Remember, remember, the lies of December

Peter Heck: The government that cried COVID

President Biden's recent COVID diagnosis has opened up a fair share of observations that perhaps the final shred of credibility remaining for public health experts who have guided the country (and in some ways the world) through the last two years of pandemic protocol has gone up in smoke.

That the Biden diagnosis was announced exactly one year to the day that he boasted of how vaccinated and boosted people did not get this disease, that it was very much a "pandemic of the unvaccinated," only made the immolation of the people's trust all the more thorough.

When pressed on where the president might have contracted the virus, his press secretary demurred, unbelievably saying, "I don't think that matters." You could hear a collective, national spit take. Parents who watched their 2nd graders miss weeks of school because they were "contact traced" by nosy school administrators, families who missed vacations because public authorities "contact traced" them to a distant relative who might have been on the tail end of an infection, are now being told it doesn't matter where the president was exposed?

There's no quicker way to destroy public confidence than a two-tier enforcement apparatus.

Beyond that, consider this astounding chart depicting the ebbs and flows of the pandemic in two states dramatically distinct in their mitigation tactics and efforts. While Illinois imposed mask mandates, travel bans, visitation denials, school closures, and maintained them for over a year, Iowa did not. The results? A case, hospitalization, and death rate breakdown that is nearly identical:

There's no escaping what this data tells us, that the unprecedented government-imposed lockdowns in the name of public health, did untold damage to the economic, educational, and social climate of our civilization without netting any distinguishable gain. That such a truth inspires only frustration and not violent upheaval is something for which we all should be grateful.

That is especially true given the recent outbreak of MonkeyPox in the United States – a disease that is almost exclusive to the male gay community. Yet despite being able to pinpoint a behavioral change that would stop the disease in its tracks – namely, telling gay men to stop having sex with one another – the government restrains itself for the sake of preserving "freedom." Notably, that's a restraint they were unwilling to exhibit when it was pre-schoolers being traumatized by ineffective masks.

All this is why despite unprecedented efforts among public health experts to push the vaccine into children under 5 years of age, people just aren't listening anymore.

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Some have suggested that we need not relitigate past policy decisions. "What happened then should be confined to the past and we should all move forward," it's said. While I'm inclined to agree for the sake of moving the national conversation beyond COVID for the first time in what seems like forever, here's the reason that just doesn't fly:

Simply put, if the people who orchestrated the disgraceful COVID theater of the last 3 years aren't shamed and chased from public office, no lesson will be learned, and the public will continue to get more of the same. We owe ourselves, our children, and the world a better future than that.