The first sign of giving up

In the northeastern part of America, where I live happily with a wife, two cats and a snow shovel, governors are crooning softly to their constituents, telling them that the mask mandate for school kids has been lifted.

And the peasants rejoice!

In Massachusetts, where Gov. Charlie Baker, R-Ennui, has the wardrobe of the upper classes without the certainty or the grace, the dropping of the kiddie mandate has about 20% of the population wriggling with joy as they unfurl their "Let's Go, Brandon" banners and celebrate.

Of course, they're being duped again.

You're the governor of a state. The unemployment rate is under 5%. The young men and women who join the military aren't being sent to East Carbombistan. The stock market is doing well, so tax receipts are up.

Good time to ease back on the panic button, no?

No.

That portion of the population dedicated to the belief that America will end next Tuesday is so fixated on masks that they can't notice any good thing happening.

So, why not let the dopes win?

Unmask their kids and they'll be happy, and you deprive the freak job extremist candidates of a very important plank in their platforms.

It's a crude (and possibly evil) political calculation, but it's smart. Give 'em what they want, and see how they like it.

Best of all, nonvaccination tends to be clustered among the poor and the uneducated, precisely the two groups most likely to throw themselves into some Trump clone made entirely of hair gel and slogans. Give them a little something to celebrate, and they won't notice when you get back into office.

Mask wearing, the slogans tell us, should be a matter of personal choice, not public policy, a recipe very likely to produce a rich, deadly meal of disaster.

There is no real cure or 100% effective vaccine for COVID-19. That means it's time to abandon anyone who won't take precautions for themselves or their children.

We're giving up.

For a long time in this country, syphilis, gonorrhea and polio were all incurable. Tuberculosis ravaged the urban poor.

So, we got used to those diseases. They became diseases a lot of people had at any given time, and they killed some people, and it was regarded as the normal cost of running the world.

That was one heck of a calming way to look at things, particularly if you weren't poor and sick.

Of course, the men and women, the much-reviled "scientists," will continue to peer into microscopes and test vaccines on the less attractive primates but, until we get a cure, better to let the disease rage than see one public official deprived of his/her official state license plate.

As my father used to say, it's lonely at the top and crowded at the bottom.

As Election Day gets nearer for officials big and small, now is the time to decide how much you care about public health and how much you care about public opinion.

And, if you are holding public office, you can soothe your conscience by saying that if you don't ease up just a little on anti-COVID-19 precautions, then the maniac who replaces you will be burning masks, books and vaccines all at the same time.

If you are in office and remain perplexed, just remember that the same folks who don't want the ideas of Mark Twain running loose in the school library don't mind if a virus runs loose in the halls.

© 2022, Creators