Commentary: The return of masks is pointless and political

If vaccination works, why do the vaccinated need to be masked? And if we still need to be masked post-vaccine, why would reluctant folks get poked?

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet with a group of mayors and governors in the Oval Office in February. (White House/Flickr)

Other than more testing and more reported cases, nothing vital has changed since two weeks ago when I explained the delta variant is innocuous to vaccinated people.

But the medical establishment, legacy media and government “experts” feel differently.

Los Angeles County recently became the first major metro area to reinstitute its face mask requirements for indoor settings. More than 60% of residents are fully vaccinated, but the mandate from their inept health commissioner applies to vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Police in Los Angeles rightly won’t enforce this rule, since it’s not backed by science.

Seventeen months after “flatten the curve” and just over two months from President Joe Biden declaring masking defunct, are we really returning to this virtue signaling in major liberal cities?

We’ve been told to do irrational things for our own good and followed the rules; cities shuttered playgrounds, schools, small businesses, major events, and more. People suffered and persevered.

If vaccination works, why do the vaccinated need to be masked? And if we still need to be masked post-vaccine, why would reluctant folks get poked? The vaccinated — now about 70% of eligible Americans — are protected, and the unvaccinated had eight months to decide. This is no way to reach “herd immunity,” and overall, you cannot completely eradicate COVID from existence.

When Mississippi and Texas wisely dropped their mask mandates in March, Biden infamously called the moves “Neanderthal thinking.” Progressive academics and blue-check media essentially predicted a holocaust in these states. Like in Georgia last year, the “experts” were proven wrong. Case numbers dropped in the weeks and months after the smart decisions by Republican governors.

Americans did not contract coronavirus when passing someone on the street or going to school. It was most often in close contact, inside homes that contributed to spread. Bringing back masks in low-risk situations will do nothing to stop COVID from spreading.

Deaths, trending down for months and even the last two weeks, don’t correspond. Of nearly 400,000 fully vaccinated people in Washington, D.C., an infinitesimal 200 have been “breakthrough cases.” And they’re almost all mild.

So why return to an ineffective mitigation measure like masking? Politics and power.

Teachers unions, who’ve destroyed the lives of millions of children, likely will try to get paid to sit home for a third school year. This is, again, anti-science.

By virtue of being children, they are more protected against the worst effects of the virus. We also know the insidious psychological and physical effects of masking on students and locking them out of school.

Even the socialist United Kingdom public health system won’t make kids mask up.

In May, the CDC belatedly admitted the risk of contracting and transmitting COVID-19 among vaccinated Americans is so minuscule that fully immunized people can remove their masks.

Dr. Anthony Fauci ignores CDC guidance and favors bizarre recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which seeks universal masking for all Americans regardless of vaccination status.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is promoting indoor masking at home, even for the vaccinated.

“Why are public health people pushing this?” John Podhoretz asked on Commentary Magazine’s Monday podcast. “This is the most fun they’ve had, and the minute they say the pandemic is over, they’re done. The 1960s left should be screaming in horror at public officials’ managerial fetishism. These people used to be suspicious of government…and now they’re essentially handmaidens to this explicit notion that it’s proper for unelected people to tell people what to do.”

Count Sen. Amy Klobuchar, pushing legislation to ban free speech on what she deems health “misinformation,” among those elites hoping the crisis never ends.

A.J. Kaufman

A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.