Article written by Virginia Kruta, editor at the Daily Caller
Unless you have been living in a bomb shelter – or inside a hazmat suit – for the last 18 months, you’ve been exposed to COVID. We all have. So is it too much to ask that we act like it?
I’m not even asking that we go back to “normal” per se, because the reality is that the pandemic has changed things in a number of ways and some of them are probably permanent. But can we stop acting like we can stop the spread of a now-endemic virus by getting a few more people vaccinated or wearing small fabric squares over our faces?
The virus is everywhere. It has spiked in every state and nearly every city in every state. And while earlier in the pandemic outbreaks could be effectively traced to specific schools, conventions, and other events, the reality is that if I test positive next week there will be no way to determine where I caught it. Did one of my kids bring it home from school? From a gymnastics lesson? Did my husband get exposed at work? Did I get exposed at the grocery store? There is no way to tell, and really, it no longer matters. You can’t contact trace a virus that’s everywhere, and we should stop pretending we can.
That’s not to say that the pandemic has not been devastating – it has. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and hundreds of thousands of families are heartbroken over those losses. But what made it so deadly was not the fact that it was a coronavirus – it was the keyword “novel” in front of it. And now that the virus is everywhere, it is slowly becoming less novel. Exposure, vaccination, and infection are beginning to cancel out the “novelty” aspect of the virus and will continue to lessen its impact as time goes on. And people are starting to notice.
I spent the last weekend in Chicago at Wizard World Comic-Con. Thousands of people gathered in a convention hall to meet celebrities, hunt for vintage comics, and snag photos with some of the best fan-created costumes. In theory, everyone was supposed to be masked up for the duration – unless they were actively eating or drinking or taking certain approved celebrity photos. In practice, compliance was probably around 70%. And even among those, fewer than half were wearing their masks correctly.
I would have been happy to see a “mask optional” policy, even at a convention that large – not only because I personally would prefer to ditch my mask for good, but also because I believe it is all but absolutely certain that we’ve all already been exposed.
It’s time for the government – whether on the municipal level or in the White House – to let the American people evaluate the risks for themselves and make their own personal healthcare decisions without further interference.
For more articles by Virginia Kruta at the Daily Caller, click here: https://dailycaller.com/author/vkruta/