Commentary by Joe Schaeffer, 247 Real News
The "screw your freedom" contingent is now demanding respect for the blue-blanketed Linuses among us who continue to insist upon masking up as the coronavirus social curb regime slowly fades to black.
Whereas individuals should have the right to indulge their personal insecurities so long as it does not affect others, two years of brutal social tyranny in the name of "public health" have made it clear that this is not how it works. Government and coercive private business muscle allowed people who fully acceded to having their lives be ruled by illogical fear to impose their compulsions on the rest of us.
And so it is more than merely annoying that the same folks who openly mocked the rights of those who wanted to make an informed decision not to wrap a swath of plasticized fibers around their face are today assuming the role of delicate wounded birds, begging for understanding as they continue to perform their bizarre and socially hostile mask theater while clinging to their steadfast belief that they are our moral betters.
The Seattle Times wrote in a March 7 editorial:
As Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center clinical research professor of vaccines and infectious diseases Dr. Joshua Schiffer said, the region is entering a “natural experiment” about whether ending the mask mandate will affect community spread. Self-determination just became a larger factor in the experiment.
Schiffer said he’ll continue wearing his mask, which is a well-informed decision that deserves respect. The end of the state mandate gives every resident and visitor the freedom to make a similar assessment of personal risk and act accordingly in public spaces. That situation should be accepted without confrontation. The workplaces and public spaces that continue to require masks and vaccinations as conditions of entry should have their policies respected for the same reasons.
This would be the same Seattle Times that wrote a charming Dec. 29, 2001 editorial titled "Employers must mandate vaccines":So, what can be done? It’s past time to admit that no amount of information, no recognition of the damage the virus can cause, will convince those who are able to be vaccinated but who have so far declined to do the right thing. This leaves vaccine mandates by employers as one of the few effective tools remaining to increase the vaccination rate.
When the choice is between hitting the road or taking the shot, a lot of people become more amenable to protecting public health.
My how the tone has changed in a little over a year. The San Francisco Chronicle on March 7 interviewed Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the University of California San Francisco's Department of Medicine. Wachter is another one of those countless credentialed expertists who have run roughshod over this nation for the past 24-odd months. His day in the sun may be waning, yet he still sees himself as a personal fountain of wisdom from which we peasants must drink deeply. The topic? "Should you still wear a mask":Some of the nicest feedback I get from my Twitter feeds is that many people have told me that they trust my decision-making process, and so make their decisions based on what I’m doing, which is a heavy responsibility, and one I take quite seriously.
Megalomaniac much? Wachter has a rather large platform on Twitter, with over 259,000 followers. It goes without saying that he loves vaccines, but he really, really loves Paxlovid, Pfizer's oral antiviral drug that is prescribed for patients who test positive for COVID. Carefully read the doctor's responses as to the appropriateness of masks today and it is obvious that he is still staking a claim to having a say over the everyday lives of the people of this nation. He can't enforce it via brute power anymore, so it is dressed up as sage medical guidance:I am now comfortable eating indoors in restaurants. I also am fine getting together in small to mid-sized groups (up to 10 or so) of people who I’m pretty confident are vaccinated. (For example, I’ve resumed, maskless, my eight-person poker game.) I haven’t worn a mask outdoors since early in the pandemic. But in larger indoor groups or in places where it seems unnecessary to accept any risk of catching COVID, I’ll still wear a mask. So I wear one when I’m shopping, and would wear one if I went to a movie or indoor sporting event. I’m still required to wear one in the hospital. Flying: I keep it on for as much of the flight as I can, and try to remove it (briefly) to eat when others around me have their masks on.
Again, it is crucial to note what is going on here. He is the umpire:I am not critical of people who choose not to mask in large crowds or while shopping — particularly if they’re low risk and if community transmission rates are low. But to me, it’s reasonable to mask in those kinds of situations.
Gee, thanks doc. That sure is a relief to hear. The French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec orchestrated one of the most rigid coronavirus social curb regimens in North America. Today, the very same health departments that imposed curfews on residents only three months ago now call for respect for the masked. The Toronto Globe and Mail reports:Masking, [Quebec interim public health director Dr. Luc Boileau] said, would become a “personal choice in the context of a progression to a normal life,” but he added that “if there are people who feel more comfortable wearing a mask, of course they will be able to.”
Let us reiterate: This is the same health department that refused to allow supposedly free citizens to leave their homes at night just weeks ago. It's important to see the passive tyranny subtly at work with this new soft approach. New York City has finally ended its horrific mask mandate on school children but teachers are being allowed to bully their young students into continuing to wear them anyway based on this same corrosive mindset embodied by the self-righteous examples above. The New York Post reported March 7:Teachers at a top Manhattan high school pressured students to stay masked on Monday — all with the blessing of their principal, The Post has learned.
Beacon High School principal Brady Smith apparently sought to undermine the mayor’s ending of the school mask mandate by telling parents that teachers could ask their students to wear masks.
“While teachers cannot mandate a mask in their classroom, they may request that students wear one as many of us have vulnerable loved ones at home,” Smith wrote in a letter obtained by The Post.
A student described how the squeeze play worked:A freshman told The Post that he had giddily shed his mask — until he was pressured into keeping it on by an instructor.
“My English teacher said ‘It’s preferred in my class to keep wearing the mask’ so I put it back on,” he said. “You know what that means.”
The wounded birds use their fragility as a weapon against others:Another male senior who asked not to be identified said his teacher also discouraged taking off masks.
“One of my teachers asked us to keep wearing them last night,” he said. “It was his message to all of us on Google Classroom. They use it to post assignments, class assignments. He said his family members had co-morbidity and some other teachers had new babies and they want us to keep wearing masks.”
This is the acute danger that comes with ceding one speck of moral authority to the maniacs who only a short time ago were demanding that Americans be fired from their jobs and not allowed to buy bread at the supermarket unless they bent the knee to the mask-and-jab tyranny.Yes, of course, the lunatics among us who will go on donning their masks for no scientifically justifiable reason should not be kicked around for doing so. But neither should they be granted the tiniest sliver of public moral standing.
We’ve seen where that road ends.
These people grievously harmed tens of millions of their fellow Americans to indulge their fears. Leaving them alone and respecting their delusions are two very different things.
