Our Covid Mission Creep

T he terms and conditions of the biomedical security state continue to shift under our feet. In a November 30 press conference, CDC director Rochelle Walensky assured the public that “we are not changing the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ right now,” with the asterisk that “as that science evolves, we will look at whether we need to update our definition.” It’s not clear what part of “the science” has evolved since then, but less than two months later, Walensky told CBS that the CDC was introducing the term “up to date”: “Right now we’re pivoting our language. If you are eligible for a booster and you haven’t gotten it, you’re not ‘up to date,’ and you need to get your booster in order to be up to date.”

These public-health proclamations, with their carefully ambiguous language, seem designed to wave off criticisms as wild-eyed conspiracy theories. Until, of course, they aren’t. In early November, Ron DeSantis was “fact-checked” by the Independent for “falsely claim[ing] vaccinated citizens without boosters could be declared unvaccinated and lose their jobs.” Today, the British paper’s assurances that “the director of the CDC says the Biden administration has no plans to reclassify vaccinated people as unvaccinated if they don’t get boosters” seem a little less sure-footed.

Walensky has yet to explicitly say that boosters will be required for “full vaccination” status. As of now, the CDC’s line is that vaccinated (and eligible) Americans who don’t get their boosters will still be considered “fully vaccinated,” but won’t qualify as “up to date.” (All of this, of course, in keeping with the dispassionate demands of The Science). Since vaccine mandates and passports across the country use the language of “fully vaccinated” rather than “up to date,” the White House can maintain a modicum of plausible deniability as to imminent booster requirements.

But it’s not difficult to see where this goes. In fact, just 17 days after Walensky’s November presser, Anthony Fauci said that an “update” to the definition of “fully vaccinated” was “certainly . . . on the table and open for discussion.” If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the last two years, it’s that “on the table and open for discussion” is code for “it’s definitely happening — we just don’t think it’s politically feasible to say so yet.” And at any rate, many institutions haven’t waited for the CDC’s go-ahead: A growing number of colleges are already mandating that students be boosted, and businesses across the country are beginning to require it of their patrons.

Other countries are already there. Israel, Croatia, Austria, and France have all explicitly announced plans to invalidate Covid passports for un-boosted citizens after a grace period. And on January 25, the entire European Union announced that its digital Covid certificate — now a requirement for free movement between EU member states — is set to require periodic boosters, with no end in sight. “On February 1, the EU is shortening the validity of vaccine status in the COVID certs to nine months (at most) since a person’s last dose,” the Lonely Planet reports. Alternatively, “additional testing requirements can remain in place for people who are unvaccinated or who are not up-to-date with their booster vaccine schedule.”

Not up to date, you say?

This is, of course, the logic of Walensky’s “pivot.” The CDC director can equivocate all she wants, but the difference between “up to date” and “fully vaccinated” is semantic. (How would an individual whose vaccination status isn’t “up to date” fare in any functional vaccine-passport regime?) Public-health officials know this. They just don’t think we’re ready to hear it yet. (Remember that Dr. Fauci’s justification for moving the goalposts — i.e., lying — on herd immunity was polling on people’s willingness to take the vaccine.)

Notice also how the talk of an end date to these measures has all but disappeared.

For a brief period between the vaccine rollout and the arrival of the Delta variant, the promise was that vaccinated Americans would no longer need to mask. “If you’ve been fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask,” President Biden announced in a May press conference, just hours after the CDC had released a statement to the same end. “Let me repeat: If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask.” Since then, things have gone the opposite way. In July, the CDC reversed its guidance, recommending that “fully vaccinated people wear masks in public, indoor settings to help prevent the spread of the delta variant.” That included “teachers, staff, students and visitors, regardless of vaccination status” in schools.

Now we’re seeing a push to make mask mandates more stringent, with a new update from the CDC recommending medical-grade N95 masks to “offer even more protection.” Civic institutions have followed suit, with a slate of schools opting to mandate N95s over less intrusive and uncomfortable cloth or surgical-style masks. “Masks back on: But this time, colleges are demanding KN95 and above,” declares a University Business headline. “In guidance to students and employees, institutions say cloth masks won’t cut it as omicron surges through U.S.” And in Los Angeles, “the country’s second-largest public school district will force students to wear non-cloth masks that have a nose wire, even while they are outside or playing sports,” Reason’s Robby Soave reports. All this, of course, on top of vaccine requirements.

The pandemic mission creep doesn’t stop there. My home state of Oregon has opted to extend its mask mandate indefinitely. And recent months have seen the masking regime expand beyond Covid, as public-health officials, including Walensky herself, begin to suggest masks as a response to the flu. Citing numerous experts, Yale Medicine informed its readers last week that “COVID-19 is not the only reason to reconsider your mask. After a 2020–21 flu season that has been described as one of the mildest ones in memory, some experts were concerned about this flu season.” The article explains that a Yale Medicine emergency specialist also urges adults to consider wearing masks during flu season if they are at risk for or interact with people who are vulnerable to complications from the flu. “Because the flu hits you all of a sudden — you may feel fine even though you are potentially contagious,” the doctor said, “then all of a sudden you have a fever of 102.”

Gone is the sunny talk of a post-Covid America. On July 4, Biden declared “independence” from the virus before a crowd of more than a thousand attendees on the White House’s South Lawn. But as I pointed out earlier this month, “universities across the country are pushing forward with draconian restrictions, locking down campuses and quarantining students — all of whom are fully vaccinated and boosted, in compliance with the universities’ own requirements — in their rooms.” We’re not done with virtual school yet. We’re not done with mask mandates.

On top of that, vaccine passports are debuting in cities across the country. Instead of “independence” from Covid, we are now facing perpetual subjugation.

For obvious reasons, the public-health bureaucracy rarely says this outright. (Although the mask — pun intended — does slip from time to time: In December, Fauci made the mistake of saying the quiet part out loud, telling ABC News that masks on planes — “even though the filtration is good” — should be here to stay forever.)

But the logic of permanent mandates is written into the structure of the Covid regime. The White House justifies mask mandates on the grounds that masking can “help slow and contain the spread of the virus — and the combination of increased vaccinations and masking will have a major impact on COVID-19 transmission.” But as that statement implicitly acknowledges, vaccines — while highly effective at preventing severe illness and death — don’t prevent transmission. So if contagiousness is the standard for mask-wearing — and if Covid is never going away, as public-health officials regularly tell us — then it stands to reason that masks, too, are here to stay.

Here in D.C., for example, vaccine passports just went into effect. And yesterday, Mayor Muriel Bowser extended the city’s mask mandate for yet another month, citing the District’s “very high (though falling) daily case rate.” (Alternatively, we saw just 42 Covid-related deaths in the past two weeks — an average of three a day in a city of more than 670,000 people.) But again: Vaccines don’t stop transmission. So if “case rates” are the standard by which mask mandates are justified, then D.C. residents — and those in cities with similar rules across the country — face the prospect of a permanently masked way of life.

It isn’t difficult to see where this all ends. The “new normal” is solidifying before our eyes. It’s up to us to stop it.