On September 6, the White House announced that twice-vaccinated, twice-boosted Jill Biden has COVID-19—for a second time.

President Joe Biden tested negative but will begin masking again, the administration also confirmed.

A day later, co-host of The View Whoopi Goldberg was missing from the show, having also come down with the virus.

Coinciding with these announcements, mask mandates have been re-emerging in blue cities—including Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Los Angeles-based entertainment company Lionsgate, and Kaiser Permanente health facilities in Santa Rosa, California.

A group of hospitals in New York state, including United Health Services, Auburn Community Hospital, and University Hospital in Syracuse, have also reinstated compulsory masking.

Amid these measures, two equal and opposite fears have also surfaced in America.

The first is of several new COVID-19 “variants of concern,” identified by scientists as EG.5 and BA.2.86.

According to The New York Times:

EG.5 has become the dominant variant of Covid in the United States and BA.2.86 — while responsible for fewer infections — shows more than the usual amount of mutations from the original coronavirus, a fact that concerns scientists because it could mean it is better at evading vaccines.

The second concern is that “Covidocracy” is making a comeback.

The election variant is here, some have warned—just in time for primary season and just in time for woke legislators to relive the 2020 vote-by-mail glory days.

Perhaps these concerns aren’t so exaggerated.

Don’t forget that ultra-woke Time confessed that getting “millions of people to vote by mail for the first time” was a vital part of “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.”

Some have even pointed to Alex Jones’ recent claim that a TSA whistleblower has flagged a return of mask mandates for airport staff by mid-September, and passengers by mid-October.

The Alex Jones prediction, like his many others, may or may not prove accurate.

But one thing is certain: We must learn from past mistakes and listen to those who were once demonized but now vindicated.

Still pinned at the top of his timeline on X (formerly Twitter) is Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s August 2021 post, declaring:

Mortality from #COVID19 differs more than a thousand-fold between the old and young. Focused protection is the compassionate approach that balances COVID risks and collateral damage to public health.

Together with Oxford Professor Dr. Sunetra Gupta and Harvard Professor Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Bhattacharya was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration.

Having garnered almost a million signatures since it was penned in October 2020, the Great Barrington Declaration warned that “lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”

Though silent on masks and vaccines (the latter had not yet been developed), the Great Barrington Declaration places a mirror before the Western world’s hysterical response, which has persisted for the better part of three years.

Aimed at advising governments on what to do in response to the threat of COVID-19, the Declaration now reads like a tragic “what-we-should-have-done” report card.

It is begging to be read once again.

If COVID-19 does make some sort of comeback, the Great Barrington Declaration is how we should respond.

As for how we shouldn’t respond, here are some ideas:

Never again should we shut down schools, businesses, and houses of worship in pursuit of a pipe dream like Zero COVID.

Never again should we order residents to stay in their homes and avoid all travel and human interaction.

Never again should we ticket or even jail people for being out in public, while relaxing the rules to let others riot and burn cities for a politically expedient cause.

Never again should we fund gain-of-function research in Communist China, lie about the research to Congress, then lie about the lies.

Never again should we reject basic medical ethics like bodily autonomy or primum non nocere—ethics that were hundreds of years in the making.

Never again should we force workers to undergo an unwanted medical procedure in order to continue providing for their families, paying their mortgages, or keeping their careers.

Never again should we beat protesters, shoot at them, trample them with horses, or freeze their bank accounts, as happened in nations as neighborly as Canada and Australia.

Never again should we parrot phrases like “trust the science,” as though every other field of human knowledge—economics, psychology, sociology, religion, ethics—is meaningless.

Never again should we allow “the experts” a say over every aspect of our lives.

Never again should we appeal to “the greater good” at the cost of so much individual misery and suffering.

Never again.

There is a better way.

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