Panicdemic was how I have been spelling it for a while now, because panic has been the greatest problem from COVID-19.

Philadelphia was among the worst of the cities in this country when it came to forced masking, vaccine mandates, and throwing people out of work who did not comply. The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers threw up constant roadblocks as the School District was trying to reopen the public schools. That history is what makes this story interesting:

COVID hospitalizations are rising. Philly schools still won’t require masks – mostly.

Students who test positive must stay home for at least five calendar days, and will be expected to participate in virtual learning. The district has also dropped its vaccine requirement for employees.

by Kristen A Graham | Wednesday, August 30, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

The Philadelphia School District announced its updated COVID-19 policies Tuesday, and the school system is keeping masks optional — mostly.

The news comes as COVID hospitalizations are up nationally, but the risk of contracting the coronavirus locally remains low, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

Students and staff in the district’s 216 schools can wear masks at any time, but will not be required to do so unless the city health department deems it necessary amid a COVID-19 outbreak in a classroom, school, office or department, according to the guidance.

That would mean that the decision would be taken by Commissioner of Health Cheryl Bettigole, who loves her some mask mandates, trying to keep them even after CDC eased their recommendations, but was forced to back down due to political pressure. You can be certain of one thing: Dr Bettigole will be just champing at the bit if she sees any possible excuse to reimpose mask mandates!

People will also be required to wear masks if they test positive for COVID-19 after returning from five-day isolation, and are “highly recommended” to mask for 10 days after their last date of COVID exposure.

Students who test positive must stay home for at least five calendar days, and will be expected to participate in virtual learning. Parents are obligated to notify the school nurse or principal if a student tests positive, and those who show COVID symptoms during the school day must be picked up by a family member, and will be provided with a free COVID test.

Who will administer the test? If the student is simply sent home with a test, all that his parents or he has to do is say that it was just a cold, and that he tested negative. If the test is administered by the school, that means that school officials would have to touch the student, something which cannot be done without consent, or it constitutes an assault.

The district has also dropped its COVID vaccine mandate for new employees.

I’m sure that Mayor Jim Kenney, who strongly enforced a vaccine mandate on city employees, and had months-long efforts to fire employees who did not consent, would be appalled by that, but, then again, he’s been practically on strike for a year now.

I had hoped that I wouldn’t be writing about mask or vaccine mandates again, but there has been a not-so-quiet push for mask mandates and vaccine mandates from some of our friends on the left, including President Biden:

Biden plans to ask Congress for funding to develop new COVID vaccine, may recommend shot for all

The announcement comes near a year after Biden declared the pandemic was ‘over’

by Greg Wehner | Published August 26, 2023 8:35pm EDT | Updated August 27, 2023 3:26pm EDT

President Biden said Friday he plans to request additional funding from Congress for the development of a new COVID-19 vaccine, adding he may require everyone to take it whether they previously received a vaccine or not.

President Biden had declared the ‘pandemic’ to be over. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but for the vast majority of people, the panicdemic is long gone.

Biden, who is vacationing in the Lake Tahoe area, was asked by a reporter on Friday if he could say anything about the uptick of COVID cases and a new variant.

“Yes, I can,” the president said. “I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works.”

He added, “Tentatively it is recommended that it will likely be recommended everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not.”

Can you figure out the grammar in that last sentence? 🙂

At least right now, the government is recommending that people wait on getting a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot, until the newest vaccine is approved, supposedly in mid-September. That strikes me as odd: if the vaccine has not yet been approved, they are still operating on the assumption it will be approved. That’s almost certainly a political decision, because a new version of the vaccine, supposedly more effective against a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, can’t have much testing, and certainly no testing at all when it comes to long-term effects, all against a virus which is producing, for most people known to contract it, something like the flu, perhaps not fun, but survived by well over 90% of the people who contract it.

Of course, COVID-19 has been so mild that a lot of people have contracted it without any noticeable symptoms. With at-home tests, and people who see no reason to test, we really have no idea how many people have contracted it.

If the President wants to recommend that people get the new vaccine, that is within his freedom of speech; anybody can ask any other person to do, or not do, something. Where I strongly object is the idea that the President, or anyone else, can order people to take the vaccine. Even the Philadelphia School District realized that, because they understood that some people will refuse, and that the city has lost some good people to previous vaccine mandates.

I’ve long called the response to COVID-19 a panicdemic, because the chief disease we suffered was the loss of our rights due to the utter, widespread panic that government officials pushed, and the authoritarian controls they imposed, with most of the sheeple barely uttering a bleat.

And now, Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) has unwittingly admitted that all of his orders were based not on the disease, but political considerations:

Philly relaxes COVID vaccination policy for city workers now that national emergencies have ended

The vaccine mandate still applies to city-employed health-care providers.

by Jason Laughlin | Tuesday, May 30, 2023 | 5:03 AM EDT

Most Philadelphia municipal employees are no longer required to be vaccinated for COVID-19, Philadelphia officials said, ending a pandemic policy that went into effect less than a year ago.

As of last week, only city workers with jobs that put them in contact with patients, such as doctors or nurses, must be vaccinated, said Sarah Peterson, a spokesperson for the city. Philadelphia changed its policy in response to the end of two national emergency declarations earlier this month and new recommendations from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

The relaxed city employee mandate complies with the health department’s requirement that health-care practitioners in the city, with the exception of home-care workers, be vaccinated against COVID.

