The Barbershop: Dennis Byrne, Proprietor
The never-ending pandemic. How do we know when it’s over?
Not until every last American is vaccinated? (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
Maybe never. The way it’s going, there’ll be no end to the pandemic and the unnecessary partisan restrictions, regulations and rules that are running, and in some cases, ruining our lives.
Especially those of our children, as the movement is rapidly spreading across the country that children must wear their masks for their entire school day. Is anyone testing their oxygen levels in their undeveloped lungs struggling to breathe?
It’s as if we’ll have to live with this until 100 percent of Americans are vaccinated, a ridiculous, unattainable and unnecessary goal. Completely ignore the natural immunity that combats all forms of invasive diseases. Make sure that everyone who has caught the disease who has antibodies to fight it must get vaccinated anyway, even though the wisdom of that is not “settled science.”
Some of these thoughts are brilliantly captured and expanded upon by John Tierney, in the City Journal where he is a contributing editor. He also is a contributing science columnist for the New York Times, and coauthor of The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It.
Here is his opening paragraphs from Keeping Fear Alive: Reluctant to set the public free, policymakers and the public-health bureaucracy set unachievable and unnecessary goals:
Throughout the pandemic, American political and public-health leaders have been following Rahm Emanuel’s classic dictum for power-seeking officials: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Now they’ve adopted a corollary: you never want a crisis to end.
So they are prolonging the national misery instead of easing it, which could be done with a few simple strategies. Explain to the public that the virus will never disappear but is no longer a mortal threat to the vast majority of Americans. Encourage the minority still at risk to get vaccinated by honestly discussing who is in jeopardy and what scientists have learned about infections. Promote treatments proven to prevent infection and speed recovery while avoiding unproven treatments and mandates that cause collateral damage and generate mistrust. Above all, make it clear to Americans that we finally have reason to celebrate: what once seemed an unprecedented danger is now just one of many pathogens that we know how to live with.
But the nation’s crisismongers aren’t about to relinquish their hold over the public, so they’ve set new goals that are as unachievable as they are unnecessary and harmful. Making vaccines available to every American adult is no longer sufficient; now the crisis cannot end until the entire population has been vaccinated. Instead of focusing efforts on vaccinating the vulnerable, officials obsess on compelling universal obedience, even if that means squandering vaccines on people who already have acquired natural immunity or are at minimal risk of serious illness.
The same progressives who regularly denounce “systemic racism” and “Western imperialism” are now enforcing policies that disproportionately punish minorities and the poor, both in the United States (the majority of black teenagers and young adults in New York have been banished from much of public life by the city’s new vaccine-passport policy) and in the rest of the world….
That’s probably the limit that I can quote for the piece. There’s much more to read–if the censors will allow it to be read.
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