Setting the Terms for (Hopefully) a Post-Pandemic America
PLUS: I sense a disturbance in the Star Wars universe...
With the Omicron wave rapidly receding throughout the country, many states—including those predominantly Democratic states that had adopted the strictest measures to mitigate the spread of the virus—are now moving to lift their pandemic restrictions. It’s good news case numbers and now hospitalizations are in free fall; deaths, however, remain high, although it looks like they’ve currently peaked at around 3,500 a day. (To lend some perspective to that number, that’s about one thousand more Americans than died on June 6, 1944, during the D-Day invasion and a few hundred shy of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg.)
As for the rush to end pandemic restrictions…well, the opportunity is certainly there but I’m worried we’re letting the politics get a little ahead of the science. In the first place, there’s still a lot of COVID out there.
In fact, in most states, it appears if you take the number of cases recorded over the past few days, it would still exceed those recorded during the peaks of past waves, including the Delta wave. Of course, the good news is Omicron does not cause as severe an illness as past variants, and vaccines do a good job keeping people from getting seriously ill. Unfortunately, Omicron is more contagious, meaning it spreads more easily and sickens more people, which can cripple public services. While it’s possible we’re brushing up against something close to herd immunity given the number of people who have either contracted Omicron or gotten vaccinated, I’m concerned if we pull back the restrictions we currently have in place too soon that we could end up re-seeding another mini-wave this spring, which might again strain hospitals, schools, and the supply chain.
I also don’t know if it’s wise to lift restrictions during what is still winter. I’d be inclined to wait a few weeks until people can more easily dine or gather outdoors, which could help counter whatever spread may happen when restrictions on public places are lifted.
But whatever restrictions remain are about to expire regardless whether the government officially keeps them in place or not. Americans for the most part seem ready to live with endemic COVID. Those who have gone without the shot—by this point, more beholden to politics than science, unpersuaded by the finding that roughly 95% of those dying of COVID are unvaccinated, and more interested in trying quack treatments if they get sick than proven vaccines to keep them from getting sick—have essentially picked their poison. And the vaccinated can reasonably say they’ve done the responsible thing to keep themselves and others safe and want to get back to leading their normal lives. It won’t take a government statement to end these restrictions; citizens will just end them themselves.
So regardless whether the best moment to rescind these restrictions is now or a month from now, it’s fair to say they’re living on borrowed time as what Dr. Anthony Fauci refers to as the “emergency phase” of the pandemic comes to an end. That means there’s an opportunity here for President Biden to reset the country’s footing vis-à-vis COVID. You may be wondering why he would need to do that if COVID (or at least the pandemic) is going away but my guess is a.) It’s not; and b.) It’s going to linger as an issue even if it does and he needs to set the terms for how the country reflects on it.
In a recent article for the conservative/center-right website The Bulwark titled “COVID Derangement is Working Out Just Fine for the GOP,” A.B. Stoddard wrote that “somehow it’s Joe Biden who has seen his approval rating tank while Republicans are poised to take both the House and the Senate” despite the fact that “it’s the Republicans who have tried to suppress vaccine adoption. That it’s the Republicans who have accommodated the craziest, most pathological claims about vaccines. That it’s the Republicans who have affirmatively been contributing to the deaths of people who listen to them.” It’s Biden who has taken a beating over his management of the pandemic, yet it’s Republicans who have made the pandemic far worse than it ever needed to be over the past year. Stoddard concludes:
[Last year] Biden wanted to fight the virus, not Republicans. His failure of imagination was not understanding that Republicans would be happy to push the virus along if it undermined his presidency.
A pandemic Republicans have eagerly prolonged has pummeled Joe Biden’s presidency and he can no longer fight depravity with good will. There are no more marginal vaccine holdouts to be wooed. No more lives of people who just don’t know any better to be saved.
It’s time for Democrats to stop worrying about alienating the unvaccinated and start explaining to the rest of the country how the unvaccinated—and the Republicans who coddle and truckle to them—have screwed the rest of us.
To win this culture war, Biden and the Democrats have to actually fight it.
Otherwise, the Republican COVID radicals are going to clobber them.
