The COVID-19 pandemic has truly shown us the ugly side of how our government (and some of our bureaucrats for that matter) can treat those who don’t “follow the science.”
Like everything in today’s cultural climate, something as mundane as following science has become politicized. But the silver lining here is that, thankfully, the majority of Americans are no longer buying the stay-masked hysteria that our would-be handlers are selling.
A while back, a Scott Rasmussen poll found that 57% of voters would feel comfortable in an indoor setting such as a restaurant or large social gathering without a mask. This is in spite of Sun God Anthony Fauci’s fear mongering, the CDC’s unbelievably bad messaging, and the media’s Herculean efforts to keep the crisis phase of COVID going indefinitely for the sake of clicks and ratings.
And Biden has failed, as he has at everything else. History will record his time in office as divisive, defensive, a failure to innocent people and a great step downwards toward America’s eventual decline.
This is also in spite of the still-alarming 40% of voters in Rasmussen’s poll who still feel uncomfortable going to an indoor event without a mask. To think that many Americans, legitimate health reasons notwithstanding, still feel the need to wear a mask when vaccines are widely available is downright disheartening.
It’s disheartening because throughout COVID, it seems like too many Americans have fallen too easily into the pattern of following the nanny state our government has become. These Americans, many of them on the Left, are hypersensitive to a fault and already worry obsessively about pronouns and diversity quotas while China and Russia encroach on us abroad.
It’s no wonder then, that they were so easy to surrender to the dictates of an overblown bureaucrat like Fauci, who has become drunk on the power the pandemic suddenly gave him in managing the lives of millions.
All that said, I’m still encouraged that the majority are ready to be done with masks. It is civil disobedience. I only wish I had one hundred employees so I could tell Joe Biden to go take a flying leap.
Let’s not forget that because of American ingenuity we had, in just under a year, three widely available and free vaccines to fight back against this nefarious contagion. We have vaccines, and moreover they work!
Even the vaunted delta variant, which the media and CDC are using as their excuse to keep the crisis going, is marginally less severe for people who are vaccinated, even in breakthrough cases (which, by the way, are less widespread than news outlets would have you believe.)
With all that in mind, is it really a surprise so many Americans are done with masks? That kind of scientific wizardry was exactly because we wanted to go back to normal, not so we could prolong our own misery. The only people who seem to not understand that are Joe Biden and his CDC cronies.
What’s more, Rasmussen also recently found that only 31% of voters want to go back to strict lockdowns, while a sane 62% are firmly opposed to any such notion. The cherry on top is that 48% would rather live in states where mask and social distancing rules are left to individual business owners rather than blanket mandates.
I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again folks: People vote with their feet.
My point in all this data is that Biden, Fauci and the rest of the clowns who are convinced that doubling down on masking, lockdowns and state-sponsored coddling are woefully behind the times.
The bureaucrats and liberal politicians who saw COVID as a chance to carve out petty kingdoms and fiefdoms should be put on notice. The majority of Americans are enjoying having their freedom back, and they are tired of new excuses to prolong the crisis that began what seemed like a lifetime ago in March 2020.
If Joe Biden wants to salvage what’s left of his own presidency, he needs to start listening to what voters want and do away with any notion of masking or mandates. He needs to fire whoever does communications for the CDC and start treating COVID like we treat all other diseases.
That isn’t to say don’t take it seriously, but Biden and his government should also take seriously the fact that 57% of voters aren’t interested in the “follow the science” and “flatten the curve” schtick anymore. Those pitches wore thin ages ago.
More than half of our electorate has decided to do without masks. If Joe Biden can’t learn to do without them either, then Democrats can kiss their control of Washington goodbye.
Craig Shirley is a Ronald Reagan biographer, presidential historian, and four-time best-selling author. His most recent book is ''Mary Ball Washington,'' a definitive biography of George Washington’s mother. Read Craig Shirley's Reports — More Here.