I hesitated calling it science. What's been called "science" over the past year is up for grabs. I'll leave it to others to debate that.

The pandemic is essentially over. COVID-19 perhaps should not have ever been designated as a pandemic. Its known mortality rate is on par with a severe flu. Now, with vaccines widely available, the hospitals able to manage crises, medicines to treat the ill and an awareness of who and how COVID most impacts, we're ready for life again. And yet, our politicians and the CDC have served up a colossal stew of mixed messaging.

This week, the CDC has changed course again and now announced that it's safe for vaccinated people to not wear masks outside, and that they can also take off their masks inside in most situations. The last remaining governors who had instituted mask mandates rushed to end them and not be the last man standing who wasn't following new guidelines. Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia both ended mask mandates (for the fully vaccinated) on May 14.

However, this same message should apply for ANYONE WHO HAS ALREADY HAD COVID.

Here's the science:

1. Natural immunity is better than vaccinated immunity. It lasts longer, and it is evidence of the divine design of our immune systems and our resiliency. What this means is that anyone who has had COVID can take off their masks (and be safer for it than vaccinated people). [Source: Forbes - Coronavirus Immunity May Last Years, Possibly Even Decades, Study Suggests, 11/17/20]

   these antibodies were “durable,” showing remarkably slow rates of decline that were consistent with many years, and potentially even decades, of protection... the New York Times refers to it as “the most comprehensive and long-ranging study of immune memory to the coronavirus to date.”

2. Wearing masks continuously is bad for your health, and studies consistently show that masks cannot stop the spread of a respiratory virus (which aligns with all the scientific findings prior to April 2020).A paper published at the National Center for Biotechnological Information (and since retracted) said:"The existing scientific evidence[s] challenge the safety and efficacy of wearing facemask as preventive intervention for COVID-19. The data suggest that both medical and non-medical facemasks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious disease such SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, supporting against the usage of facemasks. Wearing facemasks has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects." [Source; NCBI original link]The American Institute for Economic Research has a series of articles about the ineffectiveness of masks here:

   • Masks ‘don’t work,’ are damaging health, 2/19/21 • Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, stated that evidence about the effectiveness of face mask use was “astonishingly weak.” [Sweden’s disease expert says just wearing face masks could be ‘very dangerous’, 8/19/20) • "A September report by the CDC found that more than 70 percent of COVID-positive patients contracted the virus in spite of faithful mask wearing while in public. Moreover, 14 percent of the patients who said they “often” wore masks were also infected. Meanwhile, just four percent of the COVID-positive patients said they “never” wore masks in the 14 days before the onset of their illness." [Source]

3. Social distancing is completely ineffective. "The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 indoors can be as great at 60 feet as it is at six feet in a room where the air is mixed — even when wearing a mask, according to a new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers who challenge social distancing guidelines adopted across the world." [Source]

4. COVID is treatable, and has a 99% survivability rate in people between 0-70 (95% in people over 70). (Source: CDC) We've known how to treat it since last April when America's Frontline Doctors were censored for claiming so.

5. The idea of asymptomatic spread is at best speculative. Why is that important? Masking up people who feel perfectly healthy is the basis for the entire universal masking narrative. The reason? No one knows who has COVID, so everyone needs to mask up (even though the vast majority of people have nothing to fear from COVID). [Source: A severely symptomatic lie about asymptomatic spread (The Blaze), Covid-19: Asymptomatic cases may not be infectious, Wuhan study indicates (British Medical Journal), Asymptomatic Spread Revisited (AIER)]

There has been an active and misguided (and perhaps evil) effort to suppress, censor and eliminate information that contradicts the overall fear narrative that has been the primary motivational tool by politicians and leaders to enforce mitigation strategies.

With the ending of mandates, lockdowns and COVID-19 mitigation measures, we can rejoice as life begins to return to normal. The trauma that has been inflicted by the pandemic and governmental response (and our responses to one another) will be slower to heal.

What about people who have had or tested positive from COVID?

I think I understand why the messaging from our political leaders these days is targeting the fully vaccinated. They want to urge as many as they can to become vaccinated. It remains for others to decide what truly led to the abatement of the pandemic, but there's very good arguments on many sides. Some will claim that masks, social distancing, lockdowns, etc. worked. Others will claim (with just as much evidence) that they didn't, and that this virus, like all before it, had a life cycle, we have immune systems and have reached herd immunity.

But here are some questions that perhaps someone can answer:

Why hasn't the messaging included people who have had COVID?

Remember, natural immunity is better than vaccinated immunity. So why isn't the CDC communicating the good news that millions of Americans can now unmask safely? I think it's because it's tough to answer who has had COVID. Do they say:

• People who have tested positive and had symptoms

• People who tested positive

• People who were sick and suspected COVID but never had a test

It's confusing, and at some point, leaders will simply have to let people make their own decisions. And we will all get to remember the phrase, "mind your own business" when snarky folks criticize people for being masked or unmasked.

Get ready to smile

If you're living in Virginia or North Carolina, smile big tomorrow. Let others see that smile! You'll join millions of other citizens who have been enjoying mandate-less living for months. Let's be patient with those who cling to their masks like Linus clinged to his blanket. It took over a year to exit this craziness. The remnants of it won't be removed by a governor's declaration.