Biden would be making another mistake if he assumes the pandemic is just going to recede into history and that the country is headed for a period of political calm. The epidemiological and (most certainly) the economic effects are going to linger. With Democratic governors ending pandemic era restrictions, it’s time for Biden to wrestle the situation to his advantage. To that end, he needs to do five things:
1. Vaccinate the world. What’s become clear over the past year is that the biggest problem we face in trying to suppress this virus is the emergence of new variants. In a few big ways, we lucked out with Omicron. But if another variant comes along that is as contagious as Omicron but either more virulent or vaccine-resistant, we could easily find ourselves transported back to Spring 2020, only with a much less risk-averse population. That could be catastrophic. We need to do what we can to prevent the emergence of new variants, which means we need as many people as possible vaccinated throughout the world to reduce the number of opportunities the virus has to mutate within human hosts.
Additionally, Biden shouldn’t promote this undertaking on the domestic front. If he wants to claim credit for it internationally, fine, but there’s no need to tout it to a domestic audience if Republicans (as I suspect they would) are just going to turn it into a wedge issue by arguing we don’t need to be giving medical handouts to countries who should be paying for these vaccines themselves. Let’s remember though: This virus originated in China. Omicron was first identified in South Africa. Who knows where the next variant will come from. If we want to avoid further personal and economic disruptions, let’s pay the price to vaccinate the world. If we don’t, we could very well be paying for the much more massive cost of another shutdown.
2. Get back to normal (except for where it may be wise to remain cautious.) At this point, if local governments are convinced it is time to lift restrictions, they have to go all in on it. They shouldn’t hedge their bets by stating (for instance) “Masks aren’t required in movie theaters but we advise people to wear them.” That suggests a lack of faith in their own recommendations and will likely sow doubt among the public. (I should add if public officials believe it is unsafe to go mask-less in certain places, then they shouldn’t be lifting mask mandates in those places to begin with.) It would be better to simply state that mask-wearing is a matter of personal discretion and no longer required, as a way to emphasize that vaccines and low transmission rates have significantly reduced the risk of developing serious illness and that people are still free to wear masks as an extra layer of protection
That said, as public officials go about lifting mandates, they need to think about settings where it may be wise to leave something like a mask mandate in place and then explain to citizens why this exception is in place. I’m not sure what such a setting would be, but I would hypothesize that something like mass transit and transportation facilities—where people from a lot of different places are brought into close contact with one another and then disbursed to a variety of locales—might qualify. So might high schools and grocery stores for other reasons, although I can’t say for sure. Had we done a better job contact tracing, we may know more about what types of places seed outbreaks, which we would still want to avoid.1
3. Explain it’s possible pandemic restrictions may return under certain circumstances and that people should be prepared to take steps to keep the virus at bay. It’s impossible to know if Omicron represents the last major wave of the pandemic. I wouldn’t doubt it if we see waves every December/January for the next few years or even regular seasonal waves. Furthermore, no one would bet against the emergence of a new variant. Consequently, public officials need to be upfront with citizens by telling them restrictions may need to be re-imposed if certain conditions arise. What would those conditions be? One obvious candidate would be a variant that evaded vaccines and proved deadly. (Hopefully vaccine makers would be able to counter such a development fairly quickly.) High case counts might also necessitate a return to mask-wearing or other restrictions if schools, essential businesses like grocery stores, and (especially) hospitals are overwhelmed or struggle to provide services. Additionally, public officials should prepare the public for the possibility they will need to get routine booster shots. (The CDC reported Friday that preliminary studies indicate the effectiveness of booster shots wanes after four months.) I suspect a lot of people—including the vaccinated—won’t be happy about that but maintaining a population fortified against the virus is preferable to having to confront a new variant with reduced immunity.
But…
4. Emphasize if there is a need to re-impose restrictions, the burden for that will be borne primarily by the unvaccinated. Vaccines do a great job preventing serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID. It is true a vaccinated person can transmit Omicron to another vaccinated person, but we can at least say those two individuals have done their part to reduce the likelihood of that and to keep themselves and others safe. They are entitled at this point as vaccinated individuals to live their lives with a reasonable and tolerable amount of risk.
