Not the Bee offers special thanks to our lord and master, King of the Technocrats Anthony Fauci, on the occasion of his coming down with the disease that he could supposedly stop through authoritarian measures:

Thanks for proving that being a powerful, lockdown-driven, always-masked, daily-tested, quadruple-jabbed elite still doesn’t stop the spread!

Now can we stop with idiotic mask and vaccination charades? Absurdly, some places still require them.

Secretly, Fauci is probably taking ivermectin, or as the moonbat media calls it, horse de-wormer.

Say, what’s this?

Fauci was scheduled to brief Congress on the country’s response to the pandemic on Thursday. It remains to be seen whether he will participate in the hearing remotely.

Maybe he’s faking it so that he doesn’t have to commit any more felonies by lying to Congress again. Surely Dr Fauci couldn’t really have Covid. That would indicate that the repressive measures he advocates don’t work.

On tips from Steve T, Blackjack, and Mr. Freemarket.

As some suspected from early on, Covid muzzles are not so much for our health as to obliterate our individuality and to force us to signal submission to leftist technocrats — speaking of whom, top technocrat Anthony Fauci has made a rare positive contribution to society by admitting it.

Earlier in the week, the Justice Department asked an appeals court to overturn a federal judge’s order that mask mandates were unlawful.

The next pandemic is sure to arrive before these martinets knock it off with the masks.

Honks Fauci:

“[I]t’s less about mandates on the plane than it is about who has the right and the authority and the capability of making public health decisions. …

“So it’s more of a matter of principle of where the authority lies than it is about whether or not there’s gonna be a mandate on a plane or not.”

There you have it. It doesn’t matter whether people are forced to suffocate. What matters is to show who’s boss.

Too bad their primary concern is not our health. Then people would not be compelled to wear the unhealthy masks.

On a tip from ABC of the ANC.

The main reason we have entered a potentially devastating inflationary cycle is that the federal government exploited Covid as a pretext to go on a spending spree with nonexistent money, thereby diluting the value of the money we earn.

Some of this really was spent on Covid, if not necessarily wisely. Much of it was wasted on pernicious moonbattery — and continues to be. For example, Providence, Rhode Island is using it to build slums, address “social disparities,” and pay people to be black:

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza signed a spending plan for $124 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding Friday, paving the way for the city to invest tens of millions of dollars into housing and infrastructure projects. …

“We’re going to be able to invest in hopefully the creation of hundreds of affordable units, which also allows for the creation of other market units over the coming years,” Elorza said. “So this is going to be a gift that keeps on giving.”

It wasn’t a gift. The money was stolen. Through inflation, it was taken by force out of the pockets of everyone who holds American currency.

In addition to housing, the city is allocating roughly $20 million towards investments in water, sewer, broadband and infrastructure; $24 million toward addressing community and social disparities; $6.2 million in the recovery of sectors like tourism and hospitality; and $2.8 million in economic stabilization.

Unlike the rest of it, water and sewer are at least the purview of government, although there is no reason the whole country should have to pay for sewer pipes in Providence. Most of the rest is straight up Marxist looting.

Bureauweenies buy votes with some of our money. Some of it, they put directly in their own pockets:

The city is also putting more than $36 million in ARPA money towards lost public sector revenue.

Still more outrageously, some of our money goes to stoking resentment by paying people to be black:

The spending plan also earmarks $10 million for reparations through something called the “COVID-19 Equities Program.”

Barks Elorza:

“We know that $10 million is not enough. We can’t right all the wrongs of the past, but we can take an important first step.”

American history and heritage are shameful, according to the dogma of our liberal rulers. Therefore, Elorza has a right to shower our money upon a politically favored racial group that votes overwhelmingly for Democrats like Elorza.

Our forefathers had a practice of coating people who betray public trust in tar and feathers, carrying them on a rail to the nearest body of water, and dumping them therein. This salutary tradition should be revived at once, starting in Providence or better still in Washington.

Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.

Abortion is not the only way moonbattery afflicts the most vulnerable among us. Lockdowns and mask mandates did no good against Covid, but they did provide an opportunity for leftists to test our willingness to submit to absolute tyranny. They have also left infants developmentally retarded:

Progressives have learned how to manufacture autism. No doubt this will help promote the atomization they count on to prevent us from uniting against our ruling class.

On a tip from KirklesWorth.

Word that Covid is actually not worth panicking over took 2 years to reach Bill Gates; it still hasn’t reached China’s communist rulers:

Shanghai authorities were tightening the city-wide COVID lockdown they imposed more than a month ago, prolonging into late May an ordeal that China’s capital Beijing was desperate to avoid by turning mass testing into an almost daily routine. …

In a video shared widely on Chinese social media, police in hazmat suits argue with residents who were told they needed to be quarantined after a neighbour tested positive.

“This is so that we can thoroughly remove any positive cases,” one of the officers is heard saying. “Stop asking me why, there is no why. We have to adhere to national guidelines.”

There is no why. If only the Democrats had someone who could explain Covid policies so succinctly.

