Re-lockdown

Is a modicum of sanity about to reassert itself regarding the Wuhan Flu? Are the people finally exhausted by their panic over the Fauci-altered coronavirus? Remember those little bulletins that Mike Pence carried around, enjoining us all to to take “fifteen days to stop the spread”? I think we’re at about day 750 now. New York restaurants and many cultural emporia demand that you produce your papiers (it sounds better in German) — identification plus an image attesting to your “vaccination status” — in order to enter. Some are even requiring proof that you’ve had a “booster” jab. Pfizer likes that.

Another holiday season, another Covid strain to quintuple-mask against. This one, discovered in South Africa last week, is called omicron, and how fitting that it sounds like the codename for some evil plan that was hatched in a volcanic lair. The omicron variant feels like nothing so much as a twelfth-in-ten-years action movie sequel, derivative and exhausting, asked for by no one, with even Vin Diesel and The Rock unable to tell each other apart anymore. Omicron is the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, meaning Covid has already produced a couple dozen other variants. (The WHO, which names the strains, skipped nu, the thirteenth letter, so it wouldn't be confused with "new," as well as xi, the fourteenth letter, presumably to avoid offending a certain Chinese public health hero.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo took the last can of Who-hash by announcing a ban on both indoor and outdoor private gatherings larger than 10 people. It is just the latest flash of insanity from our nation's leaders in trying to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, but it provoked an even larger backlash than usual because it attacks two sacred American institutions: Thanksgiving and the family. Cuomo's order is insulting to our intelligence and is disgustingly authoritarian. COVID science suggests gathering outdoors is relatively safe (it's why so many states have offered restaurants money to winterize their patio dining), yet Cuomo tells families they cannot do it for Turkey Day. What if you live in a rural area and have a large backyard that makes social distancing possible?

Are you ready for the second blame wave? As the country braces itself for an inevitable repeat surge in COVID-19 infections, we’re told red-state governors 'opened too soon'. The next outbreak, we can be sure, will be something to do with the fact the President decided to resume his political rallies, approximately two weeks from now. What nobody says is that individual or social behavior is the cause. It can’t possibly be the thousands of people closely together marching down city streets yelling and chanting, some with masks, some not. The guidelines fell completely by the wayside for the Democrats and much of network cable news. In the middle of May, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser extended her lockdown order through to the June 8.

Fear is gripping the American public health and media establishments: they are losing control. States are belatedly (and far too tentatively) easing their coronavirus lockdowns, many without having met the absurd CDC benchmarks for doing so. Customers are joyfully returning to previously shuttered restaurants and parks, some even discarding that symbol of subjugation: the outdoor mask. The mainstream media and health experts are not going down without a fight, however; their newfound power over almost the entirety of human life has been too exhilarating to give up now. Their reaction to the current rebellion provides a glimpse of the strategies that will be deployed during the much-hyped 'second wave' of infections this fall in order to shut the economy down again.