The same can’t be said about the unvaccinated. In the event of another wave, the unvaccinated are the ones who will make people reticent to see a movie in a theater or eat out in a restaurant. They’re the ones who will put the squeeze on our school systems and the economy. (As Stoddard recommends in her article, Democrats need to start “hammer[ing] to voters that GOP COVID obstruction is imperiling the economy” and that high inflation, empty shelves, and a low labor supply are all hallmarks of the “economy of the unvaccinated.”) More importantly, it’s the unvaccinated who are more likely to contract, spread, and require care for COVID. They’re the ones who will clog our hospitals and compel health care systems to begin rationing care. In the so-called “post-pandemic” era, when vaccines are widely available and American life has returned to something close to normal, it’s the unvaccinated—those who have not taken it upon themselves to help move the country into this post-pandemic era—who should shoulder the burden if it becomes necessary to reimplement pandemic era restrictions.
This would require the government to do two things. First, it needs to create an authenticated vaccine passport system public accommodations can use so life can carry on for the vaccinated in the event of a new wave. And second, if an unvaccinated person is hospitalized, they should be expected to pay a portion of that bill. A three-shot vaccine regimen costs around $75. Charge an unvaccinated person hospitalized for COVID $75 a day up to $1000 for a hospital stay. Maybe even refund the charge if they get vaccinated within six months of their discharge. Regardless, send the signal there are personal consequences for the burden the unvaccinated place on society.
5. Thank the vaccinated. Thank the vaccinated for doing their part to help the country reopen. Thank them for not only looking out for themselves but for others. Acknowledge the sacrifices they have made and how difficult the past two years have been. Let them know that by doing the responsible thing, they’ve made it possible for all of us to get back to doing the things we love and cherish. Give them the credit. They deserve it.
Stoddard makes a critical point in her article: The pandemic is political. Ideally, it wouldn’t be, and there are good reasons why Biden avoided making it political and tried instead to sidestep political conflict over the issue during his first year in office. Yet for the past 6-7 months, it’s Biden who has suffered politically while Delta and Omicron clobbered the country. With the Omicron wave fading and the country reopening, however, it’s time to turn the tables and seize the political moment. The nation’s getting back to normal. The vaccinated—Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike—made that possible. The unvaccinated and those who have downplayed vaccines did not. Voters need to be reminded of that.
Signals and Noise
Here’s some cognitive dissonance for you: As the Washington Post was reporting Friday that the White House was considering attaching deficit reduction components to its stalled Build Back Better agenda in order to appeal to deficit hawk Joe Manchin, Roll Call was reporting congressional negotiators had finalized a framework for this year’s defense appropriations bill through which “national defense and related programs would see a $30 billion boost above President Joe Biden’s budget request, or $5 billion more than even the fiscal 2022 defense authorization law outlined.” That “boost” would bring the national defense budget for the fiscal year starting October 1 to somewhere around $1.5 trillion, which is about how much the pared back Build Back Better plan would spend on social spending over ten years.
Maybe “lock him up?”
I’m no lawyer, but if I was representing Sarah Palin in a lawsuit against the New York Times claiming a demonstrably incorrect op-ed printed in its pages amounted to an instance of libel that harmed her reputation, I don’t think I’d put the former governor on the stand. Yet that’s what happened. How exactly does someone tease out the difference between the amount of damage a single NYT article did to her character and the damage Palin has repeatedly done to her own reputation? Putting her on the stand would only seem like an opportunity to play the greatest hits all over again. Also: Do Republicans really want Palin to win a libel case against a major national news organization? If she wins that case, doesn’t it become open season on FOX News?
Speaking of Sarah Palin’s greatest hits, here’s a clip of her rapping “Baby’s Got Back” after her reveal as the Bear on The Masked Singer:
Craig Shubert, the mayor of Hudson, Ohio, is skeptical of a plan that would permit ice fishing in the local park: “If you open this up to ice fishing, while on the surface it sounds good, then what happens next year? Does someone come back and say, ‘I want an ice shanty for X-amount of time?’ And if you then allow ice fishing with shanties, then that leads to another problem — prostitution.” Wait, what? He continued, “And now you’ve got the police chief and the police department involved. Just data points to consider.” The reaction of his fellow councilmember is priceless.
Vincent’s Picks: I Sense a Disturbance in the Star Wars Universe
(Vincent’s Picks theme song here)
NOTICE: SPOILERS for THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT and THE MANDALORIAN follow.
While I recall certain moments of other movies I saw as a kid—a giant Animal lording over a western town, a red-eyed bear with sharp teeth and claws fighting a fox and a hound, a bug crawling into Pavel Chekov’s ear—the first movie I remember watching beginning to end in a theater was The Return of the Jedi. Jabba the Hutt’s menagerie of humanoids and monsters! A bigger bad guy than even Darth Vader! Ewoks! Speeder bikes!!!