The prolonged isolation and fear of being sent to quarantine centres, which sometimes lack showers and other basic conditions, have caused widespread frustration, even altercations. …

Businesses that remained open were not seeing many clients as people did not want to do anything that might bring them near infected people and force them into quarantine.

Note that it isn’t Covid they fear; it is their government’s authoritarian overreaction to Covid.

“North of us are malls and offices that have been sealed, and their apps might mark them as close contacts if they came,” said a barber surnamed Song, referring to the mobile monitoring software all residents must use.

Think how safe we will be when the Department of Homeland Security applies similar technology to keep tabs on us — assuming the shaved gerbil in charge at DHS isn’t doing it already.

Last week the authorities threatened action against critics of the zero-COVID policy.

Misinformation about the wisdom of government Covid policies must be suppressed for the sake of public health. That’s what we have Nina Jankowicz for.

On a tip from Anonymous.

Even the pear-shaped prince of the globalist plutocracy now admits that Covid was hyped out of proportion. Bill Gates says that back in the early days of the virus,

“We didn’t understand that it’s a fairly low fatality rate, and that it’s a disease mainly of the elderly, kind of like the flu…”

Furthermore,

“Once Omicron comes along, the vaccine is not reducing transmission, hardly at all, particularly about three or four months after you take the vaccine,” he said.

His comments came after top officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said much the same thing, that COVID-19 is now akin to the flu.

Gates only recently named Australia as a role model for handling Covid. Australia degenerated into a biosecurity police state, complete with concentration camps. He must have shifted his interest to the next pandemic, which he says will require health equity to prevent.

Speaking of communism, a more appropriate role model for moonbats like Gates would be China, which has implemented most of the Big Government agenda, minus Cultural Marxism and global warming malarkey. Maybe Gates can get word to the ChiComs that the virus they created does not warrant a hysterical response.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Not the Bee wants this guy crowned the next King of England. He would be a hell of an improvement over Prince Chucklehead:

As the hysteria dies away, this young man’s sensible viewpoint will get increasing traction, hard as the ruling class will try to suppress it.

The authoritarian exploitation of Covid was worse than the virus itself. It was an expensive lesson, so we had better learn from it. Otherwise, we will be unprepared when they attempt to impose something worse in the name of climate change.

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.

Will the Regime officially declare war on the United States by terminating Title 42, thereby opening the floodgates the rest of the way, so that the already unprecedented level of illegal immigration will be multiplied severalfold, resulting in an invasion of Third Worlders in search of freebies so massive as to produce societal collapse? Don’t ask Joe Biden; he doesn’t even understand the question:

At the conclusion of Biden’s remarks Thursday on additional aid to Ukraine, a reporter asked the president, “Are you considering delaying Title 42?”

Biden responded, “No, what I’m considering is continuing to hear from my, my — first of all, there’s going to be an appeal by the Justice Department because as a matter of principle, we want to be able to be in a position where if in fact it is strongly concluded by the scientists that we need Title 42, that we be able to do that. But there has been no decision on extending Title 42.”

The reason that makes no sense is that he was referring to a separate issue, the pointless and tyrannical mask mandate on airline flights.

Biden’s bosses made him release a clarification:

“I want to clarify that, in comments at the conclusion of my remarks this morning, I was referring to the CDC’s mask mandate and there is no Department of Justice action on Title 42,” said a clarifying statement from President Biden to Fox News.

Whoever is steering this ship straight toward Niagara Falls, at least it isn’t the loathsome kakistocrat Joe Biden.

Still no answer on Title 42. The powers behind the empty throne are still fighting it out. Do they go for America’s jugular and take the hit in the November elections, or do they pretend to be well meaning in hopes some voters forgive their egregious misrule? It’s a struggle between the far left and the ultraleft — the only contingents represented by our government.

On a tip from Varla.

Americans erupted into cheers when Republican-appointed US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the CDC does not have the authority to impose mask mandates on flights. In contrast, liberals panicked, fumed, and threw tantrums, confirming that the obviously senseless mandate would be imposed indefinitely were they to have their way. Also confirmed is the purpose of the mandate:

[W]hen given the opportunity to explain and justify the Biden administration’s decision to appeal the federal judge’s invalidation of the CDC’s federal mask mandate, [White House spokesmoonbat Jen] Psaki admitted that the White House would fight the ruling in order to “preserve that authority for the CDC to have in the future.”

If the CDC has the right to suspend fundamental property rights in the name of “public health,” as it did when it dictated that landlords must house tenants at their own expense, surely it can command air travelers to wear masks as a symbol of submission, despite the highly filtered air brought in from high altitude making airplanes a safer indoor environment than you could find on the ground.

This was never about health. Lockdowns did not benefit public health. It was always about tyranny as an end in itself. That’s why the Injustice Department is appealing the ruling. As Psaki openly admits, they intend to continue exploiting the CDC to inflict new outrages against our dwindling liberty.

