In 2020, Americans learned that if emergency dictated, we could lock down, mask up, and blow out spending to temporarily stymie the impact of a global pandemic. We learned that if uncertainty required massive response, we could mobilize massive response, including the creation of new vaccines within one year.
And in 2021, Americans learned that it's easier to flip the switch on toward top-down control and government dependency than to turn it back off.
We have vaccines that likely reduce the chances of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 (somewhere between 0.05% and 0.1%) to below the infection fatality rates of the flu (somewhere between 0.1% and 0.2%). We have effective therapeutics, including a new therapeutic pill that will reduce post-COVID-19 diagnosis hospitalization and death by around 90%.
And we have a new strain of COVID-19. Omicron reportedly infects at 140 times the initial rate of COVID-19, and about 70 times the rate of delta; it hospitalizes, according to South African data, at about 20% the rate of delta. Which means that nearly everyone will get omicron, and that very few people will die.
And yet here we are, nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, with our expert class informing us that we must vaccinate and boost, no matter our age (in reality, only those who are older than 65 or immunocompromised truly require a booster); that we must continue to mask up, even if that means using cloth masks against omicron (even Leana Wen, CNN's resident COVID-19 hawk, calls cloth masks "facial decorations"); that we must vaccinate and mask our small children and possibly shut down schools again (children are at near-zero statistical risk from COVID-19); that we must test the asymptomatic, sending the economy into soft lockdown (attempting to prevent transmission is a fool's errand given the transmissibility of omicron); that we must put in place vaccine passports (even though the vaccinated are getting and transmitting omicron); that we must continue to spend money at record rates in order to prop up an economy that we are destroying for no good reason.
We have, in other words, lost our minds.
It turns out that learned helplessness sets in extraordinarily quickly -- and that proponents of such learned helplessness become unreasonably angry when others refuse to engage in it. Thus, President Joe Biden spent most of this year deriding his political opponents as friends to the virus and attempting to mobilize sentiment against the unvaccinated. Today, the media continue to preach that red states are the COVID-19 problem despite the fact that case counts are at record highs in states ranging from New York to New Jersey to Massachusetts.
Biden did announce this week that there was "no federal solution," stating that the pandemic would be "solved at the state level." This came after Biden tried to cram down a federal vaccine mandate, chided former President Donald Trump for his supposed failures of leadership, and went to rhetorical battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for refusing to engage in COVID-19 hysteria.
But his administration just as quickly bought back Biden's comments, suggesting that "we're going to get through this by working together"; meanwhile, the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci announced the possibility of a vaccination passport for air travel.
It may take the election of 2022 to remind blue-state Democrats and the elitists in our media that unreasonable policy has consequences. Either way, we can only hope that 2022 is the year that Americans return to reality rather than continue living in a pandemic-paranoid fantasy.
Ben Shapiro, 37, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers "How To Destroy America In Three Easy Steps," "The Right Side Of History," and "Bullies." To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS
5 comments:
Ooooof ben…do you even try to get actual numbers for anything, or you’re good with just pulling shit out of your ass? But let’s roll with it: Omicron is 70 times more transmissible but results in 20% hospitalizations compared to Delta. Thats so many more hospitalizations.
400,000 people dying annually and his solution is literally to do nothing. Don’t even try.
@5:46am Ummm, are you paying attention to the news?
"Look, there is no federal solution," Biden said Monday, according to a transcript of a conversation he had with a group of governors. "This gets solved at a state level." USA Today
And "at the state level" is no different. He just passed the buck, so the states will do the same. Each and every person - individually - is responsible for the health and safety. Full stop.
Government SHOULD do NOTHING in more instances than not regarding the support of a free society.
Government SHOULD do NOTHING in more instances than not regarding the support of a free society.
I'll give you credit for sentence construction as soon as I can figure out what the hell you just said.
@4:48am Translation: The less government the better. Ultimately, responsibility for each individual's health and well-being is their own. That's the way it has always been for thousands of years.
Minimize sugar, salt, and stress - eat strategically and in moderation, and most of all - stay physically active.
This is the "medicine" prescription of the future.
Chinese Proverb: "Man dig's his grave with his teeth."
9:25 am
Pick up a few history text books on pandemics.
And, Ben Shapiro has unrealistic expectations of how quickly reliable research can be confirmed with a novel ( that means new, Ben and not seen before) virus that is mutating thanks to pundits like you who sold their conscious and soul for coin.
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