Don’t ‘follow the science,’ follow DeSantis by Eddie Scarry
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/dont-follow-the-science-follow-desantis
Perhaps we should consider removing the “D” from “CDC,” because liberals at this point don’t seem to care so much about exterminating COVID-19 as they do about keeping a vise grip on what people can and can’t do.
After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its guidance last week, determining that fully vaccinated individuals have no need for mask wearing, pandemic-lovers everywhere rushed to call it premature.
There’s no verification of vaccination! Not enough people have been vaccinated! But my mask is like a security blanket!
Dr. Leana Wen of George Washington University, often seen on CNN, wrote Sunday in the Washington Post that President Joe Biden should override the CDC guidance.
“The Biden team has excelled on many aspects of the COVID-19 response,” she wrote, “but this was a major blunder that threatens to set back much of the progress made. President Biden needs to fix it, urgently.”
Wen’s suggestion for Biden is to reassert the need for countrywide indoor mask mandates and to fulfill the dream of requiring a form of COVID vaccination verification.
Wait, what happened to “following the science?!”
Wen further wrote that Biden “should clarify what it is that the CDC does,” that it only offers “guidance” but doesn’t set policy.
Yeah, that’s what conservatives and level-headed Republicans have been saying for the better part of a year — that a group of scientists at a government agency aren’t tasked with steering a country through a pandemic. That’s what elected leaders are for, and they do that by weighing competing factors, such as the spread of a particular disease, the education of children, and the health of the economy.
True, the CDC’s guidance, in this case, doesn’t go the way that Wen and others would have preferred. But science isn’t there to make anyone happy. It’s there to inform decisions.
These people have never really been interested in following the science anyway. They’ve proven that time and time again. The phrase “follow the science” itself is just a cliche. We should instead say, “Follow DeSantis.”
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida made the determination early on that the pandemic was too big to micromanage. He was right. A highly contagious, airborne virus, at that time with no proven treatment yet, (but fortunately with some identifiable infection patterns) couldn’t be stopped. But it could be managed.
DeSantis realized that those most at risk of severe illness (his state’s large elderly population) could be shielded and that everyone else could be advised and trusted to assess their own condition and behave accordingly.
With that calculation, DeSantis kept his state’s hospital system stable and its economy above water. People died, and each death is a tragedy, but that’s the nature of a pandemic, and they did not die in especially large numbers in Florida. In fact, states with enduring mask mandates and stricter lockdowns fared no better than Florida when you account for population size.
With each passing day, liberals can feel their control over our lives slipping away. They don’t like it, but that’s where “the science
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