As my good friend, and occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach recently noted, the twenty leaders at the G20 ‘summit’ “signed a declaration to introduce vaccine passports for their respective jurisdictions, with the stated intention of creating a global verification system to facilitate safe international travel.”

I embedded my own tweet here:

Our family have been on several flights, including several foreign airports, over the past two months — Toronto, Amsterdam, Aberdeen, Zurich and Tel Aviv — and in none of these were masks either required or even much in evidence.

— Dana Pico (@Dana_TFSJ) December 4, 2022

I should have included Istanbul and Kuwait City, those being the airports at which SSG Pico stopped on her (too short) pass to meet me in Jerusalem.

While Representative Massie said that the American people had moved on, he was too restrictive: as nearly as any of us could see, much of the world have moved on as well.

But, of course, the Biden Administration wants to instill fear, because that’s better for government to control people. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

CDC Director Walensky is urging people to wear masks indoors and on public transit, raising alarms about the ‘tridemic’

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will speak at a health summit in Philadelphia Tuesday.

by Jason Laughlin and Sarah Gantz | Tuesday, December 6, 2022 | 10:21 AM EST

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky is in Philadelphia today to speak about pressing public health threats as officials raise alarms about the so-called “tridemic” — a surge of influenza, RSV and COVID-19 cases straining the health system.

“The past several years have certainly not been easy, and now we face another surge of illness, another moment of overstretched capacity, and one of tragic and often preventable sadness,” Walensky said during a CDC press briefing Monday.

Would that be the same Dr Walensky who told us, “Vaccinated people do not carry the virus — they don’t get sick”?

She is expected to address a crowd of medical professionals and public health stakeholders today at the Bloomberg American Health Summit, taking place at Loews Hotel Philadelphia in Center City.

The CDC has recorded at least 8.7 million cases of flu, including 78,000 hospitalizations and 4,500 deaths since October, the Washington Post reported.

Children’s hospitals have been flooded with cases of RSV, a flu-like virus that can cause severe respiratory problems among very young children and those with underlying health conditions.

Flu season hits every year. And nurses, such as my wonderful wife, know that RSV season hits pediatric hospitals every year, the government wasn’t trying to push indoor and travel masking for the flu and RSV. They got away with doing so due to the COVID-19 panicdemic — and no, that’s not a typographical error; I spelled it exactly the way it should be spelled — so now they want to try it again.;

“Our hospital is filling up with young babies that are struggling to breathe,” James Reingold, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, told the Inquirer in early November.

COVID cases and hospitalizations are also rising in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but remain within the range the region has seen over the past two months.

In her remarks to reporters Monday, Walensky urged people to be proactive in protecting themselves and others by seeing a doctor if they have symptoms, getting vaccinated and wearing a mask indoors and on public transportation.

That last fits in with what Mr Massie stated, that the President “is still fighting in federal court to reinstate the airplane mask mandate.” The federal government sure loves them some arbitrary and authoritarian power!

I had said that masks weren’t much in evidence in my recent travels, but it’s also true that there were at least a few people who chose to wear them. And that’s the point: they chose to wear them. If someone feels either the need or desire to wear a mask, I have no way of knowing what his reasons and decision-taking processes were, and it’s really none of my business. But when the government tries to force people to wear them, then it becomes my business, and my answer is what it will always be: not just no, but Hell no!