OPINION:
A new poll from The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 56% of Americans want to keep in place face mask mandates for airplane, bus, subway and public transportation travelers and staffers. Unsurprisingly, most are Democrats.
This dance with stupid has gone on long enough.
The mantra “face masks work” has not only been proven by comparison studies to be false, but it’s also been a message of folly from the get-go: Exactly how is “work” defined, anyway?
In August 2020, then-presidential hopeful Joseph R. Biden said, “This is about saving American lives, so let’s institute a mask mandate nationwide, starting immediately.”
The takeaway? Face masking saves lives.
On Jan. 20, 2021, shortly after taking the oath of White House office, Biden said this, via an executive order: “It is the policy of my administration to halt the spread of coronavirus disease … by relying on the best available data and science-based public health measures … [to] include wearing masks when around others.”
He went on, “Put simply, masks … reduce the spread of the disease … and thus save lives.”
The takeaway? Face masking saves lives.
In March, Team Biden said this, on the launch of COVID.gov: “Today, the Biden Administration is launching COVID.gov, a new one-stop shop website to help all people in the United States gain even better access to lifesaving tools like vaccines, tests, treatments and masks …”
The takeaway, once again? Face masks save lives.
“Wear a Mask to Save Lives from COVID-19,” the Alliance for Aging Research warned.
“There’s a simple thing we can all do to save tens of thousands of lives. Wear a face mask in public,” the Alliance for Aging Research said.
“According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, if 95% of Americans wore a mask when they go out in public, we could save 130,000 lives,” the Alliance for Aging Research wrote.
Where do they get those numbers?
From the same place they get the idea that illegal border crossers don’t carry COVID-19 — that is to say, from the figments of imaginations of Democrats and from the cesspool of lies from the left.
But face masks work!
So long as citizens ignore this, from respiratory and infectious diseases experts Lisa Brosseau and Margaret Sietsema, writing for the Center for Infectious Disease and Research Policy in April of 2020, that “masks-for-all for COVID-19 not based on sound data” — so long as citizens ignore that, face masks work.
So long as citizens ignore this from Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, speaking at a press conference in March, that “no high-quality data says [masks] saved any lives and it’s a lie” — so long as citizens ignore that, face masks work.
So long as citizens ignore this from infectious-diseases expert Margery Smelkinson, emergency medicine doctor Jeanne Noble and Oregon Health & Science University faculty member Leslie Bienen, writing in The Atlantic in January that “we reviewed a variety of studies — some conducted by the CDC itself … — to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed” — so long as citizens ignore that, face masks work.
The problem with the face masks from the very beginning was that humans, particularly a whole nation or humans, aren’t easily controlled. Not every human is a surgeon in a sterile operating room, where nurses with cleaned and gloved hands tie the face mask in place. Most, in fact, live quiet unsterile lives.
Most, in fact, carry their face masks in their unsterile pockets or pocketbooks, pull them out with unsterile fingers that just patted the dog and wiped the snot from their kids’ noses and rubbed across steering wheels that haven’t been cleaned since last spring — and then put them carelessly across faces, gaps and all.
Nothing says non-sterile like a pull-down to eat, then a pull-up to comply, followed by a pull-down to sip. One has to wonder: How do these scientists know what blocks of air are immune to coronavirus entry, versus which blocks are danger zones? But such was air, rail and bus travel for more than two years.
And now that face mask mandates have been tossed for travelers by a federal judge?
Well, make way for the stupid.
“The sudden end to the mask mandate for planes, trains and buses has sparked confusion for travelers and uncertainty over how to approach travel, especially as the Biden administration recommends that Americans still wear masks on public transit,” The Hill wrote.
Why?
Here’s why: Because Democrats don’t want to let go of the control.
The AP/NORC poll finds that 56% of Americans favor the continued wearing of face masks on public transportation, including airplanes — fully 80% of whom identify as Democrats. By comparison, only 33% of Republicans want travelers to keep on wearing face masks.
But of course.
Democrats have been the ones who’ve been pushing the fear of the coronavirus for two-plus years now. Democrats have been the ones who’ve been crying to keep kids in schools in face masks for perpetuity, if possible. Democrats have been the ones who’ve used this coronavirus for every political gain and to exert every clamp on individual liberty they can — and it’s their goal to continue to clampdowns.
An election is coming — an election the Democrats know they can’t win. Their best chance is mail-in balloting. Their best chance is keeping voters away from the ballot box.
But aside from that, Democrats are simply the uncritical thinkers of the country — the bleating sheep of Big Government believers — the entitled brats of the emotionally unstable class.
The Democrats are the party of stupid.
• 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.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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