Don't buy new COVID hysteria

Just as memories of COVID lockdowns and mask mandates were fading to the back of our collective minds, the hysteria is returning, and many are wondering how to react.

The two new strains responsible for the surge in cases are known as EG.5, or “Eris,” and BA.2.86, or “Pirola.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers show COVID hospitalizations have increased by almost 15.7% in one week, and deaths have increased by 10.5%, although these numbers greatly fluctuate day by day. Director Mandy Cohen said up to 10,000 people are being admitted with COVID per week (compared to the average 40,000 per week at the height of the pandemic).

Around 70% of hospitalizations are among those 65 and older.

Outbreaks are being reported in nursing homes. Mask mandates are resurfacing in many public places. And universities are quarantining students who test positive.

It seems almost inevitable that states will begin reverting to mandatory restrictions unless we make a concerted effort to amplify the facts about the ineffectiveness of masking and vaccinations. Time has proven what many conservatives knew all along – the government oversight forced on Americans throughout the pandemic was unnecessary and counterintuitive.

In May, even the CDC announced that COVID now presents a low public health risk, noting the virus and all its strains are “an established and ongoing health issue which no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.”

The current panic around COVID is due to one thing and one thing only – media fear-mongering.

You might be questioning why the Eris and Pirola strains are of such concern now, when other strains of equal strength have gained relatively little media attention since the “end” of the pandemic. The timing of this spike seems a little too coincidental to many observers, since it surreptitiously aligns with the upcoming presidential election, just as it did in 2020.

“America is about to face — not a new strain of COVID-19 — but a redux of the fear-mongering 2020 lockdowns, and just in time for the ballot boxes to open,” one commentator wrote.

Even if this “surge” in COVID cases isn’t an artificial, orchestrated attempt to manipulate the upcoming election, we must nevertheless band together and refuse to allow government institutions to strip us of our bodily autonomy and freedom on the grounds of faulty scientific evidence and fraudulent “experts.”

To prevent that from happening, Harvard professor and epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and professor at Stanford Medical School, along with many others, have called for the creation of a bipartisan COVID Response Commission to examine the mistakes made in 2020-2022, like almost every other leading nation has already done.

Kulldorff and Bhattacharya believe the commission should address four main areas:

• Public health measures, including the closing of schools, businesses, sports, religious services and cultural events

• Treatment of patients

• Vaccines, including development and approval

• Censorship of scientific debate, including tech censorship

“Our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic constituted history’s biggest public health mistake,” Kulldorff and Bhattacharya said.

Let’s not make those mistakes again. We know that COVID is a “treatable, preventable” disease, no more dangerous than the flu. We know masking has little to no effect on contracting viruses. We know that the vaccines are not safe or effective.

So, until further notice, we recommend taking Bhattacharya’s advice: “Just live your life.”

— Written by the Family Policy Institute of Washington. To contact the organization, email info@fpiw.org.