Return of the Jedi hit theaters before VCRs really took off so I’m not sure if I had somehow seen Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back before then. Maybe they had aired on TV and my parents had let me stay up late to watch them. I know I had the read-along book-and-records, so maybe that’s how I knew the story. And of course, I had (nearly) all the action figures so I was very familiar with the main characters, including one Boba Fett.
Boba Fett is a bad man. He’s the bounty hunter who, during Empire, followed Han Solo to Cloud City, alerted Darth Vader to Han’s presence there, and then took Han’s body (frozen in carbonite) to Jabba. Fett wasn’t affiliated with the Empire, which made him a free agent villain, a problem in his own right, and a total badass. We first meet him hanging out with other bounty hunters like IG-88 and Bossk, making those curiosities cool by association; when I played with the action figures, Fett and his fellow bounty hunters provided storylines beyond the played-out Rebels vs. Empire conflict the movies developed. In Return of the Jedi, we find Fett chilling at Jabba’s palace, the quickdraw enforcer in the back of the throne room. It turns out he can also fly. He dies like a chump, though, when Han inadvertently whacks him on his jet pack, which sends him careening into the side of Jabba’s sail barge and into the sarlaac pit. He’s such a satisfying morsel the sarlaac even burps after swallowing him, reducing the coolest character in the original trilogy (sorry Lando) to a bit of comic relief.
Boba Fett would go on to appear as a child in 2002’s installment of the prequel trilogy Attack of the Clones as well as make multiple appearances in the extended universe of novels and comic books. For a guy with little screen time and barely any dialogue in the original trilogy (four lines, the most memorable of which is “He’s no good to me dead”) Fett became a huge fan favorite. When Disney sought to develop a Star Wars series for the 2019 premiere of their streaming service Disney+, that show’s Eastwoodian title character, the Mandalorian, came from the same alien race and dressed in the same style of armor as Boba Fett. Star Wars fans flocked to the show in droves for some western-style Boba Fett action while more casual viewers fell hard for his adopted BFF “the Child,” aka “Baby Yoda.” The Mandalorian, set a few years after Return of the Jedi, was a major hit and returned for a second season, which also saw the return of a much older Boba Fett, who, as connoisseurs of the extended universe would have known, somehow managed to escape the sarlaac. The teaser at the end of that season saw Fett claim Jabba’s old throne and promised The Book of Boba Fett, which premiered on December 29. (Jon Favreau, who directed Iron Man and the “live”-action version of The Lion King, is the showrunner for both series.)
The Book of Boba Fett just concluded this past Wednesday, and man, did it ever turn into a bunch of bantha fodder. Why did they do this to Boba Fett? The bigger question, though, is why do they keep doing this to Star Wars?
The first four episodes are kind of slow, with a bunch of flashbacks and world building (it’s always fun to get a tour of the Star Wars universe) but even if at times there isn’t a lot happening, it still feels like it’s seeding a bigger story. And bonus: An evil wookiee shows up with murder in his eyes. The main plot follows Boba Fett (played by Temuera Morrison, who also played Fett’s father in Attack of the Clones; Boba is a clone of his father, as are all the original stormtroopers) and his consigliere Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) as they take over Jabba the Hutt’s territory and contend with competing criminal cartels on Tatooine. We also find Fett is a changed man, having learned the values of loyalty, camaraderie, and family from the tribe of Tuskens who rescued him after his time inside the sarlaac. This is unfortunate as it softens Fett; I guess one of the biggest stars of Disney+ can’t be a killer for hire.
Then something weird happens: The next two episodes, without any heads-up, turn into episodes of The Mandalorian. Boba Fett isn’t even in episode 5 and only cameos in episode 6. Baby Yoda (his real name is Grogu, but who cares) gets a whole story arc with Luke Skywalker (a digitally de-aged Mark Hamill who, despite the digital assistance, still can’t act his way out of a box) which is really odd since what happens turns out to be a pretty big development as far as the plot of The Mandalorian goes. It’s kind of like tuning into Laverne & Shirley only for it to be a Happy Days episode that finds the Fonz moving out of Milwaukee. These episodes aren’t bad—episode 5, directed by Bryce Dallas Howard (apparently I’ve got Howard’s father Ron on the brain) is actually an impressive piece of filmmaking—but other than maybe a 5-10 minute tie-in, they definitely aren’t episodes of The Book of Boba Fett (although, admittedly, the character of the Mandalorian is basically what everyone assumed Boba Fett was actually like, only paired with an adorable and highly-marketable sidekick. Maybe the bigwigs at Disney, bored with Boba, figured no one would notice if they swapped him out for Mando so they could pour on the cuteness and sell a few thousand more plush toys in the process.)
