After dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic for nearly two years, most everyone is ready to move on with their lives and leave mandates and restrictions behind for good — everyone, that is, except for Democrats.
A new survey by Monmouth University found that 70% of respondents agreed that “it’s time we accept that COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.” The political breakdown of these respondents is worth noting: 89% of Republicans and 71% of independents agreed with this statement, while only 47% of Democrats agreed.
Interestingly, many of the respondents who agreed that it is time to move on from COVID-19 admitted to being concerned about the virus and supporting some restrictions to stop its spread, including social distancing and state indoor mask guidelines. However, the majority of these people also acknowledged that we would likely never get the virus under control. COVID-19 is here to stay, which means the zero-COVID policy approach that our public health bureaucrats have been pursuing needs to come to an end, especially at the federal level.
Clearly, a lot of people are looking for a middle-of-the-road approach, one that treats the threat the virus poses to at-risk groups as a serious one without saddling the rest of the population with heavy-handed mandates.
Republicans have been willing to strike that balance. In Florida, for example, school districts are allowed to ask students and teachers to wear masks, but parents are also allowed to opt their children out of that policy. Similarly, companies in the state are allowed to ask their employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but they must also grant exemptions to that requirement.
These policies have been smeared by Democrats as a threat to public health when all they really do is guarantee that individuals have the freedom to assess the risk for themselves and then decide what’s best for their health. This approach lines up with everything we’ve learned about COVID-19 over the past two years, and as Monmouth’s poll proves, it’s also the most popular one. Even if they remain worried about COVID-19, people want to know they have the freedom to move on from it whenever they choose.
Democrats are making that as hard as possible for blue parts of the country, which should come as no surprise. The pandemic gave the Left an unprecedented opportunity to exert control over other peoples’ lives. Did we really think they’d be willing to give that up?
