Libertarian: The Endless Pandemic
“The White House COVID-19 adviser and his ilk admit they will never let some mitigation measures expire,” fumes Reason’s Robby Soave. After airline CEOs told Congress that mask mandates make no sense on planes, “where the air filtration systems are superior to what is typically found in an intensive care unit,” Dr. Anthony Fauci declared we’d always need to wear masks on planes. Who cares what CEOs think and customers want — or even what’s safe? “All that matters is the calculus of the most risk-averse people: unelected” public-health “bureaucrats who have given themselves sole authority over vast sectors of American life — from travel to education to entertainment to housing.” The “Faucists talk about COVID-19 as if the pandemic is still some kind of we’re-all-in-this-together civilizational struggle that justifies and necessitates the suspension of civil liberties, whole industries and school time” — “harmful restrictions” that “will apparently last for years, for decades or forever.”
From the Right: Joe’s COVID Blues
President Biden’s latest anti-COVID actions are “the latest evidence that Biden . . . was not, in fact, prepared to handle the pandemic,” argues the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. The “comprehensive plan” he boosted of during the campaign turned out to be “to distribute the vaccine developed under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed,” plus “the use of masks and social distancing” — none of it anything new. And now he’s scrambling on testing, though another campaign vow was that “tests would be available to any and all.” Bottom line: “At some point, voters will realize that Biden is simply unprepared to do what he promised to do.”
Capitol Hill watch: Dems Did It to Themselves
Democrats “should not have been surprised” by Sen. Joe Manchin rejecting the Build Back Better bill, notes The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen: He’d “said over and over again” what he wouldn’t accept, and even upped the total in spending he’d accept from $1.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion. “But instead of eliminating programs to scale down their bill, Democrats tried to jam him with budget gimmicks” to make “seem smaller than it really was.” And the reason he gave Sunday for deciding “to oppose the bill is that ‘it hasn’t shrunk.’ ” He would’ve gone for a 10-year boost to the child tax credit. “But apparently that wasn’t enough if it did not contain everything the party’s progressive wing wanted.” In short, Dems “are the authors of their own defeat.”
Conservative: Dems Will Pay for Bashing Manchin
“The surprise Sunday was not Sen. Joe Manchin’s announcement that he won’t support President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, but the White House reaction to his declaration,” quips Fox News’ Karl Rove. Press Secretary Jen Psaki basically called “Manchin a liar and a traitor to his party,” though “for months Manchin had expressed strong concerns about the bill’s spending, tax increases,” etc. “The deeply personal attack on Manchin . . . was a terrible mistake. Did they think questioning Manchin’s integrity would make him more eager to engage with the White House in the future?” The prez “will pay many prices, large and small, for attacking the senator.”
Public-health expert: Keep Schools Open
Despite the surging Omicron cases, “the argument for keeping schools open” remains, Dr. Joseph G. Allen points out at the New York Times. It “rests on two constants ever since the Covid pandemic began: The risk of severe outcomes to kids from coronavirus infection is low, and the risks to kids from being out of school are high.” Specifically, “The weekly hospitalization rate for school-age children is approximately 1 in 100,000. This has stayed remarkably consistent” and evidence shows kids will remain low-risk as Omicron waxes. “The harms to kids from being out of school, on the other hand, are severe. And they could last for decades.” School closures have harmed young learners and low-income students most. The mantra “should simply be, ‘Schools should never close.’ ”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
