Friends from my hometown are often shocked when they come visit me in the DC area and find that many Americans are still adhering to long-expired Covid restrictions. Thankfully I recently moved to the suburbs, but whenever I travel into the city — or even Arlington or Alexandria — for work, it’s not uncommon to see people driving alone in their cars with a mask over their face. People here still wear N95s into the grocery store, “socially distance” and otherwise behave like paranoid hypochondriacs.
We are now more than three years out from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. This past April, President Joe Biden, who spent the early part of his presidency forcing government employees and healthcare workers to get vaccinated and otherwise fear-mongering over the virus, signed a bill ending the Covid national emergency. Even before then, many Americans — dare I say most — were long fed up with the pointless public health policies and damaging shutdowns. With each new variant, Covid became less serious, less deadly, more like a common cold.
So why are new Covid restrictions being implemented?
Morris Brown College, a historically black college in the Atlanta area, announced on Instagram that due to an increase in positive cases, they were reinstating a mask mandate, requiring social distancing, prohibiting large gatherings and implementing contact tracing efforts.
Hollywood studio Lionsgate similarly brought back its mask mandate due to rising cases in Los Angeles.
“Employees must wear a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95) when indoors except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace,” a response manager for the studio wrote in an internal memo.
Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse took the same approach to an uptick in cases.
In addition to these new mask mandates from private institutions, the government is again encouraging Americans to get their Covid vaccine boosters to fight against a new subvariant. These shots do not prevent infection or spread; each new Covid variant is demonstrably weaker than the prior strain — and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admits cases, while rising, are still low overall. Nonetheless, Americans are being told that to protect themselves and others, they need to to get jabbed again this fall.
I’m quite sure that the vast majority of Americans at this point aren’t going to follow any new restrictions or vaccine recommendations, except for the people mentioned at the top of this newsletter that never stopped following them. So why the sudden push to bring Covid-19 back into the conversation?
The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it is dedicating an additional $1 billion for more vaccine trials this fall. Moderna and Pfizer stocks rose after losses earlier in the year upon news that Covid was back. Moderna claims early data shows its booster is effective against the “Eris” and “Fornax” sub-variants. Shares of Novavax spiked after it said its new Covid vaccine created a “broad immune response” to Eris.
Another theory gaining ground on social media? That the government is setting the stage for another public health emergency that would require 2020-style election policies ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“I hear that the Covid-19 Election Variant may be coming back,” former news anchor and Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake tweeted.
Former Blaze editor Jason Howerton quipped, “It’s awfully strange that Covid always waits to release its worst variants until the election cycle.”
“Two and a half years after the mandates were lifted, Covid seems to be making a convenient comeback just in time for the 2024 election season!” Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles asserted.
It’s not surprising that people are suspicious. The science doesn’t back up any of the revamped hysteria surrounding Covid. According to the World Health Organization, “There have been no reported changes in disease severity to date.”
“The people that are getting hospitalized often have lots of co-morbidities, and they’re at-risk no matter what Covid strain they get,” Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, said.
The symptoms caused by the new variant are comparable to those of a common cold.
It doesn’t make much sense to implement new restrictions just to stop people from getting Covid (especially if new variants are not any more dangerous) — we don’t do that for other common viruses. It stands to reason that there is indeed some other explanation for the wave of mask mandates and available booster shots sweeping the nation.
A current trending topic on X — previously known as Twitter — encourages “DO NOT COMPLY!” After the overreach of the last three years, it’s easy to see why so many are making that their mantra.
