By speaking in terms of "time-duration for an emergency action within the social contract" compared to "time-duration of the virus" dfee means: You need powers that bypass democratically elected representatives in week 1 of an emergency - but when you get to week 10, there's been plenty of time to get a urgent bill passed by the legislature, so shouldn't the emergency powers have been replaced by an explicit bill?
And if such a bill can't be passed - i.e. the person holding emergency powers is using them to do things our elected representatives aren't willing to sign off on - surely that proves how important it is that the powers be limited.
(Of course, if you believe our elected representatives would risk killing people to make the other side look bad, or would stuff unrelated pork into the must-pass bill, you might not follow this line of reasoning)
And if such a bill can't be passed - i.e. the person holding emergency powers is using them to do things our elected representatives aren't willing to sign off on - surely that proves how important it is that the powers be limited.
(Of course, if you believe our elected representatives would risk killing people to make the other side look bad, or would stuff unrelated pork into the must-pass bill, you might not follow this line of reasoning)