'The Science' continues to magically shift before our very eyes, with additional liberal states joining the cascade of soon-to-be-lifted restrictions. Some states, like California, New York and Illinois are set to relieve these burdens on everyone except children, for now -- which is, of course, the opposite of what the real science has been teaching us for almost two years. Top Democrats have declared that the Biden administration has achieved enough progress to warrant ending mitigation, but that's truly embarrassing spin. Some media doctors are prancing along to their political tribe's choreography, insisting that yes, the 'Science' has suddenly changed:
"The science has changed." @DrLeanaWen explains why she supports lifting some pandemic restrictions and thinks the decision to wear a mask should shift from a government mandate to an individual choice. pic.twitter.com/vaiybBBF2b
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) February 8, 2022
The science on forced school masking science has not changed. The politics have. Charles Cooke flays Wen:
In Wen’s telling, there are three camps in America: Those who think that restrictions were never needed, those who think that restrictions are always needed, and those who “advocated restrictions from the start but now believe circumstances have changed enough that mandates can go.” It is into this third “camp” that Wen is trying to place herself.But this, of course, is not the whole story, because it misses a vital constituent part: time. The primary criticism that is being leveled against Wen — and many others — is not that there was never a need for restrictions, but that those restrictions lasted far too long, were routinely justified with Calvinball, confused personalized cost-benefit analyses with objective “science,” and only disappeared when the polling became unbearable for the Democratic Party....[Wen] resents an opinion about tradeoffs masquerading as a mathematical diagnosis. If Wen were more honest, she would have made her case for changing our approach now, while acknowledging that others disagree and have disagreed for a while. Instead, she played precisely the same game as has been played throughout — and showed us all that she, and those who think like her, haven’t learned a damned thing.
And yes, the polling has become unbearable for the Democratic Party. And so the Science had to change:
Biden job approval dips below 40 percent for first time in RealClearPolitics average of polls: 39.8% approve, 54.4% disapprove. https://t.co/68MeU1ximM pic.twitter.com/SBL7e1LOCQ
— Byron York (@ByronYork) February 9, 2022
So much sciencing:
After conducting focus groups, “Mr. Murphy’s advisers were struck by the findings: Across the board, voters shared frustrations over public health measures, a sense of pessimism about the future and a deep desire to return to some sense of normalcy.” https://t.co/pEInZDEAYk
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 9, 2022
I've been calling the politicized "science" of COVID Political Science for months. I didn't mean that quite this literally, but here we are. On Special Report this week, I applauded the major win for Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the children of Virginia this week (I wrote about an update earlier today), calling ongoing forcible masking in schools anti-science and harmful. A Reuters correspondent on the panel disagreed with my point (or at least what he thought was my point), leading to this exchange:
I seldom interrupt on TV, especially during the @SpecialReport panel, but I’m grateful to @BretBaier for affording me an opportunity to reaffirm my point about *school* masking earlier, following a polite challenge from the estimable @jeffmason1: pic.twitter.com/hC6GUPSp64
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 9, 2022
I fleshed out my argument further:
…it’s also true that fitted medical grade masks, worn properly, appear to be effective for high-risk adults and others who wish to wear them…
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 9, 2022
A few resources backing up these assertions: https://t.co/xgNhv7RaOehttps://t.co/ybP3oMUOjNhttps://t.co/VC9pMAqJvyhttps://t.co/ZKU6YyYVNMhttps://t.co/hShzWLJqWf
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 9, 2022
Feel free to click those links, which buttress my argument with detailed analysis of data. A few of the pieces discuss the harms inflicted on kids by mask requirements. It's important to make public policy decisions based on evidence, but it's also useful to illustrate the evidence with real people's stories. So watch this:
(Part 2 of 2) pic.twitter.com/rWu7gvPIrY
— Aaron (@AaronFromChi) February 8, 2022
Real children. Real harm. Real hurt. These public officials who are maintaining restrictions imposed on kids for absolutely no scientific reason should be made to listen to example after example like this, each day. And if they continue to insist that they've been doing the right thing, they should be required to actually answer questions like this with specificity. They cannot because the compelling evidence does not exist.
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