Recently, President Biden called on states to stop opening up businesses and to keep mask mandates in place.  Dr. Fauci was asked if kids could go to summer camp and responded that he didn't "know that for sure."  The Biden administration proposed an "infrastructure" bill that pays off more unions than it does roads.  President Biden, the "moderate," continues to drag out COVID to push leftist policy.  The thing is, COVID is not much of an emergency anymore.

Biden's new $2-trillion bill is being framed in the media as an "infrastructure" bill.  The funny thing is, only about 5% is going to roads and bridges.  Even when extending the definition of infrastructure to plumbing and water, it accounts for only a third of the bill.  The rest of the money is going to numerous other causes — one of them being unions.  The administration is just trying to get this passed by exaggerating COVID to make this an emergency economic recovery bill.  To accomplish this, he is encouraging states to re-employ mask mandates and other restrictive policy to keep the impression COVID is still a big problem.  This, despite the fact that the pandemic is dwindling as vaccines go out to the vulnerable.

What is being ignored by them is the stress COVID and restrictive policy puts on Americans.  This is most apparent in statistics like this one from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that 30% of "nonessential workers" have symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders, and 8% considered suicide in the 30-day period before the survey was done.  I cite this statistic, though I assume anyone could guess that the consequences of the lockdowns would be significant.

It seems that the restrictions have the same negative effect on college students.  Though they are some of the most privileged people in society, a blog called One Class conducted a survey on 14,000 college students asking them about the negative effects of the pandemic.  Eighty-five percent said the pandemic has negatively affected their academic performance.  In terms of mental health, the statistics are not any better, with The Journal of Medical Internet Research finding that 71% of students had increased stress or anxiety.

Now, it is a well known fact that the right has a grudge against college students.  But putting aside political battles for a minute, these young adults are a perfect example of how restrictive policy hurts the lives of even those who generally agree with the lockdowns as a policy.

After seeing all the negative effects, it is clear that lockdowns are not a preferable way to deal with the pandemic.  Any politician who cares about his people would want to find a better way to deal with the pandemic that keeps his people safe and does so without all the negative side-effects.  As it turns out, Florida found a way to do this.

Florida has the second highest elderly population and should logically have a high COVID death count along with it.  According to a statistic from the Kaiser Family Foundation, California and Florida have similar deaths per 100,000.  This, despite the differences in the average age for their residents and the differences on how they ran their states during the pandemic.

California completely shut down.  Meanwhile, Florida had minimal regulations on COVID.  Florida's Governor DeSantis shut down for a short time during the beginning of the outbreak but opened back up as soon as possible.  He did this while the media shouted him down and ditched him for months.

On Ben Shapiro's show, DeSantis was asked what policies he pursued to allow his state to stay open without causing an uptick in deaths.  He said, "It was a number of things, but partly, we supported strong policy to protect nursing homes early.  Some of the Democrat governors were sending the contagious COVID patients back into nursing homes[.] ... We didn't do that of course, but we banned hospitals from doing that because we knew the hazard that would be."

So basically, as long as you isolate the vulnerable parts of the population, everything does not have to shut down.  This gets even better as over 51 million Americans have been vaccinated, with one of the vaccines being 90% effective at stopping transmission.

The White House knows this.  Biden's people are using COVID as a mask to get the bill passed.  If this passes, that will be four billion dollars in four months.  This kind of money equals the total cost of World War II.  It's imperative that we put a stop to this now unless we want to wear masks for another four years.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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