Now that we’re in an election year where Democrats see their political fortunes slipping away in real time, they and their co-conspirators in the media have decided we should all take a quick break from “The Science.”
Democrats in New Jersey, New York, California, Oregon, Delaware, Connecticut, Illinois, and Rhode Island in recent days have said to heck with the CDC and are beginning to loosen up their beloved restrictions and mask mandates.
Less than a month ago, the U.S. was averaging more than 800,000 new Covid infections each day, the highest number seen during the entire pandemic, and quadruple the rate of infections that occurred during its peak under President Trump. But because case numbers are finally falling, New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney on Wednesday credited “Democrats’ plan to fight COVID,” which he said is “working.” Therefore, he said, “It’s time to give people their lives back.”
Democrats taketh away and Democrats giveth back.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, also of New York, said that the falling case counts aren’t happening “by accident” but because “under President Biden’s leadership, a public health infrastructure was put into place … to ensure that we can do everything possible to crush the virus, and that is what has been happening.”
Dr. Leana Wen, CNN’s omnipresent Covid nag, declared with glee this week that “the science has changed!” and that the rules for mask-wearing should “shift” from government mandate to “individual responsibility.”
A favorite of mine is the case of Michelle Goldberg, the New York Times columnist who takes every moment as an opportunity to remind her readers how “privileged” her life is. In the span of four days late last month Goldberg went from scolding people who are “done” with the pandemic — “not everyone has the luxury of being insouciant about infection,” she said — to begging elected leaders to relax school mask mandates “as soon as possible, to give students some reprieve.”
The timing is very convenient, particularly when you consider that we’re not in remarkably better shape in terms of infections, deaths, or hospitalizations today than we were less than three months ago, when Saint Anthony Fauci said the U.S. would need to average “well below 10,000” new infections per day in order for us to even think about “a degree of normality.” Not normalcy, but a degree of it.
If we in fact needed to be significantly lower than 10,000 (a number based on nothing), Democrats have effectively told “The Science” to STFU. The latest data show that we’re averaging just under 230,000 new cases each day. And The New York Times reports, “Since late January, the country has been averaging more than 2,500 newly reported deaths each day, the most since last winter.”
A year ago, Biden said at the White House that “the worst thing we could do now is let our guard down” with regard to the virus that has spread more and caused more death under him than his predecessor. “This is not a time to relax,” he said. “We must keep washing our hands, stay socially distanced, and for God’s sake — for God’s sake, wear a mask.”
That was Feb. 25, 2021, when we were averaging under 70,000 new infections per day. If that was “not a time to relax,” what time is it now that we’re more than tripling that number?
Democrats didn’t lead us to some scientific breakthrough. The “experts” haven’t discovered a new way of doing math. The only numbers that have changed are the year and Biden’s approval rating, which sits with independent voters at a shocking 32 percent. (Among all voters, it’s 39 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll.)
Democrats running into a disastrous midterm election is apparently what it means to be “done” with the pandemic. Don’t buy it. They’re relaxing the noose in hopes that after November, they can tighten it all over again.