Interesting article in The Washington Examiner

The Pandemic is Over. Not the Chinese Flu itself, but the emergency, and we should resume our normal lives. It’s well worth reading in its entirety, but I found its conclusion particularly striking:

How to get over a pandemic

Which raises the question: How do we reverse the learned behavior of fear, especially if it’s still reinforced by some elites? If you look at the lockdowners — the federal and local health authorities and the few remaining media cheerleaders — you can see a fear in their eyes right now. 

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky lost her cool before the Senate Health Committee when GOP Sen. Susan Collins questioned her on the onerous rules on summer camps that require children to wear masks all day, every day, outdoors, for instance. Walensky fired back: “We now have 38,000 new infections on average per day. Last May 11, it was 24,000, and we sent a lot of kids home, and camps were closed.” 

One need not be a statistician or epidemiologist to see the number games Walensky is playing there. Last May 11, those 24,000 infections were from fewer than 400,000 tests. This May 11’s 38,000 cases are from about 1 million tests. And this year, most U.S. adults are vaccinated, meaning they are at extremely low risk even if children catch it, and all children 12 and over will be able to get a shot by summer vacation anyway. Yet Walensky suggested that the current environment is more dangerous than last year’s. 

That’s absurd, and its implication is clear: No matter how good things get, the CDC won’t admit anything is safe as long as the politics dictate it declare everything dangerous. Maybe the CDC just wants to preserve power. Maybe the Biden administration is afraid of making life difficult for the teachers unions that are still keeping schools closed. Maybe, at best, Joe Biden simply wants a great, dramatic July 4 reopening announcement for which he can take credit. 

Nobody should be shocked that CDC guidance might be ungrounded in science. This same CDC advised against masks last year but still refuses to admit that outdoor masks are unnecessary and didn't admit that masking vaccinated people was pointless. The agency’s guidance on outdoor spread is that “less than 10%” of all cases were contracted outdoors, while it knows that the real number is far less than 1%. 

Half of America has been walking down sidewalks, playing baseball, waiting for their kids in the school parking lot wearing a mask that provides nobody any protection, and the CDC found it important to keep that practice going. 

The Biden administration’s insistence until May 13 that fully vaccinated officials wear masks showed that the White House was unwilling to loosen restrictions that serve no purpose. And it was unwilling to learn a lesson. 

But we all need to learn many lessons from these last 14 months: Teachers unions are not on the side of school kids; employees should stay home when feeling sick; new viruses don’t always behave like old viruses; federal approval of testing technology needs to be faster. 

The most important lesson is that public health authorities can no more be trusted with great power than anyone else. 

While lockdowners will retort that masks are no big deal, or scream “500,000 dead!” to belittle the social, economic, and moral costs of the lockdowns, the biggest danger we face right now is allowing restrictions to go on any longer than needed. 

States, cities, counties, and the CDC are using emergency powers to restrict our freedom. At times throughout the past year, there may have been serious gains from these government actions. At least, the government closures seemed in line with the mood of much of the country. 

But if a government keeps its emergency powers indefinitely, it becomes a tyranny. Free people cannot allow these powers to outlive the emergency. We also cannot wait on the coronavirus to go away. We certainly cannot wait on the CDC to declare the emergency over. 

Americans are a self-governing people. It’s up to us — not Biden, Walensky, or Fauci — to step outside, toss our masks in the trash, and declare this whole thing over.