It is understandable if, in March 2020, you panicked at videos of communist Chinese agents welding Wuhan residents into their own homes. Perhaps, upon hearing how whistleblowing scientists were disappeared by Chinese authorities to cover up this new and deadly disease outbreak, you began wearing N95s at the grocery store that were hermetically sealed to your face.
Luckily, it only took a few weeks to discover a few crucial truths about the coronavirus. First, it disproportionately sickened and killed the most elderly. Second, it was not especially dangerous to children and did not primarily transmit through children. Despite early lies told by public health officials such as Anthony Fauci and Jerome Adams, high-quality masks — read N95 respirators, not one-ply cloth masks — did somewhat protect the wearer from contracting the coronavirus. (The CDC itself conceded this in 2020.)
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We knew all of this. In 2020, masks did a decent enough job of protecting the wearer, and by 2021, the vaccines did an extraordinary job at protecting recipients from getting seriously sickened by the virus. The only calculus that has changed in the last six months is the emergency approval of vaccines for minors, who aren’t at any serious risk of severe illness from the coronavirus anyway. There is also the highly transmissible but less severe omicron variant, the ubiquity of which undercuts whatever positive externalities that would otherwise justify vaccine mandates.
Annoyingly, the Biden administration, teachers unions, and Democratic governors and mayors have continued until now to party like it’s March 2020. Mayor Muriel Bowser recently put a vaccine mandate in place for everyone older than 11 on top of an existing indoor mask mandate. In New York City, those mandates apply to everyone older than 4. California has maintained its statewide mask mandate, while Los Angeles made its school mask mandate even more stringent, forcing the population for whom COVID-19 is actually less dangerous than the flu to upgrade to medical-grade masks.
But now, something awfully funny is happening.
Democrats representing the bluest parts of the country and their allies in the media have done one of the most stunning about-faces in recent memory. All the sudden, coronavirus mandates and restrictions that only heretics opposed 24 hours ago can be lifted, just like that.
Yes, COVID-19 deaths are at a point nearly as high as they were at their peak in January 2021. But the governors of deep indigo California and New York have all the same announced the imminent end of their onerous indoor mask mandates. The Biden administration is planting proof of a pivot toward a “new normal” in Politico. The governors of New Jersey and Delaware have gone even further, finally announcing an end to their mask mandates in schools.
Leana Wen of CNN claimed the sea change has finally arrived because “the science has changed.” Nonsense. This is not about science — this is about Democrats looking at polls and panicking at their diminishing midterm prospects.
As the 2021 elections already demonstrated, the pandemic no longer registers as a top concern for voters, but the restrictions are starting to.
Those who fear the virus have already gotten vaccinated and boosted. Those who don’t have simply never cared. With inflation at 7% and gas prices through the roof, the average person has much bigger concerns about the economy.
But now, the polling also proves that the public is no longer merely apathetic to the coronavirus regulatory regime. They’re fed up.
Biden’s handling of the coronavirus went from having double-digit approval — consistently his best issue — to nearly 10 points underwater on average. Monmouth found that 7 in 10 believe it’s time to move on and learn to live with COVID-19. There is a 10-point drop in support for vaccine mandates since last September.
Crucially, the costs of coronavirus mandates for students have started to shift public opinion, with more than two-thirds of respondents polled by Pew agreeing that children’s academic performance ought to be a major consideration for keeping schools open. Less than 2 in 5 seriously care about teachers contracting the virus. This ought to come as little surprise, given the school closure and quarantine regime’s disproportionate impact on low-income students and mothers.
No, the science has not changed. The vaccines have not gotten any more effective at preventing severe illness — if anything, omicron has rendered them less effective, at least at preventing transmission. Even before the vaccine, children were never at any real risk of death, and their teachers have been at the front of the line for vaccines for over a year now.
The only thing that has changed for Democrats is the tea leaves they are reading. A red wave was already forming on the horizon for the 2022 midterm elections. Even this abrupt pivot might prove too little, too late.
