More than anything, the bizarre attempt to fight COVID-19 by government mandates to wear masks and the fact that many are still wearing masks, even those vaccinated, when the politicized CDC has given up on the charade, gives you a signal of how many people act on emotion even when logic suggests they should act otherwise. Many have been scared out of their minds others are to fearful to act without support from the crowds.
The number is large.
Gillian Tett of the Financial Times reports:
This would not have looked odd two weeks ago, as New York is one place where the population (eventually) embraced indoor and outdoor mask-wearing with fervour. But last week the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declared that fully vaccinated people could shed masks in any setting, as long as permitted by local laws. New York state then dropped its mask mandate for the vaccinated in most public spaces.
Almost everyone I know above the age of 16 is “double jabbed” and kids over the age of 12 are now getting shots too, though New York City says only 49 per cent of adults have had two shots so far.
Yet most people in the street are still voluntarily sporting masks. So too in shops and restaurants. And when I did a recent straw poll among friends at a Sunday brunch, there was only one guest who proudly declared that he had stopped wearing a mask outside...
There is a lesson here for libertarians. Mass movements are not about logic. They are about catching the wave and directing it. The central planners have done such a good job of catching the COVID-19 panic wave and intensifying it with scaremongering press conferences that the absurd government edicts about mask-wearing etc. are now running on auto-pilot for a large majority.
The message that eventually must be delivered to the masses if we want freedom is that private property must be respected and that central power should never be supported.
-RW
