This Covid re-opening will definitely for sure work out differently this time, right guys?

The “open everything” crew are lonely and want the government to make their friends hang out with them

Photo by Chad Davis, flickr

Well Omicron is seemingly subsiding finally, having reeked havoc on many holiday travel itineraries and New Year’s Eve party plans. So in response, most state and local governments are plowing forward with revoking mask mandates and other protective measures designed to limit the spread of the virus.

But we’ve been here before.

When we first started easing restrictions after the initial surge of Covid-19, the Delta variant popped up, and rode through the population like Moses through the Red Sea. Cities and states rushed to reimplement mask mandates and restrictions on indoor public spaces in order to stem the tide of a hospitalization rate that threatened to overwhelm the health care system.

After Delta, we once again saw protections rolled back, and once again a new variant emerged, this time the deadly Omicron. My own plans to visit my parents for Christmas were quickly scuttled as hospitals once again filled to the brim with Covid cases.

Along the way over a million Americans died from the virus. A number that I used to think wasn’t possible for a virus, given modern medicine and previously trustworthy institutions like the Centers for Disease Control. But the CDC, it seems, is taking orders from CEOs these days, rather than following the science on public health.

So here we are again, rushing to “open everything,” with an army of self-proclaimed centrist armchair epidemiologists leading the chorus on policy change. Noted New York Times quitter-turned-Substack grifter Bari Weiss boldly proclaimed that she was “done with Covid,” as if viruses were an attitude instead of a serious health problem.

Trained economist-turned-election-predictor Nate Silver implored President Joe Biden to tell liberals it was safe to get coffee with friends, while mocking those who take time to plan and consider Covid risk for social get-togethers. Presumably, Silver is just lonely and wants Starbucks with his lib friends, I don’t know.