How far is the left willing to go? I wonder because sometimes it seems like there’s no bottom.

The day before Thanksgiving, Dr. Esther Choo, who has a Master’s in Public Health and is an emergency medicine doctor, in addition to being an MSNBC health columnist advocated for canceling Thanksgiving “for so many reasons” and moving the “winter holidays” (she couldn’t even bring herself to say “Christmas”) to the summer to prevent the spread of viruses like COVID and RSV.

Every winter we go through this gathering-to-spread-respiratory-illnesses. May I suggest
– cancel Thanksgiving, for so many reasons
– move other winter holidays to the summer with big outdoor events
– make winter holidays more about hygge, books, and netflix

— Esther C, MD MPH (@choo_ek) November 23, 2022

The immediate reaction was no, and that people should “cancel” listening to MSNBC health columnists. It’s not clear if she was serious, but given the things that were pushed during the pandemic, we saw a lot of wild things from public health people.

Podcaster Josh Barro set off an extensive argument when he asked, “Do only total weirdos enter MPH [master’s in public health] programs, or do MPH programs turn people into wierdos?”

“Hypochondriacs fill the public health field. This is what we’ve learned in the last three years,” Heroes of Liberty Editor Bethany S. Mandel replied.

Ryan Marino, a medical toxicologist, offered a snide response to Mandel, writing “Public health experts don’t know anything, right wing mommy bloggers are the real heroes.”

Mandel then fired back, calling Marino a “misogynistic doctor,” appearing to take issue with his description of her credentials.

But in Choo’s suggestion and Marino’s response, we see a lot of what has plagued our society from the left for the past few years since COVID.

We saw how suborning other concerns all to COVID without regard to the evaluation of the risk hurt us in so many ways, including with diseases that were not adequately attended to, people who lost their jobs and their businesses because of lockdowns, and the devastating harm to children’s education over that period.

As my colleague Mike Miller wrote in July, people in authority still refused delivery on that harm to kids, even as it came out.

When COVID-19 first began to spread around the world, pausing in-person learning was a logical precaution, given that nobody knew at the time how transmissible the virus was or might be in the classroom. The self-created problem was that school lockdowns lasted long after encouraging data emerged, suggesting not only that extended lockdowns were unnecessary; but also that the lockdowns were detrimental to both health issues and relative learning abilities, as well.

This resulted in educational deficits that might never be made up and that could affect kids the rest of their lives.

But Marino doesn’t think that a “mommy blogger” has a right to comment on the things that concern her children or her family. That’s demonstrative of the arrogance we’ve seen from the left over the last three-ish years: “We are the experts, shut up and listen and do as we tell you.” But as I previously wrote, parents are the experts when it comes to their children.

This is exactly representative of the condescension and the god complex that enabled “public health experts” to take hold of our lives and wreak havoc. Don’t let them bully you into silence ever again.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) November 25, 2022

But some in government still think they own your children.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to fully measure the cost and the things we lost in the process. There are still people with cloth masks affixed to their faces, driving alone in their cars. I have a friend who hasn’t gone anywhere in three years, after loving traveling all over the world before that, because of the imposed fear. How do you measure what a loss that is to someone’s life — to stay locked in their home for three years?