California Gov. Gavin Newsom was the latest Democrat officeholder to flout the “science!” on mask mandates when he was photographed sans mask at the Rams-49ers playoff game, accompanied by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and San Francisco Mayor London Breed.
It wasn’t the first time Newsom demonstrated that Covid rules are only for pleb workers, small business owners, and children, and not for their lordships in public office and high society. In November 2020, when the rest of the state was being told to lock down and shut up, it was revealed that Newsom and a dozen other unmasked guests had attended a birthday bash at a high-end Napa Valley restaurant.
Newsom is one of the many Democratic governors, members of Congress, and mayors who have spent the past two years disingenuously threatening, belittling, and terrorizing their constituents and the country at large with unscientific Covid cult practices and superstitions that were unprecedented in public health history prior to February 2020. These fraudsters have readily and cheerfully opted out of their own fear porn whenever it suited them.
While it’s tempting to attribute the failure to heed their own Covid wisdom as plain old hypocrisy, the real takeaway is that Democratic leaders have always been much less afraid of Covid than they want you to be. Their Covid behavior has been about demonstrating a social hierarchy in which they are unquestionably at the top.
At his Texas rally last weekend, former President Donald Trump earned cheers from the tens of thousands-strong crowd when he announced that “we’re moving on from Covid, whether they like it or not.” Ironically, the Covid-fear peddlers and purveyors of tyranny Trump was referencing include Democratic officials who have let it slip time and time again that they moved on from Covid restrictions long ago.
House Speaker and Chicago Mayor
The pioneer in all of this was probably Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who, as early as April 2020, trotted off to get her hair done in violation of her own stay-at-home order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is another Democrat for whom the prospect of contracting or transmitting Covid was not so terrifying that it stopped her from getting a blowout. Her trip to an otherwise shuttered hair salon in her home state of California was famously captured on CCTV and shared by the salon’s owner.
Throughout the country, people caught a glimpse of Pelosi, who only months before had chided President Trump for not setting an example by wearing a mask, swanning around maskless. That should have been enough. If an 80-year-old woman, before the availability of vaccines, was brave enough to stare Covid down, despite belonging to one of the most vulnerable age demographics for Covid hospitalizations and deaths, clearly the rest of the population didn’t need to be so terrified either.
Pelosi was at it again last summer at a fundraising event, where scores of maskless white leftist elites wined and dined, while minimum-wage minority servers waited on them with their faces obediently covered.
Denver and Austin Mayors, Illinois and Michigan Governors
Then there are the hoaxers who ordered their constituents to lock down while they jetted off on vacation interstate and abroad. In 2020, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock tweeted, “stay home,” “avoid travel,” and “host virtual gatherings” before boarding a flight to visit his own out-of-state family.
A month later, Austin Mayor Steve Adler took time out from kicking back in the sun in Los Cabos, Mexico, to shoot a video for the serfs back home, warning them, “this is not the time to relax” and threatening them with further restrictions and lockdowns.
For politicians seeking temporary respite from self-inflicted blue state misery, Florida has consistently been the destination of choice, despite routine left-wing attacks on Gov. Ron DeSantis for his allegedly reckless, virus spreading, murderous Covid management strategy. Early in the lockdowns, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker sent his family off to live it up on their multi-million-dollar estate in Florida while he locked down his constituents and warned against “non-essential” travel.
While warning Michiganders about non-essential travel and the perils of spring breaking in variant-ridden Florida and then flying the virus back home, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer chartered a private jet to the Sunshine State, lied about the trip, then tried to weasel her way out of the scandal.
Barack Obama, AOC, the List Goes On
Most recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was photographed vacationing and partying in Miami Beach, while back in New York, Covid is apparently so deadly that at restaurants the police are ejecting unvaccinated children and management is denying service to black families.
But it’s no secret that masks are just expedient political theater for AOC. When she was gracious enough to join celebrity guests at the $30,000 a ticket Met gala last fall, she evidently saw no need to spoil the occasion with something as pointless as a face covering. Meanwhile, scurrying behind in the background were her masked attendants, dutifully fawning over the congresswoman and carrying the train of her ghastly concoction of a dress.
Former President Barack Obama and San Francisco Mayor Breed have both been caught on camera partying and clubbing without masks, totally cool with the covert virus particles they’ve been exploiting to spook, propagandize, and scaremonger the rest of us.
No Proof It Works
Now the latest data again confirms what the Democratic aristocracy was confident of all along: lockdowns, social distancing, masks, and vax mandates may be useful at keeping the drones and neurotics in check, but largely ineffective in preventing virus transmission. Jurisdictions around the world that locked down hard don’t appear to have fared any better at curbing the virus than those that took a more relaxed approach.
The Centers for Disease Control begrudgingly acknowledged what Dr. Anthony Fauci was advising back in February 2020, before he switched his position: cloth masks are ineffective. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky recently admitted that vaccines can’t prevent virus transmission, and even Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla conceded that two vaccine doses provide “limited protection, if any” against the Omicron variant.
Meanwhile, an updated review of global research from Stanford University’s Meta-Research Innovation Center suggests Covid fatality rates have fallen across most age groups. The analysis, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, reveals an infection survival rate of more than 96 percent for all age groups, and more than 99 percent for all age groups under the age of 70. Data showing this was available early in the pandemic, almost from the time of the U.S. lockdowns.
Even the CDC’s best estimates show a relatively low infection fatality ratio across all age groups. For children 17 and younger, that figure is a breathtakingly low 0.002 percent.
Think about this the next time you fasten a useless, oxygen-depriving, speech-impeding bacterial trap to your helpless two-year-old. When you don the Covid talisman to go to church, attend class, enter a grocery store, watch a show, or board an airplane, reflect on how a disdainful coterie of officials have trolled Americans for two years.
They’ve been bleating about “flattening the curve” while they’ve been nonchalantly recreating, dining, primping, and preening, vacationing, partying, and clubbing in contradiction of their own fabricated and capricious public health edicts. Yes, they were being dishonest, hypocritical, and hierarchical. But most importantly, they were clearly never afraid of the virus, and you shouldn’t be either.