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This is a public service announcement from Cockburn: the mask mandates have got to go — for everyone’s health.
Even America’s most progressive cities have lifted their face mask restrictions after the cresting of the first Omicron wave — but some of their denizens are hooked on the taste of government boot, and are going mad at the prospect of being weaned off it.
Cockburn was sent a video by his nephew earlier this week showcasing this phenomenon: a masked Washington local cussing out unmasked teens at a DC Metro station. Masks are, for some unscientific reason, still required on public transport in the nation’s capital — despite not being needed in schools, gyms, stores, bars, restaurants…you get the picture.
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“Go back to whatever stupid fuckin’ Midwestern shithole you came out of,” the middle-aged man yells through his N95 at his fellow passengers, who are visibly young and healthy — and so at limited risk from Covid, especially now.
Two years ago, we urban dwellers were well into the “two weeks to stop the spread,” leaving Amazon packages on the step for forty-eight hours, emptying the Walgreens shelves of Clorox paper and toilet paper, begging our immunocompromised relatives to stay indoors (Cockburn’s mother is in her nineties and refused to give up Gin Night with the other girls from the home).
Almost all of us were suffering from the earliest strain of Covid Derangement Syndrome, an affliction that’s clearly still disturbing this poor gentleman on the Metro.
But at some point the pandemic ended. It occurred at different times for different people, whether that was the day after George Floyd died, your first trip to Florida or after the vaccine turned you gay. Cockburn fully opted out after last year’s CPAC and has been all the more healthy for it.
Others are not so lucky. The uncertainty of the pandemic left them clinging to the words of hucksters and conmen like Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom for a sense of security and calm.
Now, nearly twenty-seven months after China bothered to inform the World Health Organization that they may have spread some light coronavirus, we actually know a lot about the virus, its various strains, how to treat it, how not to catch it — and the current risk level.
Many of our cities have rules that reflect those present risks. Yet the lingering regulations on planes, trains, automobiles and, yes, DC Metro are keeping the pandemic alive in the mental space of the government-addicted.
Cockburn pities this gent and others like him — a responsible approach to public health would include considering the lasting psychological impact that unscientific Covid restrictions have had on society.
How long will our public officials entertain these wretched folk’s delusions and prolong their suffering?
