It's Over?

It's a miracle! The pandemic is over!! Vaccinated people can take off their masks!!!

It appears that the Biden administration, driven by focus groups that indicate growing and widespread anger at their irrational (some would say, insane) mask mandates (not to mention school closures and lockdowns), have finally decided to follow (actual) science that has been well-known and documented for over 12 months—masks have had marginal benefit and in some cases, do more harm than good; are completely unnecessary outside; do little to protect people in large indoor spaces; are monumentally intrusive, and, I suspect, were used as a mechanism for subjugation and control by petty blue dictators at the state and city level who got off on their pandemic power. 

There's also the non-trivial problem of vaccine resistance, driven in part by the idiotic requirement that until yesterday, vaccinated people had to still wear their masks. More than a few reporters have encountered folks who have said, "If I can't take off my mask, why bother getting vaccinated?"

Steven L. Miller writes:

Just like that? Nothing about this pandemic, or the science behind it, or the vaccines that have stopped it, tells us that something changed suddenly and magically for vaccinated people yesterday. But today we can finally lose our masks, as President Biden’s CDC finally announced a full loosening of mask restrictions other than crowded indoor spaces and public transportation. Joe Biden wants you to believe that this day arrived by the good graces of science and his administration’s tireless work, but that would be incorrect. The public has been getting vaccinated since early January and we are now five months into 2021. It’s the same vaccine, yet we are supposed to buy the idea that today, May 13, 2021, will go down in history as the day the pandemic suddenly ended.

Perhaps Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci finally found Florida and Texas on a map and that is why they chose today to lift CDC mask recommendations. Or, more believably, perhaps the Biden administration found itself on the back end of its most disastrous week since taking over on January 20 and needed to apply an emergency brake as the news cycle spun out of its control. The Biden administration was faced with skyrocketing inflation, a catastrophic jobs report that shows the country sliding backwards, the news that Russian hackers shut down a pipeline which led to fuel shortages throughout most of the eastern and southern US — and just this morning, dodging questions on if the administration helped in any way facilitate a $5 million ransom payment, as well as a growing conflict between Israel and Gaza. Biden was hitting a 10 on the 1 to Jimmy Carter scale.

Those of us who live in Florida have rejected catastrophist thinking since, umm, June, 2020, now almost one year ago. Sure, the pandemic did damage, sure there was real cause for concern, but most people—not all, but most—got on with their lives. Floridians paid little attention to the CDC's Legion of Doom pronouncements and mandates throughout the second half of 2020 and throughout all of 2021, and the state bounced back—fast.

So for those of you in Blue states, burdened by unnecessary lockdowns and mandates, your masters at the CDC say it's all okay. Welcome back to the world. We're glad you've finally arrived.