The Unwelcome Return of Covid Restrictions and Lockdowns
Covid restrictions are back. Almost a year after President Joe Biden said “the pandemic is over,” several hospitals, businesses, and universities have reinstated mask mandates and social distancing requirements. Meanwhile, nearly sixty universities have announced that students must take a covid vaccine to attend for the fall 2023 semester.
Although these restrictions are still limited to only a handful of organizations, their implementation demonstrates that the destructive public health dogmas responsible for the devastation of the last three years are still with us. The American people must stop tolerating these ruinous policies and the totalitarian paradigm underlying them.
The current dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant is a subvariant of Omicron called EG.5. Informally, it’s been nicknamed Eris after the Greek goddess of strife. The strain was first identified back in February 2023. It overtook the previous dominant variant at the beginning of August. The symptoms of the Eris variant are those of a cold—a runny nose and a sore throat. There is no evidence that Eris is more contagious or severe than the previous dominant variant.
Another Omicron variant called BA.2.86, nicknamed Pirola, has also been detected, but the few confirmed cases have also been very mild.
In recent weeks, an uptick in covid has been detected in wastewater, indicating a rise in cases. The trend is the familiar “summer wave” in viral spread seen as people move indoors to escape the late-summer heat. Still, the case numbers are extremely low, and the virus has the severity of a cold.
And yet some institutions have reinstated restrictions on their customers and workers in response to Eris. On August 17, two New York hospitals reimposed mandatory face masking and covid testing. Then, on August 20, Morris Brown College in Atlanta reinstated its mask mandate and banned large gatherings. The school also reimplemented contact tracing, symptom monitoring, and general social distancing requirements. The next day, the movie studio Lionsgate instituted a mask mandate for its offices. Two days later, a San Francisco medical center followed suit.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration publicly urged people to get fall booster shots last Monday. Then, last Friday, the president said he was requesting funds for a new covid vaccine that he anticipates will be recommended to everyone. And, as of August 26, fifty-eight universities have notified their students that they are required to take the covid vaccine to attend classes this fall semester.
These developments are disturbing because they indicate that the paradigm underlying the totalitarian pandemic response is still very intact. That paradigm was laid out well by both Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Aaron Kheriaty in their lectures at the Mises Institute’s Medical Freedom Summit this year.