Coronavirus vaccines dramatically reduce the risk of death or hospitalization from the coronavirus. They are now free and available to everyone in the country over the age of 4. Monoclonal antibody treatment through IV therapy has proven a stunning success as a second line of defense against severe illness.
Now Pfizer has announced an even easier treatment that’s as effective: a pill regimen, slashing the cost and time to treat the unvaccinated or those who experience severe breakthrough cases.
The pandemic may still be wreaking havoc on the developing world. But especially in the nation’s capital, it has been over for some time now.
Even so, don’t expect the overlords of Washington, D.C., to relinquish their reins any time soon.
Washington Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt has once again denied a plea from the city’s gyms that they be allowed to require proof of vaccination instead of maintaining the onerous indoor mask mandate reimposed at the Biden administration’s behest.
“How can I say to a gymnasium that, ‘Yeah, while y’all are in the gym, blowing air all on each other, sweat and breathing hard, you can take your mask off because you don’t like it, but I’m gonna still require it in schools, I’m still going to require it in restaurants, etc.?” Nesbitt said during a City Council webinar. “When I feel that the district is in a good enough place and we have enough of our vulnerable residents, including our children 5 to 11, who have a degree of personal protection, then I’ll make the recommendation to the mayor to remove the indoor mandate, OK? Is that clear?”
The resolution, of course, should be to remove the mask mandate everywhere — and especially for children, who should have never been made to mask up in the first place. But the recalcitrance of Nesbitt and Mayor Muriel Bowser is made all the more galling when you look at their performance in protecting residents’ lives from human killers.
Washington has been averaging just zero to one coronavirus deaths per week for most of the year now. Nearly all of those deaths have occurred among people who chose not to get the free vaccine that is available at every corner drugstore in the city. Since January, just 12 of the city’s coronavirus victims were vaccinated. Since June, that number is eight.
In contrast, homicides are up 13% from last year, which in turn were up 19% from the year prior. So far in 2021, 188 people in the city have died of homicide. So fully vaccinated residents are more than 15 times more likely to die as a result of murder than from the virus. Yet the government only treats one of these causes as an emergency so dire it must suffocate the city’s businesses and students.
Getting vaccinated is a choice. Bullies like President Joe Biden do not have the legal right to force you to get a shot against your will. But at this point, dying from COVID-19, especially with 60% of the population and 7 in 10 residents over the age of 11 vaccinated, is effectively a choice resulting from vaccine resistance. Again, that is your right, but your bad choices should not hold society back from returning to a complete pre-pandemic normal.
Bowser knows this — otherwise, I would not have caught her defying her own indoor mask mandate at a packed wedding reception, not 24 hours after reimposing her performative tyranny. The pandemic is over here.
Eric Adams’s mayoral election in New York City, Minneapolis rejecting a measure to defund the police, and pretty much every Republican blowout this past Tuesday demonstrate that the nation cares about crime a lot more than it cares about COVID-19. If only Washington cared about the black lives lost to murder as much as it does about controlling your personal life.
