The hard leftist authoritarian crowd is going to be disappointed, but it appears America is finally gearing up to enter into a post-COVID era. Last month, I predicted that 2022 was going to be the beginning of the end of the COVID regime as more and more Americans seek to move on from the pandemic that rocked the nation for two years. Now, there are even more indications that the country is moving past the pandemic.
CNN reported last week that a bipartisan group of governors told President Joe Biden that America needs to “move away from the pandemic,” according to Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. “There’s a number of areas that we have full agreement on, and that is one: We need to move away from the pandemic,” he told reporters after the meeting. “and we asked the President to help give us clear guidelines on how we can return to a greater state of normality.”
The president seemed hesitant about the idea of moving on from COVID-19, stating that “it’s all about making sure we have the same standards we’re applying across the board” and that the White House would “try like the devil to keep schools open.”
In a later press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki addressed the perception that Biden’s remarks might be a “disconnect” from the governors. “The President’s view is that right now, we still need to keep our heads down and stay at it, to fight what is still, you know, surging in parts of the country, but we do have the tools to get to a point where it does not disrupt our daily lives,” she said.
There were also questions during the meeting as to what “the road from pandemic to endemic” might materialize according to Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. Hutchinson affirmed that Biden recognized “that we’re moving in the right direction.”
But there are other indications that the nation is done with COVID fever. Two Democratic governors recently clashed with the Biden administration over mask mandates. Fox News reported that “more governors from blue states are joining their red gubernatorial colleagues in phasing out the mask mandates in schools.”
Gov. Murphy announced that New Jersey would be dropping mask mandates and that his administration would rescind them on March 7. Delaware Gov. John Carney also announced that he would be lifting his state’s mask mandates in indoor public spaces on Friday. He will also rescind mask mandates in schools in March as well. The article also noted that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf allowed schools to determine whether they would require masks after the state Supreme Court blocked his mandate.
It appears mask mandates are going out of style – and fast. RedState’s Brandon Morse noted:
These mask mandates are increasingly losing popularity, especially when they’re enforced on the children, yet the Biden administration still doesn’t seem to have caught up to the reality that mandatory COVID restrictions, in terms of how the populace views them, are going from necessary to irrational and very quickly. What’s more, it damages the credibility of the claim that Democrats are the party of science as it’s been known for some time that children are the least affected group.
Of course, we also cannot ignore the elephant in the room: The upcoming midterm elections. It is clear that Americans – regardless of political affiliation – are itching to get back to normal, which means mask mandates and other COVID-19 measures are falling out of favor with the public. The numbers are showing that the future for the Democratic Party is about to become quite challenging. If these measures have lost favorability, it would be foolhardy for left-leaning leaders to continue pushing them.
Also, the fact that many Democratic leaders have demonstrated time and time again that they do not actually believe in the mask mandates they have foisted upon the public is an issue. There are several news stories exposing politicians like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and most recently, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams when they are attending crowded events without wearing masks. Even President Biden has been caught maskless.
When the people who are most vocal about the benefits of mask mandates didn’t bother to follow their own rules, it became apparent that they were selling America a bill of goods, which undoubtedly accounts – at least partially – for the change in attitudes towards these measures.
It will not be long until other states follow the lead of Republican and Democratic governors lifting mask mandates. Eventually, the same will hold true for the effort to push vaccine mandates – although that will likely take longer. But at this point, the writing is on the wall and the age of the coronavirus will come to a conclusion. The COVID regime will crumble. The question is: Will America have finally learned its lesson about what happens when we allow the government to use a situation like this as a pretext to expand its power?
