CDC wagging the dog on face masks

OPINION:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just came out and announced that face masks aren’t necessary for those who’ve been vaccinated — but as many in Republican circles are asking: What’s changed?

Certainly not the science.

That leaves politics. Wag the dog, anyone?

As discomforting as it is to think the federal health agencies have become politicized, the truth is, history shows us government will stop at nothing to protect its powers.

Can you say Deep State? Donald Trump can. He faced three-plus years of faked, feigned, fabricated Russia and Ukraine charges from Deep State intel types.

Now say Deep State CDC.

For months, CDC’s top dog, Rochelle Walensky, has been about the most dogged of bureaucrats — topping even Anthony Fauci at times — with advisements to stay off the streets, stay out of school, there’s a COVID out there! And if you can’t stay off the streets, for God’s sake, wear a mask or four or more. But now?

Now, she’s all but forgotten all those “impending doom” speeches she’s made and under her direction, the CDC’s opened the doors wide for American citizens, at least, the vaccinated ones, to shed the face masks and reenter normal society.

But the timing of the flip-flopping is curious, for sure. It’s not as if it came on the heels of earth-shattering new reports on COVID-19 science. So why?

Or, as Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked on Twitter, “Why today?” Why, indeed.

Rep. Andy Biggs offered this: “While the new mask guidance is encouraging, the CDC and my far radical left colleagues only chose to do this to distract from the consequences of catastrophic policy decisions that have been heard around the world. Inflation is rising, the Middle East is in shambles, the working class can’t fill up their gas tanks, our border is being overrun and the Biden Administration’s leadership is nowhere to be found.”

All true. 

All true — and all truths that raise red alarms on a new politicization movement, one that’s not of America’s intelligence but rather health and medical agencies.

Cynical as it seems, there is some historical basis in government — in Democrats in government — using drastic, dastardly measures to distract from personal and political headaches.

“[Bill] Clinton’s airstrike motives questioned,” The Baltimore Sun wrote in August of 1998. “Many wonder if attack was meant to distract from [Monica] Lewinsky matter.”

The piece went on to state: “When President Clinton announced the surprise U.S. missile attacks on terrorist-related targets in Afghanistan and Sudan on Thursday, he said he ordered the action for four reasons. But many people wondered if there was a fifth. Pundits, politicians, the media and a sizable chunk of the public questioned whether the president was acting, at least in part, with hopes of shifting attention from his travails in the Monica Lewinsky matter.”

There’s a blast from the past.

Then there was this, from History on a date a few months later: “On December 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton announce[d] he … ordered air strikes against Iraq because it refused to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. Clinton’s decision did not have the support of key members of Congress, who accused Clinton of using the air strikes to direct attention away from ongoing impeachment proceedings against him.”

In fact, it was just the day before the air strikes that Clinton was accused in a House report of “high crimes and misdemeanors” over the Lewinsky matter.

Nothing like a good war to take the heat off an affair with an intern.

Hmm. Nothing like the yanking of face masks from Americans wearied with face-mask-wearing to distract from gas lines, inflation and parental troubles with too-cooped-up homeschooled kids.

It’s possible.

It’s more than possible.

The CDC, in the span of a year’s issuance of conflicting, overly restrictive and ridiculously unscientific advisements on the coronavirus, has lost the trust of many, many in America. And now the agency’s just sent out another dizzyingly speedy flip flop on face masks, with no good scientific reason for the timing? The CDC’s brought this condemnation on itself.

Just goes to show: Nobody knows better than the American citizen what’s best to do for the American citizen’s own health. The takeaway here is that individuals should remember the government health agencies are there to advise and suggest — but never order.

Americans must seize back their rights to self-determine and never cede to the federal health bureaucrats such levels of power to control again.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.