Lockdown bigots will continue to fight to hold onto their addictions. For sane, rational humans, it's all but over.
Coronavirus numbers mean America must stop living under emergency decree.
www.washingtonexaminer.com
It’s over.
COVID-19 isn’t gone, of course. The coronavirus, the current novel one and its variants as well as other such viruses, will never be gone, and every public health expert knows that.
And the pandemic is still raging in other parts of the world, especially in India.
But in the United States, the
emergency is over. The epidemic in America is like a poisoned rat, limping, staggering, crawling, and gasping its last breaths. The poison is the vaccine now jabbed into the arms of most adults.
Pandemic, thou art slain.
We can say that without diminishing in any way the lethality of the past year, and without having to debate the value of the interventions and sacrifices of the last 14 months.
This was a crisis. It was a plague. Now, in the U.S., it’s just a virus.
In countries such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Israel, the coronavirus is now one of countless risks and threats to human health. And like all other risks, prudence dictates we mitigate it. But reasonable humans do not demand that risks be reduced to zero at any cost.
Driving, swimming, hiking, drinking, eating, making love, raising children — all of these things are risky. Living is a risk. For the past 14 months, we’ve been asked and ordered to give up a lot of living in order to save lives. It’s time to start living again.
This will not be easy for many. Public health officials won’t want their moment to end. Mayors and county executives won’t want to give up their emergency powers. The media will hate to lose an ever-present threat with which to scare the public daily.
And many people, scarred and altered by 14 months of lockdowns, the half-million deaths, and the constant reminders of invisible germs, will have trouble giving up their masks or reentering the world.
Some will choose to stay quarantined or even keep wearing masks outdoors. That’s sad, but it’s their right. Just as it is ours to acknowledge the facts and readjust our routine accordingly.
While the media greeted the May 13 loosening of mask guidance as an all-nearly-clear declaration from the White House, it is up to neither the media nor the government to declare normalcy. The remaining restrictions — on the unvaccinated, especially on children — also need to be ended whether
Joe Biden or Anthony Fauci is ready or not.
What does it mean, then, to accept that the emergency is over?
All schools should open five days a week. Workers should return to the office. All of us should toss our masks in the trash.
Churches and bars should be filled to whatever the fire marshal will allow, so that we can pray, sing, and revel as before.
This is already what life is like in much of the country. If you live in Texas or Florida or Missouri, where infection rates are low and hospitalizations are falling while masks are rare and everything’s open, you might say the pandemic is already over. You’d be right.
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