As the nation re-opens in the sunset of coronavirus, Americans have begun to shed the masks and return to normal with live music and summer travel putting the pandemic in the rear-view mirror.
Life is moving on across the country, even in New York and California, whose residents suffered the most severe restrictions of their lives and liberty while the free states of Texas and Florida moved on from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s draconian prescriptions months earlier. But America isn’t back to normal.
Masks are still required in planes and airports, millions of kids remain uncertain over what the fall classroom looks like, and hysteria grips no small part of the population, who cling to their facial coverings while summer camps hesitate to offer relief to children after a long, arduous school year. Yet some parents gripped by pandemic fear even in the presence of not one, but three effective vaccines for the novel coronavirus still won’t let their children go to camp.
On Sunday, one mother wrote into a Slate advice column asking whether it was safe to send her 15-year-old daughter to a two-week art camp after a “terrible” school year.
“My every instinct is screaming at me that this is a bad idea,” she wrote, “plus, I don’t want to pretend I’m OK with the camp happening at all under these circumstances, and I think there’s a good chance somebody’s kid is going to get sick.”
Except, of the more than 600,000 Americans estimated to succumb to COVID-19, about 300 among those were under the age of 18.
Slate's advice is awful, bordering on misinformation. *Vaccinated* teenagers are not at risk whatsoever. The advice-seeker said her kid was vaccinated, so for that kid it's safe. pic.twitter.com/9FjTq6OvYP
— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) June 16, 2021
Such unwavering hysteria exemplifies many in the nation’s struggle to embrace a true return to normal, rejecting science and personal responsibility for the sake of those who demand life with absolute zero risk at others’ expense. But as most of the nation sees normal return, Americans must not become apathetic to the mitigation efforts that threaten to linger, including hybrid learning systems and airline masking, neither of which are necessary today.
According to a school re-opening tracker by the American Enterprise Institute, 45 percent of districts nationwide are still operating in a hybrid model. It’s uncertain how many will allow students back in the classroom full-time by September.
On masks still required during air travel, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had no good answers why Americans are forced to comply with the administration’s executive order scheduled through Sept. 13. By that point, the nation will have been open from coast to coast enjoying concerts, weddings, and sports occasions without the muzzle of a mask or the dystopian enforcement of social distancing.
“It’s a matter of safety, but it’s also a matter of respect,” Buttigieg said on ABC News at the end of May, as representative of an administration perfectly comfortable with legislating “respect.” If only the same White House would consider that standard for the lives of the unborn.
But by this point, the pressure valve against the lockdowns appears to have been released by Americans reclaiming their lives as government relaxes restrictions. That pressure valve, however, also led to the rules’ reversal.
On Wednesday, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz re-upped the pressure to relieve the public of executive health orders after vaccines have been made widely available amid falling deaths and cases.
“The last I checked under our constitutional system if federal law requires it then it is appropriate for the United States Congress to make that determination,” Cruz said, blasting Biden’s unilateral executive order to require masks renewed in April, which was supposed to lapse in mid-May. “The only way something becomes federal law in this country is if Congress passes a law and it’s signed by the president.”
Forcing people to wear masks on planes is performative theater.
Allowing people who have been vaccinated to choose not to wear a mask is a common sense step to take. pic.twitter.com/vthjqamEJo
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) June 16, 2021
Americans will keep wearing masks on airplanes as long as it remains popular among the president’s base to wear what quickly became akin to the passive progressivism of pronouns in bios. The self-restriction and hysteria feed on each other in spite of science to breed cultural norms that precede policy.
Once Americans get over their fear of coronavirus, then they will witness a true return to normal.
