How do you boil a frog without it jumping out of the pot? Put it in tepid water and turn up the heat gradually until the water reaches a boil and the frog is cooked.

— Rana Temporaria*

Let me begin by stating I take the pandemic seriously. It has killed over 500,000 Americans, and the havoc that it and the unintended negative consequences of our response to it have wreaked won’t be fully known for years.

I don’t think our elected officials and health experts are playing it straight with us. It started when Mr. Trump was president. Fifteen days to slow the Covid spread; then, a few months to bend the curve.

We didn’t know much about the virus at the time, however, so I think the national and state governments were doing the best they could. Then, as we learned more, there was a strange resistance to returning to normal.

As President-elect Biden said, “I’m asking all Americans to wear a mask for the first one hundred days of my administration.” That would be April 30 of this year. Okay; that sounded reasonable.

Two weeks ago in a CNN Town Hall, President Biden stated (I’m paraphrasing): “By this time next year (mid-February 2022), or maybe by the grace of God by this Christmas, we’ll no longer have to wear masks.” Do you feel the temperature of the water getting warmer?

The venerable Dr. Fauci recently stated we can’t return to full normality until the number of cases “keeps going down to a baseline that’s so low there is virtually no threat.” That, he said, could be next year.

If the NTSB used that same “no threat” criterion, we wouldn’t be allowed to travel by car or plane. Let’s be realistic–life is full of risks. The water is getting uncomfortably hot.

One would think Dr. Fauci would have learned the pitfalls of mixed messaging when he had a front row seat to President Trump’s Covid press conferences. I respectfully wish he would stop granting interviews until he, the CDC, NIH, FBI, CIA, TSA, AAA, OPEC, DAR and pickyouracronym.com all agree on a unified recommendation! Until then, please, Doc…..just stop guessing!

The Biden Administration’s senior advisor on Covid was recently asked to explain why the numbers of infections in California and Florida are comparable, yet the former is closed and the latter is wide open. His answer: “There are things about this virus that are unexplainable.”

Really? This from the administration that ran for the presidency on the promise to solve the pandemic? Now, the water’s really hot!

It has been said: never let a crisis go to waste. Governors and mayors have realized a new level of perverse power and have not hesitated to exercise it, often in misguided ways that have instilled undue fear in our citizens. With power comes fear and control, and the water reaches a boil. Our goose (or frog, as it were) is cooked.

The good news is there’s cause for optimism. Our numbers are improving, simply due to the increasing number of Americans protected by natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity.

What’s more, now there’s a third vaccine option with less stringent logistics, allowing states to get it to more remote and underserved communities.

President Trump pushed companies to rapidly produce Covid vaccines. I’m pulling for President Biden to keep pushing to get them out to the states and to patients. Who cares who gets credit for the vaccines’ success? They’re our only way out of this mess.

Writing in the February 19, 2021 Wall Street Journal, Dr. Marty Makary, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, predicted we’ll have herd immunity by April. He bases this on the current vaccination rate and the extreme underestimation of the number of Covid cases that were never diagnosed.

That same day, “The Morning” news feed from the New York Times reported studies that show the vaccines reduce Covid deaths to zero, hospitalizations to almost zero, and “drastically reduce a person’s ability to infect somebody else.”

Re-read the end of that last sentence. Outcome statistics, or science, would suggest that a few weeks after completing the vaccination series, we no longer need to wear masks. At the very least, once herd immunity is reached, there is no compelling reason to wear masks and socially distance (an oxymoron, by the way).

While I’m not an epidemiologist, I believe we’ll reach herd immunity by the end of June. The numbers support this.

As of today, we’re at over 90 million vaccines given. At a vaccine rate of even 1.5 million doses per day, we’ll easily surpass the 200 million mark by the end of June. That figure, plus those with natural immunity who opt out of the vaccine, will represent adequate immunity.

There are some caveats. Some people who get the two-shot vaccine will fail to go back for the second dose. We may reach a point where all who are willing to get the shot are vaccinated, leaving millions prone to vaccine alarmism unprotected–sadly, not a very good defense against the virus. Also, the newer variants of Covid could, to continue our animal theme, throw a monkey wrench into things.

The bottom line is there is room for realistic optimism, and talk of “the dark winter” and mask modeling into next year only causes people more concern. Such fear-mongering needs to stop.

It’s well past time for kids to be in school, adults to be at work, fannies to be in church pews, and restaurants and cultural venues to be open and operating at a functional viability level. That would be a real shot in the arm!

*Actually, this is an urban allegory. Rana temporaria is the scientific name for the common frog!