Fauci responded by largely echoing her [Joy Reid’s] concerns. He eventually conceded that people who were vaccinated could have unmasked gatherings in their own homes under some limited conditions, but stressed continued mask wearing outside the home.
“I don’t understand why that freaks people out,” said Reid. “Get a cute mask and make it fashion. Just put a mask on.”
She has it exactly backward: It is Reid and Fauci who are being irrationally paranoid, not the people they are criticizing.
The most charitable explanation of Mr Johnson’s comment, and presumably the advice that drove it, is that some of the people in charge believed there was a real risk that the optimism would get out of hand and the whole apparatus of regulation would collapse. In their panic, they urged him to say something that was misleading, illogical and self-defeating: in effect, encouraging vaccine scepticism and undermining the Government’s own “get the jab” campaign.
Dan Wootton offers a snapshot of a singularly sad day in the life even of royalty under the reign of the inhuman Covidocracy. (This photo alone, of the widowed queen seated masked and alone, at the funeral of her husband of 73 years, should be sufficient to expose the Covidocracy’s deranged tyranny.)
Here’s some good news from Canada:
Police in cities across Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, on Saturday refused to make random stops greenlighted by the provincial government seeking to impose a stay-at-home order amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Toronto, the country’s largest city, Ottawa, Hamilton, Windsor and at least 19 other municipal police forces said they would not conduct random vehicle or individual stops though they had been given the power to do so.
“The Toronto Police Service will continue to engage, educate and enforce, but we will not be doing random stops of people or cars,” the force said on Twitter. Mayor John Tory supported the move.
Ontario, home to 38% of Canada’s population, had 4,362 new infections on Saturday after a record of 4,812 cases on Friday, and projections indicate the virus could spike to 10,000 per day in June without more strict health restrictions.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, increasingly under fire for mishandling the province’s pandemic response, on Friday gave police the authority to stop anyone driving or walking to ask them to explain their reason for leaving home, and ticket them if in breach of the rules.
At this point, it’s worth observing that in places where states have reopened faster, cases seem to go down as a general whole. Whether this is because fresh air is helpful or herd immunity is being reached faster because people are out and about remains to be seen. But at the very least, it’s absurd to suggest strict lockdowns should remain anywhere.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel celebrates federalism’s check on lockdown powers. A slice:
If ever there was a reason to celebrate federalism, look to the continued incarceration of the cruise industry. Even living in California lockdown would be preferable to living under the Covid tyranny of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most businesses are subject to state laws. Not so the cruise business, one of the few industries subject to near-total federal control and the only one that has remained in complete lockdown since March 2020. Want to imagine life if the public-health oligarchy had free rein? This is your case study.