As Christopher Bedford notes,

The architects of America’s disastrous Covid policy — the experts, the elites, the left-wing political class — have long had the luxury to demand an orthodox adherence to their ever-shifting safety regime. They’ve borne neither the brunt of their policies nor the blame for them. Until now: The folly of the airplane debacle has finally and completely exposed the little men and women behind the curtain.

Even while vulnerable Democrats break from the White House’s mask line ahead of the November midterms, the heads of the Democratic Party are championing nonsensical Covid restrictions — and finally beginning to earn the blame they’ve deserved for years now.

The malevolent rodent Merrick Garland is encouraged to push hard to overrule Mizelle and reimpose obviously senseless mask mandates. If we have free and fair elections, Democrats will pay for their arrogance and political incompetence.

On tips from ABC of the ANC and Blackjack.

By now even most moonbats must realize that suffocating yourself with the dehumanizing masks they like to mandate is not good for your health. Yet still you see people voluntarily wearing them, often while exercising or driving alone. To understand their nonsensical reasons, we turn to a source that specializes in nonsense, the Babylon Bee:

On a tip from StephaneDumas.

The smoke has begun to clear. We can look back on the Covid crisis and determine who addressed it the right way and who did not. As usual, freedom worked. Tyranny did not work.

The results are in:

New York, New Jersey and California failed in their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic because of stringent lockdowns and policies, while Florida was among the best-performing states in the country, a new study has found.

The study, published by the Committee To Unleash Prosperity, graded states by comparing COVID-19 outcomes based on the number of deaths, the economy and impact on education.

By a remarkable coincidence, the best-performing states all had Republican governors.

The study found that the states that locked down businesses, churches, schools and restaurants for lengthy periods did not have lower death rates than those that largely remained open.

But they did manage to inflict more economic damage.

Keeping schools closed had no impact on the number of deaths in children or adults, according to the study.

That was more about placating teachers unions than public health.

Ultraliberal New York came in 49th out of 50; only New Jersey was worse. Yet the liberal establishment assured us that the lethally incompetent, tyrannical, but formerly beloved New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was doing a wonderful job:

On tips from Jack D.

It isn’t only cats that the ChiComs will kill if their owners come down with the disease they created. They do it to dogs too:

Even PETA isn’t this bad. It only kills animals that don’t have loving owners who want to take care of them.

No wonder even the Chinese, with their seemingly endless patience with oppression, are getting fed up with Covid tyranny.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Democrats appear to believe that they could solve all problems, if only they had absolute control, like their CCP brethren in China. Here’s how unlimited power in the hands of leftists is working out over there:

AP reports from China’s largest city:

The fresh round of testing comes as the city reported about 23,000 cases on Saturday, most of them asymptomatic. Large swathes of Shanghai, with a population of 26 million, have been under lockdown since March 28, leading to complaints from residents about shortages of food and basic necessities.

Residents in locked-down areas are not allowed to leave their homes.

Some have received government food packages containing meat and vegetables. Many, however, are struggling to obtain rice and other basics, with online vendors sold out and delivery services unable to keep up with demand.

It’s all part of China’s zero Covid policy. Democrats watch and learn, as they formulate policies to address future pandemics and the imaginary climate crisis.

Hopefully, they will learn that even in China — which does not have America’s tradition of individual liberty — people can be pushed only so far.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Progressives are righteous advocates of the separation of church and state when the concept can be exploited to shut down traditional viewpoints or to marginalize Christianity. When churches can be used to ram the statist agenda down the congregation’s throat, they feel differently:

Many who have chosen not to get the COVID-19 shots have cited religious objections. Now Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf’s administration wants church leaders to bring vaccination events into churches.

Pennsylvania’s public health leaders want to “harness the power of community trust in statewide faith-based organizations” to convince folks to get a COVID-19 shot. That is according to the mission statement of the Faith-based Organization Coalition, which is being formed under the state’s Department of Health and is expected to launch April 11.

“Harness the power of community trust.” Our leftist ruling class harnessed the power of our trust in the media. That trust has been expended and no longer exists. Then they harnessed our trust in the scientific cognoscenti. Anthony Fauci frittered away the last of it. Now liberals will find public trust to betray wherever they can find it, even if it means holding their noses and setting foot in churches.

As usual with Big Government, the program will be financed at least in part by money confiscated from people who would be appalled to see it spent this way.

The state aims to reduce vaccine hesitancy through the “Local Innovations in Vaccine Equity in Pennsylvania” project (LIVE PA), which is a grant program that pays churches and nonprofits to speak with their people and persuade them to get vaccinated.

If there isn’t enough pushback, next bureaucrats will pay churches to denounce fossil fuels, praise Black Lives Matter, assure us that inflation isn’t that bad, proclaim that children should be subjected to genital mutilation on behalf of the LGBT agenda, et cetera.

There will be ever more of these church–state partnerships as churches are infiltrated, subverted, hollowed out, and subordinated to the one true religion recognized by our ruling class, moonbattery. Before long, the concept of separating church and state will fade from memory, like the Tenth Amendment.

On a tip from Henry.