“The City updated its COVID-19 safety protocols to align with local health-care worker vaccination requirements while also recognizing that COVID-19 transmission has declined,” Peterson said.

“(I)n response to the end of two national emergency declarations earlier this month,” huh? In other words, politics. If the disease was so serious that it justified abridging our constitutional rights and firing people who refused to take the vaccines, why does the expiration of a political declaration mean anything?

The federal state of emergency ended because the public simply weren’t having it anymore. But, naturally, there remain those who are appalled that things have returned to normal:

‘This is going to hit most people.’ The COVID state of emergency has ended — but the need for support hasn’t.

“The end of the state of emergency is not a declaration of the end of a pandemic — it’s just the end of the support for the pandemic,” said Kayla O’Mahony, a Philadelphia resident who has had long COVID for two years.

by Massarah Mikati and Michelle Myers | Tuesday, May 30, 2023

When the world started to return to “normal” in the summer of 2021, Kayla O’Mahony was young, fit, healthy, and fully vaccinated for COVID-19. She had little reason to be concerned for her health and safety — or so she thought.

Soon after O’Mahony started opening her life back up, she contracted COVID-19. What was initially a so-called mild infection (meaning she didn’t require hospitalization) consisting of fever, loss of taste and smell, nausea, and body aches turned into a two-year, ongoing infection that turned her life upside down.

She became disabled and had to move in with her mom for almost a year. She lost her job as a local farmer. And she hasn’t been able to experience the simple joys of seeing friends spontaneously (only if they have a negative PCR test and isolate days in advance).

So when O’Mahony learned that the federal COVID-19 public health emergency was terminated on May 11, she was in disbelief.

In disbelief? The federal government announced that the ‘state of emergency’ would be ended on May 11^th months ago. One would think that, given her illness, she would have paid attention to the news, and been mentally prepared.

“The end of the state of emergency is not a declaration of the end of a pandemic — it’s just the end of the support for the pandemic,” O’Mahony said. “It’s infuriating to me.”

Actually, it kind of is the end of the pandemic. Pandemic is defined as affecting “a significant proportion of the population,” and “an outbreak or product of sudden rapid spread, growth, or development,” neither condition of which is met by the current low incidence of the disease. We can sympathize with Miss O’Mahony for the severe toll that COVID-19 has taken on her, but affects relatively few people these days, most people have some form of immunity, whether from the vaccines or natural immunity due to past exposure.

Her real concern? Money!

Under the emergency declaration, folks could access free COVID-19 vaccines, onsite and at-home tests, and Paxlovid — an antiviral that helps high-risk patients prevent severe illness. That will slowly change, as manufacturers are authorized to determine prices after the free vaccine and Paxlovid supplies run out, and insurance providers are no longer required to waive costs.

For example, PCR tests — which are the most reliably accurate COVID tests, and the ones people like O’Mahony rely on to avoid infection — are estimated to cost about $130 out-of-pocket, as opposed to $20 during the emergency declaration. And they’re becoming harder and harder to find.

Further down:

Leah Garrity was first diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, a bone marrow failure called aplastic anemia, on January 1, 2020. She needed to start masking, social distancing, and staying away from sick people two months before the rest of the world did.

“The hardest part has probably been this past year,” said Garrity. “It’s not talked about, people want to move on, but the reality is the same. The first year, at least it felt like everyone was at least somewhat on the same page.”

So, what, she’s depressed that other people no longer feel the need to take the same precautions that she does?

Aplastic anemia is a long-term, serious condition in which the bone marrow does not produce a sufficient number of new blood cells. The only known cure is a bone marrow transplant, which does not always work.

There’s a lack of education and awareness about the virus and how to protect oneself and others from contracting it, Garrity and O’Mahony said. But the failure of taking the pandemic seriously, which has been taking place across the political spectrum, has been a chief frustration for people who are still at-risk — particularly with masking.

When Garrity goes to the hospital for her treatments, for example, most people are unmasked. When O’Mahony recently had a COVID-19 scare, the nurse who conducted her PCR test was unmasked.

Does Miss Garrity believe that everybody else needs to wear a mask to protect her?

Masking ended not because the government said it was OK, but because the public, as a whole got tired with it, and people started complying with mask mandates less and less. We noted, in October of 2021, that Kroger was no longer requiring customers to wear masks, and that the number of people complying with masking requests was declining. People were getting over their panic a year and a half ago, even while the government was trying its hardest to keep the panic alive.

Let’s tell the truth here: governments love authoritarian control, and the COVID panic, a panic that governments themselves helped to increase, just gave them more control. While some of us were appalled and saying so from the very beginning, far too many people proved themselves to actually be sheeple, and just go along with all of the suspensions of our constitutional rights, because they swallowed, and wallowed in, the panic. It was only as the panic faded that the tinpot dictators in our cities and states started to lose their ability to buffalo people into surrendering their rights.

And this is why we must stand fast in support of our rights as Americans, as a free people, and as human beings: when we allow fear to overcome freedom, freedom is lost, and freedom lost is a damned hard thing to get back.