Another holiday season is upon us, and you know what that means: fearmongering from the Centers for Disease Control about COVID.
This time around, though, the public isn’t panicking, and rightly so.
As always in winter since the virus arrived on our shores, COVID hospitalizations have jumped — close to 30% in late November over the previous month.
No shock there.
It’s a respiratory virus, always more pervasive and severe in cold weather; data suggest it spreads better indoors, where we’re all spending a lot more time.
And, yes, COVID does remain a threat — to a few vulnerable populations: the elderly, especially unvaxxed ones, and those with underlying health conditions.
Indeed, the hospitalizations jump has been highest among those 65 and older, exactly what to expect; older folks comprise the vast majority of US COVID deaths.
But the CDC spent years shrilly insisting that the virus was going to kill us all.
That toddlers should wear masks and schools should be closed.
And all manner of other deeply unscientific diktats utterly unsupported by the data but driven by politics.
The result is that no meaningful brake against the epidemic was ever applied, while incalculable damage was done to an entire generation of kids (to say nothing of parents, their jobs and their communities).
And now? No one pays attention any more, and rightly so.
COVID has become a seasonal disease like any other: the flu, bad colds.
Yes, it has big risks for the old and the immunocompromised: That’s why protection efforts should be focused on them, and should’ve been, not on wider society.
Thank goodness the larger public seems to have gotten the message here.
It’s proof positive that woke irrationality doesn’t always win.