Reason’s Matt Welch writes, “President Joe Biden on Tuesday afternoon made some more public remarks about the still-spiking omicron variant of COVID-19. It wasn’t pretty.

Of particular interest was the president’s insistence on continuing to call it a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ a slogan that was unwise in July, untrue by December, and unbelievable at a time when the positive case rate in a 62 percent fully vaccinated country just reached an all-time high.

“This continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” @JoeBiden continues to say, as case rates hit record highs in highly vaccinated states https://t.co/JmFjW7XldI

— reason (@reason) January 4, 2022

‘Those who are fully vaccinated, especially those with the booster shots…you can still get COVID, but it’s highly unlikely, it’s very unlikely that you’ll become seriously ill,’ Biden said, accurately. But then: ‘This continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.’

If the pandemic indeed no longer applies to me, my family, and the vast majority of people I know (about half of whom seem to have contracted COVID over the past month), then I have a couple of follow-up questions, beginning with: Why on earth is my vaccinated 6-year-old, all the vaccinated kids in her class and after-school, and all her vaccinated teachers and supervisory staff, being forced by state law (influenced directly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to wear masks all day long?”

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Matt Welch writes, “On Monday morning, Anthony Fauci, the chief White House medical adviser, re-floated the trial balloon of imposing a federal vaccine requirement for domestic air travel.

Vaccine passports for domestic flights would require the creation of a national medical database, which holds ominous civil libertarian implications. All for a policy that would likely have a marginal public health impact. So yeah, it’ll probably happen. https://t.co/sWPa64SHOm

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) December 28, 2021

‘That is just another one of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider,’ Fauci told MSNBC, while refusing to divulge whether he has made that recommendation to President Joe Biden. ‘You know, there’s requirements that you might want to get if you want to get into college, or you want to go to a university, or you want to work in certain places. When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated. If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered…’

The positive health impact of barring the 70 million or so non-fully-vaccinated Americans ages 5 and older from air travel is likely to be closer to marginal than overwhelming. Airplane trips thus far during the pandemic have been almost preternaturally safe from COVID spread. Existing vaccine mandates, meanwhile, have failed to move the needle on vaccination rates.”

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Matt Welch writes, ”This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated. Not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated,’ Biden emphasized, on the same day that the omicron variant produced a one-day positive-case increase of 16 percent in highly vaccinated New York City. ‘That’s the problem. And so everybody talks about ‘freedom,’ and not to have a shot or have a test. Well guess what? How about patriotism? How about making sure that you’re vaccinated, so you do not spread the disease to anybody else? What about that?’

I really thought that the whole “pandemic of the unvaccinated” slogan had been retired in the age of omicron. But the president was using that more-than-mostly-false formulation less than 2 weeks ago.https://t.co/NZupW1XgSm

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) December 27, 2021

What about that indeed. New York City’s one-shot vaccination rate (of 92 percent for adults, 83 percent for kids between 13 and 17) ‘rivals any number in the free world,’ Politico’s Jack Shafer observed last week, and yet somehow my vaccinated teen and boosted self spent Christmas under quarantine. The fact-checkers over at The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact generously rated Biden’s ‘vaccinated…do not spread the disease’ claim as only ‘mostly’ false, despite epidemiologist quotes like ‘[the] statement is not accurate,’ and ‘vaccinated individuals can definitely infect other people.”

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Matt Welch writes, “Given this week’s surprise drubbing at the polls—not just in Virginia, New Jersey, and Long Island, but also in many of the estimated 117 school districts where board seats were contested on the issues of COVID-19 response, race-based policies, or sex/gender concerns—you would think that Democrats, educators, and public health officials might show a tad more sensitivity toward citizen weariness of pandemic restrictions and K-12 imperiousness.

Haha, who am I kidding, pass the Klonopin.

It’s time for the next idiotic interventions to be either abandoned or forcibly undone, beginning with masking elementary school kids who were safe even before getting access to the vaccine.https://t.co/pd7r8D7pbd

— reason (@reason) November 9, 2021

Did you know that Loudoun County Public Schools District—yes the Loudoun County, ground zero of the parental revolt against Democratic school governance—was 100 percent distance learning this week due to ‘staffing shortages,’ and that Wednesday and Friday were called off just days in advance?…

Nope, nunca, no more. In this family, we do not believe in junk science. We need to rip the masks off, not just from government mandates, but the whole grinning Condescension Complex, that only wants you—and especially your politically powerless kids—to sacrifice just a little bit more, just a few more months, get this cold and flu season behind us, until it’s time for the next booster, then maybe we can talk about full-time K-12 school in 2022–23, and masks will only be mandatory in every government structure from here to eternity.

Masks can help reduce your chance of #COVID19 infection by more than 80%.
Masks also help protect from other illnesses like common cold and flu. Wearing a mask- along w/ getting vaccinated- are important steps to stay healthy. #WeCanDoThis @HHSgov https://t.co/bfOV5VzBpq pic.twitter.com/6DGj8nwPgD

— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) November 5, 2021

We no longer wipe down our groceries, padlock our playgrounds, or set the default on school opening to be ‘closed.’ All of those took 15 months too long in blue states, but we take victories over anti-science superstition where we can get them. It’s time for the next idiotic interventions to be either abandoned or forcibly undone, beginning with masking elementary school kids who were safe even before getting access to the vaccine. If you think Tuesday was a bad day for Democratic busybodies, let them keep trying to squeeze the walls in on this rat cage of an American life.”

Read the entire column.

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Reason’s Matt Welch writes, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) snapped when asked Tuesday if the proposal to dramatically increase the surveillance capabilities of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would remain in the trillion-dollar social spending bill currently being negotiated among Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes,” the speaker said. Then she waved aside the questioner’s accurate comment that banks have reported customer concerns about the idea that the IRS would scrutinize accounts with inflows and outflows as low as $600…

How much is $10,000? Average annual rent in West Virginia. Four months of full-time minimum wage earnings in NYC; 8 months federal. Less than half the average price for a used car.

And oh yeah, the HIGH band being proposed right now for IRS bank-snoopage. https://t.co/0yaFq14EeD

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) October 14, 2021

…the negotiators have already agreed to Biden’s basic setup of giving the IRS an extra $80 billion over the next decade to hire 87,000 new employees and build out a ‘comprehensive financial account reporting regime’ that would intrude into previously untrodden territory (such as Venmo accounts and cryptocurrency), so I’d take the over on regular Joes and Janes seeing a noticeable increase in scrutiny.

Republicans are doing their best to sound the alarm (while the news media are doing their best to stress the ‘Republicans pounce’ angle), but the fact is that without significant outcry about a complicated and hellaciously expensive must-pass monstrosity, some version of this vast new financial surveillance state is likely to get built. Those who value financial privacy are best off seeking it in another country.”

Read the entire column.

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