Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to, out of the blue, generously bestow upon Americans their official blessing to stop wearing masks in most settings, if, that is, said Americans have been fully vaccinated.
So, what changed? Well, absolutely nothing, really. Other than maybe devastating gas prices and shortages across the country — I’m sure that’s totally just a coincidence though.
The change was rather inconvenient for President Joe Biden, however, considering just a few months ago he declared it to be “Neanderthal thinking” for states like Texas and Mississippi to end their mask mandates.
When asked in March about those respective states’ governors and their choice to lift their mandates, Biden replied, “Look, I hope everybody’s realized by now, these masks make a difference. We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way with which we’re able to get vaccines in people’s arms. We’ve been able to move that all the way up to the end of May to have enough for every American, to get every adult American to get a shot.”
“The last thing, the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime, everything is fine, take off your masks, forget it. It still matters,” he added.
Well, it appears that not only has the CDC adopted this “Neanderthal thinking” for its inconsistently reliable COVID-19 guidelines, but one of the states Biden slammed back in March for supposedly prehistoric levels of stupidity seems to be doing just fine.
Better than fine, in fact.
On Sunday, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott boasted his state reported absolutely zero COVID-related deaths for the first time since the early days of the pandemic, as well as several other impressive firsts that point to the elusive “return to normal” so many states have been chasing for well over a year.
“Today Texas reported: 0 Covid related deaths — the only time that’s happened since data was tracked in March, 2020, the fewest Covid cases in over 13 months, the lowest 7-day Covid positivity rate ever, the lowest Covid hospitalizations in 11 months,” the governor tweeted.
