Centrist: Time To Unmask
“It’s time to consider making masks optional in most settings,” argues Bloomberg’s Faye Flam. Mask mandates made sense “when little else was available,” but today we have “highly effective vaccines, better tests and now powerful antiviral drugs.” And mandates impose “real costs that public-health authorities have been loath to acknowledge.” Masks “stifle communication and human interaction . . . contributing to an epidemic of isolation, loneliness and poor mental health” and amp up “resistance to returning to the office.” The unjabbed should still mask, “but it’s past time to stop acting as though everyone must be treated as equally imperiled.” We need “reality-based policies.”
Poll watch: Biden’s Losing Independents
“Across a broad swath of the American electorate, Biden has serious issues, with many no longer thinking he has the main common attributes for being a good or competent leader,” Terry Jones notes for Tipp Insights. “For ‘Energetic,’ 42% agreed, versus 50% who disagreed. Similar data were found for ‘Unifier’ (41% agreed, 45% disagreed).” The poll found a sharp Democrat-Republican split, but among independents, who “now make up roughly a third of all voter registrations, the numbers more resemble those of the Republicans than the Democrats.” Worse for Biden, “this largely centrist group of voters” holdd the key “to whether the Democrats will get bounced from power” in the 2022 midterms.
From the Right: The Left’s Racist Politics
Democrats’ “vile” reaction to Winsome Sears’ win for lieutenant gov in Virginia shows “woke racism in action,” fumes Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill. Virginia voters “said No to the manipulation of the education system to socialise a new generation into the identitarian narrative” and to “the racial micromanagement that is the preferred method of governance of the new managerial elites” by supporting Republican Glenn Youngkin’s ticket with Sears, “a black immigrant woman who rejects these woke ideologies.” Still, “they’re being denounced as white supremacists” by the chattering classes, who also paint Sears herself as “a ‘black face speaking on behalf of a white-supremacist legacy.’ ” This “disturbingly dehumanising” rhetoric “is now widespread across the politics of identity” as “the identitarian left . . . thinks it has some kind of moral ownership over black and brown populations.” The left’s “woke fury aimed at black and brown people who dare to deviate from ‘correct-think’ exposes the racist underpinning to identity politics.”
Pandemic journal: Sweden’s Lockdown Lesson
When Sweden opted for a “semblance of normality” amid the pandemic — keeping schools open, not requiring masks — it was accused of conducting an “experiment” that would lead to “disaster,” recalls Johan Anderberg at UnHerd. Yet “If you measure excess mortality for the whole of 2020, Sweden (according to Eurostat) will end up in 21st place out of 31 European countries.” Today “more than 50 countries have a higher death rate” than Sweden; if it was a US state, it would rank 43. “Those who’ve followed Sweden’s example,” like Florida, also faced “criticism.” By contrast, Gov. Andrew Cuomo imposed tough restrictions on New Yorkers and got a deal for a book on leadership. Yet New York deaths per capita were 0.29 percent, vs. Florida’s 0.27 percent. It’s hard “to avoid the conclusion” that millions were “deprived of their freedom” for “little demonstrable gain.”
Economy watch: More Bad Inflation News
September stats on wholesale inflation “once again prove the rapid increase in prices for everyday items isn’t ‘transitory’ as President Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed,” reports Town Hall’s Katie Pavlich. The 8.6 percent year-over-year rise, “matching the largest increase on record,” comes as “Biden administration officials have essentially told Americans to get used to price increases and that there’s nothing they can do to mitigate costs.” This, when “the supply chain crisis is starting to impact homeless shelters and food kitchens across the country.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