And then episode 7 (directed by Robert Rodriguez) steers itself into an asteroid field. (I think that’s Star Wars for “goes completely off the rails.”) It features gunfighters who clearly don’t know how to gunfight, stormtrooper-caliber aim, characters with inexplicable healing factors, a completely nutso King Kong callback that involves someone using a helmet in a way I would never recommend, Baby Yoda’s metamorphosis into a Disney animated film sidekick, and the kind of chases that will have you screaming at your TV. (Seriously why don’t the people getting chased just turn? If the people who are being chased are faster than the thing chasing them, why can’t they get away from the thing that’s chasing them?) I spent most of the episode making fun of the action on screen. So did my ten-year-old daughter. At least Amy Sedaris, who plays another character brought over from The Mandalorian, has the good sense to scream her head off throughout the course of the episode.
To paraphase Obi-Wan Kenobi from Episode 3, “How did this happen? The people who make Star Wars are smarter than this.”
And to quote Anakin: “Apparently not, Master.”
In 2012, Star Wars creator George Lucas sold the rights of his franchise to Disney, which immediately began work on the sequel trilogy. The first of those films—The Force Awakens (2105), a loving homage to the 1977 original directed by J.J. Abrams—was widely acclaimed and seen as a return to cinematic form for the series following Lucas’ underwhelming prequel trilogy. That was followed up a year later by Rogue One, a standalone story set immediately before the ‘77 original. Rogue One has a Dirty Dozen vibe to it that separates it from the trilogy films and may interest those otherwise disinclined to space opera. (It does, though, contain that Darth Vader scene. DO NOT click on this link if you haven’t seen Rogue One so as not to spoil it for yourself, but I’m just going to put it here to make it easier for those who have because I know you’re headed over to YouTube right now to re-watch it anyway.)
But Rogue One was also the first sign the franchise was maybe in trouble. Writer/director Tony Gilroy was hired to rewrite and reshoot some scenes late in the process. It’s unclear if he saved the film or watered it down; maybe it was a little bit of both. A similar thing happened with the other stand-alone film in the franchise, Solo (2018), which followed the adventures of a young Han Solo. Midway through filming, Disney replaced its original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, with Ron Howard (Opie apparently is everywhere today.) The result was a fun but instantly forgettable film (albeit one that does hold up on rewatch; Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge steals the show as a droid passionate about droid rights.) It was also the first Star Wars film to flop at the box office. (Just put me on record though: The film is better than its reputation.)
The other two films in the sequel trilogy also didn’t sit well with audiences. The Last Jedi (2017) was acclaimed by critics for pushing beyond standard Star Wars tropes, but fans felt Rian Johnson’s film strayed too far, particularly in its characterization of Luke Skywalker. The weaknesses of that movie became more apparent, though, with the release of The Rise of Skywalker (2019), yet another Star Wars film that ended up replacing its original director. The Rise of Skywalker had to work overtime to build and resolve storylines The Last Jedi did little to develop while also dispatching or outright ignoring some of the story elements it did. The movies are fine but they ultimately aren’t nearly as satisfying as The Force Awakens. A trilogy that began so promisingly in 2015 turned out to be a big missed opportunity.
And then Abrams—who was brought back to direct The Rise of Skywalker after original director Colin Trevorrow departed—mentioned in an interview that he (and presumably Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy nor Disney) had an overarching plan for the trilogy:
You just never really know, but having a plan I have learned—in some cases the hard way—is the most critical thing, because otherwise you don’t know what you’re setting up. You don’t know what to emphasize. Because if you don’t know the inevitable of the story, you’re just as good as your last sequence or effect or joke or whatever, but you want to be leading to something inevitable.
