“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

–Albert Einstein

I thought I was finished opining on Covid or, more accurately, our national response to it. Not because I thought it would disappear–it never will (think influenza virus)–but because we’ve learned so much and we would modulate our response to any future threat … and yet, here we are.

The latest iteration of the virus has imposed itself on us, and some of the folks who should know better are once again instilling fear in our people. You’d think they would have learned.

We knew very little in early 2020, when we were going to take two weeks to “stop the spread.” Those weeks became months and then more than a year. We didn’t respond quickly to our increased understanding of the disease and its spread, and for some reason, it became very political. How did decisions about taking medications, getting vaccinated, or partaking in social isolation become a liberal vs. conservative matter?

The Great Barrington Declaration published common sense advice to protect the vulnerable–the elderly, the infirmed, the immune compromised–and let the rest of the population go on with their daily lives. Yet that advice was not just countered, but suppressed, by the previously esteemed Drs. Collins and Fauci … and, of course, they preached the gospel.

Scientific inquiry requires open-mindedness and a willingness to discuss differences of opinion on things that merit investigation; a consideration of  all possibilities and a search for the truth. That type of inquiry was discouraged and considered detrimental to the public good.

We are in a much better place now than we were in early 2020. Through natural- and vaccine-induced immunity, we’re less vulnerable to the virus. The virus itself typically weakens each time it mutates. It does so to survive–it weakens so it doesn’t kill its hosts.

Once again, there are school systems requiring masking. Some states’ flagship universities require any student who tests positive to leave the campus for five to seven days. All this when we know from 2020-2021 that children, teens, and young adults are the least vulnerable to serious Covid infection.

The Cochrane Review of masking to prevent influenza-like/Covid 19 infection found that masks are not very effective at preventing the spread of the virus. And this was for medical/surgical masks, not the flimsy designer masks that became all the rage, and really no more than just another accessory in our sartorial armoire.

Even President Biden recently mocked the CDC when he publicly took off his mask and asked the audience “not to tell ‘them’ I’m doing this.”

As the old saying goes, “you can’t prove a negative.” We don’t know how many lives were saved because people took precautions and didn’t get Covid or transmit it to those at high risk. But we do know the harm our response did: educational, social, and emotional delays in school-age children, increased rates of depression and suicide, job losses, small business closures, and a damaged economy due to reckless federal spending on “Covid relief,” just to name a few.

Are we really going to go through something similar to our ’20-’21 response again? I think it’s a real possibility. To repeat now what we did then would be the very definition of insanity.

I believe people have the freedom to do as they choose, and not to have something forced down their throats by a federal political-medical complex of experts with questionable motives and unclear logic. If you want to work remotely, isolate at home, take every vaccine made available, and/or wear a mask, that’s your choice. But if your risk of serious viral infection is low, you can opt to live life as you normally would.

Can we at least meet in the middle? Tell you what: If you choose to mask and I don’t, I won’t sneer at you if you don’t give me the stink eye when we pass each other in the Piggly Wiggly. Deal?