Ready for the 'Tripledemic,' America? The Left's Scare Tactics Begin

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

This is never going to end, is it? “This” being the government’s continuing efforts to scare the bejesus out of America. For more than two years, COVID-19 was the Democrat Party’s version of the Grim Reaper at the door. After a strong majority of Americans said enough is enough, a new scare tactic has arrived: the tripledemic.

That’s right, sports fans — the “tripledemic.” And just in time for the Holiday Season!

As described by Yale Medicine, a tripledemic occurs when COVID-19, the flu, and RSV collide.

As a common respiratory virus (RSV) surges in children across the country, flu cases climb, and COVID-19 simmers in the background, some medical experts are worrying about a potential “tripledemic.”

There’s no scientific definition for this term; it simply refers to a collision of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), flu, and COVID-19 to the extent that it might overwhelm hospital emergency departments.

It may sound obvious, but the best prevention advice for all three illnesses is to avoid others who are sick.

While all three viruses are present right now, they aren’t each peaking at the same time.

While pesky mask mandates are unlikely in most parts of the country, health experts are “renewing recommendations” to wear a high-quality medical mask on public transportation, in airports, on planes, while shopping, and in other crowded public spaces. And don’t bet against some Democrat mayor somewhere decreeing a mandate — not to mention Biden’s no doubt already licking his mandate chops.

Anyway, back to the scary-sounding tripledemic, via the Washington Post:

As the country heads into its third pandemic winter, covid-19 cases are on the rise, and the 2022-23 flu season is shaping up to be the worst in a decade — there have already been 4,500 deaths from flu, including 14 children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With such a heavy burden of illness straining the health-care system, it may be hard to believe that something as simple as a face mask could make a meaningful difference. But health experts say a quality medical mask — such as an N95, KN95, or KF94 — remains a highly effective line of defense, especially when combined with vaccination, hand washing, better ventilation and avoiding crowds.

“Masks will help reduce your risk of all respiratory viruses not just covid,” said Jay K. Varma, an internal medicine physician, epidemiologist and professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College. “They have to be the right quality masks worn consistently and correctly. Even a very small percentage increase in mask-wearing when multiplied by a large population can have a big impact.”

Speaking of masks, let’s go to one of our favorite pandemic “experts,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Wolensky, who earlier this week, as transcribed by WaPo, parroted her mask shtick, encouraging people “to wear a high quality, well-fitting mask to help prevent the spread of respiratory illness.”

If you have these other things circulating as well, and you want to protect yourself against other respiratory diseases, then the mask will help you.

Really? We’ll get to that “help you” claim in a minute, but it bears mentioning that the CDC isn’t a regulatory agency and therefore cannot impose mask mandates; it instead recommends that masks be worn while in public or in otherwise close contact with others.

Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research. of course lauded Wolensky’s recommendations as if she hasn’t made a fool out of herself on multiple occasions over the last two years.

It’s good she brought it up. We had a really good reason to wear a mask with covid, and now we have even more of a reason. It’s a three-fer — you get protection from flu, RSV and certainly from COVID.

Uh-huh. Just like the “recommendations” that COVID “vaccinations” — which aren’t vaccinations, at all — and so-called “boosters” would stop people from contracting COVID-19, and when that claim went south, the “science” of the left went with it.

As reported by the L.A. Times, only a few communities are again reconsidering mask mandates, especially if the CDC identifies them as having high levels of COVID. The most notable example is Los Angeles County, which the CDC considers to have medium COVID levels, yet the Times says cases are spiking and hospital admissions are rising.

County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in an interview Tuesday:

We are seeing a rapid acceleration again. We’ve got to get more people boosted [and] everybody should go ahead and put those masks on when they’re indoors. If you have alarming numbers of cases and lots and lots of transmission, you’re going to end up with more people in the hospital. And tragically, our hospitals also have to deal with other respiratory viruses … and deal with the corresponding staffing shortages that happen when you have lots of illnesses.

It’s almost like these people purposely ignore real science, in deference to their predetermined narratives.

And California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly kicked it up a few notches, with this warning:

Taken separately, these infections are manageable. But when all come together, the difficulty posed to the system is pretty extreme, and we’re seeing that now.

Uh-oh. Sounds like another one of Biden’s “winter(s) of severe illness and death” — that never came close to happening.

Numbers-wise, according to the Times:

L.A. County reported an average of 3,829 coronavirus cases a day over the seven-day period ending Tuesday, up from 2,301 the prior week. The latest case rate is triple the rate recorded in early November. Recent week-over-week increases in the case rate have ranged as high as 81%.

The per capita rate — 265 cases a week for every 100,000 residents — hasn’t been this high since early August, when the summer surge began to fade. A rate of 100 or more is considered high.

As of Sunday, 6.6% of hospital beds in L.A. County were being used by such patients, up from 2% at the start of November. Should that share reach 10%, it would trigger a countdown — likely a couple of weeks — to a new mask order, which would be the first for L.A. County since early March.

Ah, there it is: another “mask order.” So as I suggested, earlier, it’s time to get back to Wolensky’s “a mask will help you” claim, and other such claims, above.

As I reported last Friday, the CDC took nearly two years to tell America – and presumably, the world – that cloth masks were virtually worthless for mitigating the spread of COVID-19, and that N95 masks provide “the highest” level of protection. However, based on the results of a new peer-reviewed, international randomized controlled trial (RCT), there is no statistically significant, real-world evidence that masks stop aerosolized transmission of the coronavirus.

You might want to read that last line again: There is no statistically significant real-world evidence that masks stop aerosolized transmission of the coronavirus.

Let’s be clear: As we’ve agreed from the outset, people with underlying conditions or predispositions should take adequate precautions to protect themselves from contracting any virus or other diseases that may lead to serious illness, or worse.

But studies continue to suggest that the obsessiveness of masking everyone on the planet at the drop of a hat appears to be worthless; except to the left, perhaps, and its insidious efforts to control virtually every aspect of our lives.