Freedom Begins to Return as Masks Are Removed

Tourists, some in face masks while others are not, visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on May 14, 2021. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

So here we are, 14 months or so after “two weeks to slow the spread” and “15 days to flatten the curve,” finally being allowed out of our jail cells and “permitted” by elected and unelected bureaucrats alike to breathe fresh air without wearing a slave muzzle. As the prisoners in Don Pizarro’s dungeons sing in Beethoven’s mighty opera, “Fidelio,” “Oh what joy, in the open air: Freely to breathe again!”

How did you enjoy your first taste of totalitarianism, America? It was, after all, for your own good!

Yes, fellow citizens, “cases” of the dreaded COVID-19—a very likely man-made, gain-of-function “disease” with a 99 percent survival rate—are now down in all 50 states. Even with less than half the American population fully vaccinated, the “crisis,” such as it was, is over.

What’s more, after the so-called “red states” began ignoring the proclamations of the almighty health poohbahs, the CDC abruptly announced that masking is no longer necessary in most circumstances, thus contradicting their own senior officials who, up until a few days ago, were warning of “impending doom” should the country reopen.

That hasn’t stopped the powers that be—and by that I mean the feds, the blue states, major corporations, academe, journalists, the entertainment industry, Madison Avenue, the tech giants, and all the other selfless champions of the little guy—from continuing to thump the vaccination tub, however. Like the world’s most desperate real-estate shysters in a David Mamet play, they’re hysterically pushing—no, demanding—that everybody line up for the vaccine, using a mix of carrots and sticks to talk you into it.

On the one hand, free beer, cash money, and prepaid debit cards are used as incentives to receive the vaccine. But segregated ballparks—based upon vaccination status—and threats of a vaccine passport if you ever want to fly again await on the other.

With major news outlets warning grimly that we may never achieve herd immunity—something we might have done six months ago absent the hysterical overreaction to the made-in-Wuhan CCP virus—and minorities such as blacks and Hispanics showing increasing resistance to vaccinations, the frantic salesmen are thumping the tub ever more loudly as Memorial Day approaches and more and more Americans are saying the hell with it in regard to receiving the vaccine.

Virtue Signaling

Why? Methinks they doth protest too much.

Virtue-signaling leftists, who’ve grown accustomed prancing about in public double-masked and wearing a beekeeper’s suit or deep-sea diving gear, fret that if they take off their masks, some people might mistake them for Republicans—gasp!—or worse, conservatives, or worst of all, Trump voters.

Permanently masking yourself like a bank robber or a welder indicates that you’re one of the good people: a Biden supporter, a person who lives in a home that has a sign out front stating you believe in science, and that hate has no place here. Which is, of course, why you hate Republicans, conservatives, and Trump voters to this day.

There are also many who think it’s “too soon” to begin acting like a normal human being and constitutional aficionado. They’ve been terrified by the nonstop harum-scarum coming from the media, which continues to report crematoriums working round the clock, bodies piling up in the streets, and general havoc. True, at the moment, that’s allegedly happening in India. But hey—who are you going to believe, The New York Times or your lying eyes?

Hatched in Wuhan

Calling the coronavirus a hoax would be going too far. It was a nasty respiratory illness that discriminated primarily against the elderly and the obese. But now, after more than a year of madness, we’re inching closer to discovering the culprit: the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. The institute is one of the major coronavirus research centers in the world, funded partially by the United States government, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

You remember Fauci. Since the emergence of the virus, the diminutive doctor has twisted, squirmed, wriggled, changed direction, obfuscated, and squid-inked the American public about both the nature of the disease and his role in actually facilitating its creation. By bureaucratically overturning a ban on something called “gain of function” in regard to various deadly viruses—in other words, making them more deadly—Fauci apparently invoked a footnote to the moratorium that allowed such research “to protect the public health or national security.”

But don’t take my word for it; take the word of Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer and an expert in his field. Earlier this month, he laid out the whole story in a long, rather technical article, “Origin of Covid — Following the Clues.” In that article, he addresses the two main theories behind the Chinese Communist Party virus: that it originated in one of the so-called “wet markets”—where such delicacies as pangolins and bats are offered as comestibles—and that it was hatched in, and escaped from, the Wuhan lab—whether by accident or design.

For the political left, of course, the latter explanation has long been racist heresy. A “conspiracy theory,” huffed the British medical journal The Lancet in early 2020. The now-woke publication thundered that experts “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.”

Oops. To quote Wade: “It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr. Daszak’s organization funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers.”

Of course not. Meanwhile, Chinese communist authorities continued to insist that the virus occurred naturally. But by February of this year, fewer and fewer scientists were buying that—mostly because the Chinese had absolutely no evidence to support their CYA theory, according to Wade.

Science

The excuse given for pathologizing viruses is that creating and housing ever-deadlier viruses in a lab makes it easier to prepare for the next pandemic, should one come. That such research might actually cause such a pandemic never seems to occur to anybody.

Like the anti-clerical atheist revolutionaries of 18th-century France, today’s Jacobins are members of the Cult of Reason. The same amoral, evangelizing purpose lies behind the drive to vaccinate, allowing them to run roughshod over the dearly won constitutional protections that were established in the United States right around the same time that the French were destroying churches and guillotining Marie Antoinette.

But now the sans-culottes are caught in a bind. If the masks are supposed to protect others from your toxic emanations, yet those others are vaccinated, then why wear a mask? And if you’re vaccinated and they’re not, why wear a mask? So much for the God of Reason.

The true nature of science is that it’s a process of ongoing questioning, and not the interpretation and enforcement of holy leftist writ. As the nation slowly begins to come to its senses, the scolding Karens begin their retreat back to their white wine and kitty-litter boxes, Fauci disappears from the television screens, and the lockdown prisoners look up at the blue spring sky and wonder, “What were we thinking?”

Allons, enfants! We have nothing to lose but our chains. And our masks.

Michael Walsh is the editor of The-Pipeline.org and the author of “The Devil’s Pleasure Palace” and “The Fiery Angel,” both published by Encounter Books. His latest book, “Last Stands,” a cultural study of military history from the Greeks to the Korean War, was recently published.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.