Former FDA Chief: It’s Time to End Mask and Vaccine Mandates Forever

Can there be anything further gained by mandating masks and vaccines? The political class, fueled by the public health bureaucracy, has thrown everything it has at the wall and nothing seems to have stuck as far as limiting or eliminating the spread of Covid-19. Studies continue to show that mask mandates don’t work because people naturally inclined not to wear masks won’t follow the mandate anyway. Vaccine mandates can work to an extent under the threat of losing your job or losing access to parts of society, so it’s basically a game of fear. Do this, or else.

It’s very arguable that mitigation efforts can work, but mandates do little more than divide people into camps and help to further politicize a virus.

In that vein, former FDA commission Scott Gottlieb says it’s time to end the mandates and stop all the divisiveness they’re needlessly creating:

"As conditions improve we have to be willing to relax some of these measures with the same speed that we put them in place," says @ScottGottliebMD on policies like mask mandates. pic.twitter.com/C1ZAYDtMS9

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) January 24, 2022

As Gottlieb warns, the masking and mandates could go on forever without effort and goalposts to stop the madness:

He compares the current U.S. situation to that of the UK. Across the pond, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set plans to drop all pandemic restrictions amid a drop in cases. Gottlieb said that America should soon follow, and pointed out masks in schools and vaccine mandates as particularly ‘divisive’ restrictions that he thinks should go.

‘We haven’t described clear goalposts for when we’re gonna withdraw a lot of these measures and the two most contentious things right now in the U.S. are the masks among children in schools and the vaccine mandates,’ he said.

The UK, hardly the bastion of Covid freedom, is dropping every government mandate for masks, vaccines, vaccine passports, you name it. They’re declaring “normal” to be the new normal and moving on. Nothing more can be gained from government cajoling of a tired citizenry which now has a buffet of vaccines and other therapeutic treatments available.

For some reason, however, the Biden administration hasn’t gotten the message that the American people are moving on. More and more, we see liberal columnists declare they’re done living in the Covid fear and ready to get back to normal. Part of the driving force is the ongoing realization that even with triple-vaxxing and double-masking, many still wound up catching omicron or another variant in recent months.

Thus, the realization that played out recently with Bill Maher and Bari Weiss talking about a “pandemic of bureaucracy” just days ago:

Aside from Rep. Ritchie Torres tossing in the required fear disclaimer, the discussion is a perfect example of why the tide is changing, and “Covidian” zealots are being left behind in favor of a new new-normal. The actual normal.

The damage done to children won’t be quantifiable for years, but it’s already manifesting in lowered test scores among school-aged children and lower IQs for children born during the last two years of stress and chaos. This is the long-term sacrifice that children will be paying for years, as Weiss notes, with rising suicide rates and other problems among the nation’s youth.

It’s long past time to accelerate the return to normal if only for the sake of children abused the past two years with terrible schooling and stressed out parents.