With infections and deaths sharply down from their winter peaks, and vaccinations up, the scaremongers and political operatives found a way to turn up the panic knob...
Reports and politicians’ comments were filled with words such as “alarming,” “serious threat,” “greatest threat,” “dangerous for young people.” Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, at one time a right-of-center voice, even went so far as to declare that “red states are dangerous to America’s health.”
But within hours, things became even uglier.
On Tuesday, the Post reported the spread of the Delta variant had prompted “new restrictions worldwide,” explaining that its “rapid spread” had “forced a growing number of countries to reimpose lockdowns and other public health restrictions.”
(Forced? That’s a funny way to describe officials reimposing lockdowns by choice that was theirs alone.)
The Post continued:
The new curbs on travel and daily life stretched from Australia and Bangladesh to South Africa and Germany, where authorities over the weekend set new limits on travelers from ‘virus-variant zones’ such as Portugal and Russia.
Though he hasn’t called for more lockdowns or advised the immunized to go back to masks, the behavior over the last 16 months of Anthony Fauci, who isn’t America’s doctor, just a bureaucrat, as well as his public panic over the Delta variant, is sure to inspire efforts to reinstate lockdowns and mask mandates in Blue states and Blue cities. The Democrats have treated him as a celebrity worthy of worship in some of the most stomach-turning displays of dear-leader affection we’ve seen since Barack Obama was the recipient of their devotion. He’s a high priest in the left’s Church of the Pandemic.
To be fair, we’ve not heard of new lockdown plans in the U.S. (at least to this point), and the New York Times has reported that “health officials in Chicago and New York City said on Tuesday that they had no plans to revisit mask requirements.”
But there’s always California, ever hoping to set in motion trends, no matter how loony or obtuse, it hopes others will follow. While the rest of the country waits, for now, public health officials in Los Angeles County are back to “strongly” recommending “everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public places as a precautionary measure.”
This comes just two weeks after the governor had lifted what had been some of the most restrictive pandemic rules in the country. The recommendation was made even though the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health admitted that “fully vaccinated people appear to be well protected from infections with Delta variants.”
Apparently a fortnight of freedom for Angelenos was too much for the Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer, a social welfarist, not a physician, and her staff to bear. Yes, at this point it’s only a “recommendation,” but we know that it’s a short step from there to mandates, which don’t work.
Like masking, lockdowns are never far from the minds of officials and experts. Ominously, a University of California, San Francisco epidemiologist told a Bay Area television station this week that “I think as a state it’s quite possible we can back track.”
It’s a somewhat nuanced statement. Nevertheless, the public response to what we’re seeing this week ought to be, “no, absolutely not – you will not take our freedoms away from us again.” We know the cost of lockdowns is steep, we’ve seen the evidence that they’re ineffective. Americans need to firmly tell policymakers they will not surrender their rights again.
So, just what are the details about the Delta variant, which is looking more and more like the next threat to liberty? Is it more transmissible and potentially deadlier, as Joe Biden and many others claim?
As for its lethality, according to one study, it looks as if it’s no more of a killer than the original strain. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who unlike Ferrer is a physician (he’s an ophthalmologist who still performs surgery), tweeted this week about a “new public England study of” the delta variant showing “44 deaths out of 53,822 (.08%) in unvaccinated group.”
That’s a bit lower than the globally cumulative COVID-19 total death rate from March 2020 to May 2021 of 91.7 per 100,000, and far lower than the U.S. average of 186 fatalities per 100,000.
Nevertheless, the Delta variant is handy for keeping the cauldron of fetid political stew stirred, a handy bludgeon against our rights. We need to be ready for what might come, and unafraid to say “not this time, not any time.”
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