The federal government says the COVID-19 emergency is finally over, and it’s ending the restriction that are still in place.
White House COVID advisor Ashish Jha recently said that while they’re no longer needed, these policies “had a tremendous beneficial impact.”
He’s wrong. Actually, many COVID restrictions had a dubious public health benefit, grew the government’s power arbitrarily, and should never have existed in the first place. But public officials, including former Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci and President Joe Biden, are eager to rewrite history. Vaccine passports, shutting down schools, requiring cloth masks—none of these policies worked as intended, and many of the government officials who forced them on us are now trying to deny that they deserve any blame.
Let’s not let them off the hook. Here are three people whose record on COVID-19 shouldn’t be forgotten.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Fauci tried to pretend that lockdowns—and school closures in particular—were not his fault. “Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down,” he said defiantly. “Never. I never did.”
Yes, the power to close factories, businesses, churches, restaurants, schools, and even public beaches and parks rested with governors, mayors, school boards, and public health departments. But let’s be clear—these officials turned to Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance, and the message they got was that you can’t be too careful. Fauci used his position as the top government health advisor to advocate for prolonged closures. And he was saying people will die if you don’t shut everything down.
As head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten was ideally placed to advocate for kids—and what they needed was to go back to school. Even early in the pandemic, it became clear that virtual school was failing to meet the needs of most kids and was stressing out their parents. Everything from plummeting reading and math scores to feelings of loneliness and isolation are the legacy of shutting down schools.
But what did Weingarten do? She vigorously opposed President Donald Trump’s plan to reopen schools, calling it “reckless, callous, [and] cruel.” When schools did reopen, no thanks to the teachers unions, Weingarten remained militantly in favor of mask mandates for kids. She said she was only in favor of a de-masking when there was no COVID transmission in schools. If she had her way, kids would probably still be forced to wear masks.
When Biden was running for president, he said the COVID vaccine shouldn’t be mandatory. A year later, once he was in the White House, he flip-flopped and ordered a national vaccine mandate for 80 million private-sector workers. The Supreme Court eventually struck that down, but it remained in place for certain federal workers and health care workers, and also for non-U.S. citizens trying to enter the country.
The point of the mandates was to stop the spread of COVID. At a CNN town hall, Biden infamously declared, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” But although vaccines offer significant protection, that’s not true. Vaccinated people get COVID all the time—it even happened to Biden himself.
Meanwhile, vaccine mandates are a massive infringement of individual liberty. My body, my choice, anyone? The government trampled all over that principle, because of a hunch that didn’t pan out.
Now we’re all excited to move on from the pandemic and forget these awful things ever happened. But let’s not forget who was responsible for the awful policies that failed to stop COVID, eroded our freedoms, and made the government much more powerful.
Photo Credits: Oliver Contreras/pool via CNP/MEGA/Newscom; Ken Cedeno/pool via CNP/MEGA/Newscom; Abaca Press/Gripas Yuri/Abaca/Sipa USA/Newscom; Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Greg Nash/UPI/Newscom; Ken Cedeno/pool via CNP/CNP/Polaris/Newscom; NIAID, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; AFGE, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Ken Cedeno/pool via CNP/CNP/Polaris/Newscom; Abaca Press/Gripas Yuri/Abaca/Sipa USA/Newscom; AFGE, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Danielle E. Thomas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Alliance for Health Policy, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Music Credits: “Willpower—Instrumental Version,” by Castle Heist via Artlist; “Do It, Boy!” By CustomMelody via Artlist; “One More Time,” by RocknStock via Artlist.
Video Editor: Regan Taylor
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