Pun Salad

“Just 100 days to mask, not forever. One hundred days,” Biden said in December, repeating the request to Americans, and the encouragement to governors and mayors to keep state and local mask requirements in place.

Biden’s 100th day in office is next Friday, April 30. Do you think he’ll say, “Okay, the 100 days are over. It’s okay to take your masks off now”? Or do you think he’ll backtrack and say Americans need to wear their masks for another period of time? Until Memorial Day? Until Independence Day? Until Labor Day?

Now is not the time to take our foot off the gas when it comes to protecting our state from further Covid infections and deaths.

Governor Sununu and our legislators: keep physical distancing, the mask mandate and the aggressive, coordinated vaccination programs going. Don’t take a victory lap until after we cross the finish line.

A month and a half ago, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) lifted all statewide COVID-19 restrictions, prompting widespread panic from many Democrats—including President Joe Biden—as well as unofficial members of Team Blue within the mainstream media and public health establishment. Liberals confidently predicted that the masks were coming off way too soon, and COVID-19 would swiftly make a comeback in the Lone Star State.

Well, nope: COVID-19 deaths and cases continue to fall in Texas, even without a mask mandate or capacity restrictions on businesses. The same is broadly true of Florida, which relaxed its restrictions all the way back in September and has managed to weather the pandemic more successfully than super locked down states like New York and California.

[Leonhardt] begins with the fact that most people are terrible at objectively assessing risk. That is both true and unfortunate, but not exactly news. It does apply to covid vaccination:

The vaccines have nearly eliminated death, hospitalization and other serious Covid illness among people who have received shots.
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If you’re vaccinated, Covid presents a minuscule risk to you, and you present a minuscule Covid risk to anyone else. A car trip is a bigger threat, to you and others. About 100 Americans are likely to die in car crashes today. The new federal data suggests that either zero or one vaccinated person will die today from Covid.

Nevertheless, Leonhardt endorses post-vaccine mask wearing, basically as a concession to irrationality:

It’s true that experts believe vaccinated people should still sometimes wear a mask, partly because it’s a modest inconvenience that further reduces a tiny risk — and mostly because it contributes to a culture of mask wearing.

But if you’ve been vaccinated (and in my opinion, even if you haven’t), the “culture of mask wearing” is stupid and harmful.

It is the decent thing to do when most people still aren’t vaccinated.

Why is it “decent” to do something that is entirely pointless, potentially damaging to one’s health, and contributes to the irrational fears that Leonhardt has already described?

If you’re vaccinated, a mask is more of a symbol of solidarity than anything else.

Solidarity with whom? Dr. Fauci? The perennially masked, although vaccinated, Joe Biden? In reality, wearing a mask post-vaccine is a symbol of submission to irrational state power.

The woke revolution in the classroom is about to go federal. In an early but revelatory move, President Biden’s Department of Education has signaled its intent to impose the most radical forms of Critical Race Theory on America’s schools, very much including the 1619 Project and the so-called anti-racism of Ibram X. Kendi. (Kendi’s “anti-racism” — which advocates a massive and indefinite expansion of reverse discrimination — is more like neo-racism.) Biden is obviously co-opting conservatives’ interest in reviving traditional U.S. history and civics to deliver its perfect opposite — federal imposition of the very ideas conservatives aim to combat.

Biden’s Department of Education has just released the text of a proposed new rule establishing priorities for grants in American History and Civics Education programs. That rule gives priority to grant “projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives.” The rule goes on to cite and praise the New York Times’ “landmark” 1619 Project, as well as the work of Critical Race Theorist Kendi, as leading examples of the sort of ideas the Biden administration wants to spread.

The union outlined a whopping 23 objections to Amazon’s conduct, arguing that the company “prevented a free and uncoerced exercise of choice by the employees.” Eight of the objections concern the collection box Amazon installed in the warehouse parking lot to collect ballots for the election. A sign instructing employees, “Speak for yourself! Mail your ballot here,” hung from a tent encircling the box, which vanished after the election.

In its objections, the RWDSU argues that the collection box violated the procedural rules the NLRB spelled out in January. The board never authorized the box and had denied Amazon’s request for one inside the warehouse. The collection box, the union says, created the impression that Amazon, not the NLRB, had control over the election and constituted improper voter surveillance, since security cameras watched the tent. The union claims the company repeatedly instructed employees to vote on-site, calling this “a form of ballot solicitation,” in defiance of NLRB rules. The RWDSU also claims that the campaign slogan on the tent violated bans on electioneering.