Good and Bad News in Our Ongoing Bout With COVID

First, the good news: Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declared an end to all Wuhan Flu restrictions in Great Britain.           

No more mandates. No more masks. No more lockdowns. No more vaccine passports.           

Boris’s speech last week in Parliament was “the most consequential statement by a political leader since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Vasko Kohlmayer writes in a recent article for American Thinker. As Kohlmayer points out, Johnson is basically admitting with this pronouncement that the tactics of the last two years in the fight against COVID have miserably failed. He has also sent a message that should reverberate around the world. The fascist lockdown tactics of the Australian government are now also beginning to lift, and the severe and continuing clampdowns in countries like Germany, Austria, France, and Italy will surely come under heavy fire.           

Next up, some putatively good news: In the United States, we will likely see a continuation of what is already taking place, namely that the Biden administration has lost the war on the virus—a war that was never winnable in the first place—and is quietly placing less emphasis on COVID, knowing that weary Americans are fed up with the whole thing. To enter next fall’s elections having to admit defeat in the COVID battles will only add to the many failures of this administration and our Congress. Best to tuck this issue in the closet.

And now, unfortunately, some news that dampens the good news: on Jan. 13, Rasmussen Reports released its latest poll with some stunning revelations:          

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  Fifty-nine percent of Democrats polled by Rasmussen support confining the unvaccinated to their homes except in cases of emergencies.

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  Fifty-five percent of them favor imposing fines on Americans who refuse the COVID vaccines.

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  Forty-eight percent of Democrats believe those who publicly question COVID treatments or policies should be liable to fines or imprisonment.

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  Forty-five percent of them favor temporary camps for the unvaxxed.

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  Forty-seven percent of Democrats would support a government digital tracking program for those who haven’t gotten the jab.

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  Twenty-nine percent would go along with the temporary removal of children from parents who refuse the vaccine.

In all instances, Republicans and unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly oppose these measures.        

But why would anyone—Democrats, Republicans, Independents—favor such totalitarian moves, especially so late in the game? And why would Democrats in particular so heavily favor fines, censorship, and prison camps?

Perhaps the propaganda that passes for news at some of our media outlets has terrorized them into abandoning liberty and making war on their fellow Americans. Some of my Democrat acquaintances take most of their news from CNN and NPR. The long drumroll of fear from those networks may partially explain their penchant for dictatorship—someone to save them with an iron fist.             

Ignorance may also be a factor. Maybe lots of people are unaware that vaccine recipients can still carry the virus and become sick with variations of the ever-mutating virus. Maybe they don’t realize that those who’ve contracted COVID naturally are far more immune to the disease than the vaxxed. Maybe they don’t know that as long ago as September 2021, 72 percent of Americans had been vaccinated. Add to that figure the number of those who acquired natural immunity to the virus, and we’ve surely reached “herd immunity.”

And maybe they haven’t considered the consequences of granting the government such dictatorial powers. Today the COVID cops lock Uncle Billy Bob in his trailer. Allow them that power, and who is to say they won’t find an excuse to do the same to you?

Maybe, too, many Americans just don’t treasure liberty as they once did, which is the saddest possibility of all. A people so long accustomed to freedom may have forgotten that liberty doesn’t come with a warranty but must be constantly protected and defended.           

But to return to my earlier question: Why would so many Democrats favor such horrible measures?           

Here’s a possible answer. By the end of September 2021, more than 90 percent of Democrats had taken the shot. Just 56 percent of Republicans had followed suit. So one argument might run, “Hey, I got the vaccine, and one way or the other, you’re going to do the same.”           

Strange coming from a party that for years has chanted the mantra, “My body, my choice.”

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