Wait, no one’s planning out these Star Wars productions? Maybe that’s how a television series ends up airing two episodes from a different television series in the middle of its run and then airs a finale that’s a bunch of amateur hour action vomit. It’s weird Star Wars can’t figure this out since Disney also owns Marvel, which just strung together a 20+ film cinematic universe. It probably is too much to plan that far ahead in that much detail, and who knows what interesting beats will be discovered in the process of making these films, but it sounds like no one working in the House of Mouse on this billion-dollar franchise thought it might be a good idea to pick up a pen and paper and sketch out a three-film outline or a seven-episode story arc.
The Star Wars universe and I share the same birth year. I had most of the Star Wars action figures as a kid, Star Wars bedsheets, Star Wars Underoos. If I’m channel surfing and the movies are on, I inevitably end up watching them with my daughter. Needless to say, this franchise is dear to my heart.
Yet I also have to remind myself that these are kids movies made for the young and the young at the heart. They shouldn’t be taken too seriously and they’d probably lose a lot of what makes them so fun if they were. But they’re also—or at least they should be—first-rate entertainments. One of George Lucas’ key insights when he created Star Wars (and later Indiana Jones) was that it was possible to make good B-movies, ones that didn’t have to cut corners or settle for cheap, disposable mediocrity but that could use and polish the language of low budget science-fiction and western films to make rousing, wondrous, larger-than-life adventures. The Star Wars brand to me represents more than a childhood delight. It’s supposed to be the gold standard in blockbuster action cinema. Its caretakers need to quit approaching it as something less.
Exit music: “They Say I’m Different” (1974, They Say I’m Different) and “Nasty Gal” (1975, Nasty Gal) by Betty Davis—Betty Davis, who died this past week at the age of 77, was too much even for the 1970s. That’s saying a lot given that’s the decade that gave us Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade” (with its French chorus “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?”) and the seventeen minute orgasm that is Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby”. It wasn’t just that Davis was a sexually brash Black woman in the 1970s, but that she was a sexually brash Black woman who insisted on nothing less than total independence in the 1970s. That was too much for the music industry, religious leaders, and even the NAACP. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Davis drifted in and out of various cultural and artistic scenes. She knew Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix; dated Hugh Masekela, Eric Clapton, and Robert Palmer; and for a year was married to Miles Davis, whom she turned on to Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone, which in turn inspired Miles to record the groundbreaking jazz-fusion album he originally intended to name Witches Brew until Betty convinced him to change it to Bitches Brew. But enough with the men in her life. Davis didn’t need them. Her music, rooted in hard juke joint R&B but futuristic in its rhythmic orientation, was some of the stankiest raw funk of the 1970s. Her three albums—Betty Davis (1973), They Say I’m Different (1974), and Nasty Gal (1975), of which the last two she produced herself—constitute one of the most underappreciated catalogs in rock and roll. When she took the stage (sometimes in lingerie, accentuating her borderline dirty lyrics) she appeared as a Wakandan David Bowie. Her record labels, having failed to tone down her image and music, didn’t support her, and her career fizzled out in the mid-1970s. One could argue, however, that she reappeared in the 1980s, her spirit divided into the forms of Prince and Madonna. Her music reverberates through the work of OutKast and Janelle Monae. Today, the best way to honor Betty Davis’s groundbreaking legacy would be to finally acknowledge her status as one of the nastiest R&B artists of the 1970s, someone whose music is the sound of personal and artistic freedom.
George Will had an op-ed in the Washington Post recently pooh-poohing Dr. Fauci’s claim that we may never return to unmasked air travel. I’m not sure if Fauci is right about that—a time may come when people don’t have to wear masks on planes anymore, and planes do have good air filtration systems—but I get Fauci’s concern about transmission in the travel sector. Will saw Fauci’s comments as proof of progressivism’s inability to make trade-offs in life, specifically between health and [quoting an article by Jeffrey H. Anderson from last summer in the Claremont Review of Books] “higher concerns,” which ultimately leads progressives to “stifl[e], enervat[e], and devitalize[e] human society.” Gimme a break, Nell. First of all, Fauci actually is making a trade-off. He’s not saying we’ll need to wear masks everywhere from now on but that, as a matter of public health, wearing a mask on airplanes may be prudent. And second, how exactly has human society been “vitalized” by riding mask-less on airplanes? For Will to flourish as a human being, must he be sans mask when seated in an airborne aluminum tube? The thrill of it all! For his heart’s sake, please be careful how you introduce him to the ecstasy of the Wordle.