#It’s not really about masks and other commentary

Pandemic journal: It’s Not Really About Masks

“Why are fully vaccinated people treated the same as the unvaccinated?” wonders Peter Van Buren at The American Conservative. E.g.: All air travelers must mask. “The answer is at the heart of whether public policy in America will shift and allow us to crawl back into our lives.” Because it “was never just a mask, it has always been a way of thinking.” Every state and business has different rules, a “leadership void” into which “enters superstition, pseudoscience, politics, voodoo, and most of all, fear.” The idea “You can’t be too careful” only works if “COVID restrictions have no secondary or tertiary effects.” But they do: “Economies have been devastated. Education has disappeared for large numbers of kids.” And with teen suicides up, we’re “killing children to save them.”

Media watch: Times in ‘Echo Chamber’ Again

Jackson Richman at Mediaite slams a New York Times “news” story that claims “both sides have much to lose” if the United States and Iran don’t restore the 2015 nuclear deal and notes getting it “back on track is a top goal” for President Biden, “in hopes of containing, once more, a nuclear program that has resumed with a vengeance three years after [President Donald] Trump withdrew from it.” Yet Iran’s nuke program “hasn’t ‘resumed with a vengeance,’ ” as the deal never stopped it: It’s continuing its “mission to produce a bomb.” Worse, the piece only quotes those who back the 2015 accord. “Reported articles should strive for objectivity, balance and . . . truth. The Times failed in each category, falling once again victim to the Iran echo chamber.”

Conservative: Superspreader Event That Wasn’t

Despite predictions it would surely be a coronavirus “superspreader,” more than 380,000 attended Chicago’s four-day Lollapalooza festival through Aug. 1, notes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. Eight days later, the city has seen “no surge in hospitalizations . . . and no surge in deaths.” “The upshot is that gatherings of vaccinated people and those with a recent negative COVID test are relatively safe,” though “many people feel as if they ought to denounce large gatherings.” Singer Demi Lovato even fumed about the Chicago fest . . . then went on stage Sunday “in Anaheim, Calif., before an audience of 9,000 people, at a concert festival that did not require proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test.”

Politics beat: Dem Leaders Appease Squad

“If Biden Democrats run Washington, why are Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer (literally) embracing one of the party’s most outspoken advocates for defunding the police?” asks National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar of party leaders’ kow-tow to Squad member Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) on extending the national ban on evictions. Bush then “returned the favor by telling CBS News that she needs private security for her own safety but doesn’t support funding the police to protect less-advantaged Americans.” Moderates are routinely beating progressives from the Bush-AOC wing in primaries this year, so “the Squad’s message isn’t just fodder for Republicans; it’s out of sync with a majority of Democratic voters.” But leaders appease the radicals for fear “their own base won’t show up otherwise for next year’s midterm elections.”

Law prof: Joe’s Extraconstitutional ‘Leadership’

President Biden last year “told voters that the choice between him and Donald Trump was between the lawful and the lawless,” recalls law prof Jonathan Turley at The Hill. Yet now, “Biden is openly flouting the Constitution with a knowingly invalid extension of the eviction moratorium.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are claiming “breathtaking authority” in issuing the ban after the Supreme Court recently ruled only Congress could extend it. Biden himself “acknowledged the obvious” but went ahead anyway. The left “hailed” the prez for his “extraconstitutional commitment to social justice”; one liberal declared that “with one small action, Biden reveals himself as a better leader than Trump.” “That ‘small action’ was violating the Constitution — the document he swore to uphold.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board