Authoritarian Liberals Escalate War of Covid Mandates
Analysis of a corporatist newspaper article
My thanks to the Chicago Tribune for publishing this article with the insufficient headline, Philadelphia to end mask mandate, days after reinstating it(4/22/22, by Michael Rubinkam, of whom I have never heard).
Who decided to end the mask mandate? The Philadelphia Board of Health, as the article shows:
The health department did not release data to back up its reversal on masking, saying more information would be provided Friday. But the acting health commissioner, Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, told the Board of Health at a public meeting Thursday night that hospitalizations had unexpectedly gone down 25% in a matter of days.
There’s your public health reason for lifting the mandate: The new Covid variant is nothing more than a fucking cold, even though Dr Bettigole here would lose her job if she said that. Most Americans already have immunity to it from two things.
The first is natural immunity—according to the CDC about 52% of us had the Omicron variant, which gives us natural immunity against getting very sick from future Covid variants, and we have to add to them all the other people who were infected by the initial Covid variants and survived. So that’s, well, a large majority of us right there.
The second is vaccinated immunity, which seems to be almost as good as natural immunity, though there’s some controversy there I won’t go into here.
Whatever, it means that there won’t be nearly as many people getting hospitalized because of Covid as there were previously. It is also possible that there won’t be as many people hospitalized because the Biden Administration changed the profit incentives for our capitalist health care managers by stopping the practice of paying them more for Covid patients than for others. KA-CHING! See how that works?
The article gives some more statistics from Philadelphia, and they’re quite dramatic:
Cases and hospitalizations continued to rise at least through Monday, when the health department reported 82 patients in the hospital with COVID-19 — up nearly 80% from a week earlier — with confirmed cases up 58% over that same span to 224 per day. Those numbers were still a fraction of what the city endured during the wintertime omicron surge.
Bettigole told the Board of Health on Thursday night that hospitalizations had since drifted down to 65. (emphasis mine)
65 people hospitalized. In all of Philadelphia. That’s not many. It’s just not.
OK. The article goes on to say that restaurant owners were quite outspoken in their opposition to renewed mandates. Some residents filed in court against it. Then, and I think unexpectedly for the authoritarian mandate liberals, the Pennsylvania Democrat gubernatorial debate happened.
The candidates were asked what they thought of Philadelphia bringing back the mandate. I’ll let the Tribune provide the description:
Shortly before news broke that the mandate was ending, the issue came up during Thursday night’s debate between the three leading Democratic candidates seeking the party’s nomination for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat. Notably, two of them, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia, came out against the mandate.
“We have to move past COVID,” said Fetterman, adding that “we have to live with this virus, and I don’t believe going backwards with a mask mandate or with closures is appropriate.”
U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb of suburban Pittsburgh said he hated wearing masks, but thought Philadelphia officials were “trying to do what’s best for everybody.”
Conor Lamb is a corporatist, corrupt piece of Clintonite slime, the same guy AOC sent money to that pissed so many progressive Democrat small donors off. Fetterman is the darling of progressive Democrat cheerleaders on You Tube, and I know he projects a working class vibe. He also seems to want to win the election.
Any competent politician would know that most Pennsylvanians don’t want to have to wear masks again, so Fetterman and the Kenyatta guy from Philly, whom I assume is Black, took the more popular position.
Then hours later the mandate is dropped. Huh, I thought to myself, then read on. Oops, not so fast:
The Justice Department, meanwhile, said it is appealing a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs. The CDC asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.
Well, shit. They’re not giving up. I’ve seen a lot of lockdown liberal outrage on Twitter, and a brief review of corporate media articles on the subject shows at least a reluctance to abandoning mandates. Meanwhile, Los Angeles continues its mask mandates on trains and buses, in spite of the science that being on those things does not increase infection rates.
I know. That one surprised me, too, but it’s been known for over a year now, so I got over my kneejerk reaction in favor of the conventional wisdom, which is often just flat wrong anyway.
This mandate issue has been deliberately politicized, especially by liberals and Democrats, and they don’t want to let go of it. I’m sure there are others who are genuinely terrified Covid might kill them because of all of the propaganda that’s been immersing them for more than two years. And there are some who get off on accusing those who disagree with them of wanting to murder at-risk people and want to cheer on the authorities forcing them to do the right thing.
That’s authoritarianism and authoritarian propaganda at its best, folks: We must cheer on the government for keeping us safe from our awful fellow citizens who are selfish and violent creatures!
What happened to liberals saying people should have the individual freedom to choose how to lead their own lives? Or to choose what to wear? Or to have control over their own bodies? Is this still some aftereffect of Trump Derangement Syndrome or what?
I don’t know, but they’ve thrown all of those high-minded principles aside in favor of medically unnecessary mask and vaccination mandates to be selectively enforced by a corrupt and authoritarian government.
They deserve to be opposed now more than ever. Thanks for reading and have a great day.