Whenever anyone questioned the endless lockdowns to try to stop the spread of a virus that was going to spread anyway (because that’s what airborne viruses do), they were always hammered by the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) as reckless lunatics who didn’t care if people DIED!!

They had a good, power-expanding crisis going, and they didn’t want to consider any inconvenient questions, like, “Is this providing benefits that outweigh the many negatives, from economic devastation to kids losing precious school time to the physical and mental health strain from being stuck in isolation with no job?”

At long last, people are starting to wake up to the tragic costs of COVID prevention hysteria. We’ve seen it in the high rates of depression, lower school test scores and alarming increases in suicides during the pandemic lockdown. Johns Hopkins researchers found that during the first six months of 2020, suicides among black Maryland residents increased by 94%. Suicides among military members jumped by 15% (and what will President Biden’s threat of a dishonorable discharge for the unvaccinated do to that number?)

https://nypost.com/2021/10/01/military-suicides-rise-15-as-senior-leaders-call-for-action/

And now, the CDC reports that there were nearly 97,000 deaths by drug overdose last year, a 37% increase from the previous, non-pandemic year.

https://www.westernjournal.com/dem-devastation-america-suffers-record-drug-overdoses-since-covid-lockdowns-began/

These are tragic reminders that public health decisions aren’t a simple black-and-white choice between “good” and “bad.” Those who were so certain that theirs was the only right way to handle the pandemic assailed anyone who questioned them as dumb and uncaring. The truth is, we just weren’t suffering from tunnel vision, and we know that radical actions result in radical consequences, not all of them positive or even predictable. This is what happens when a sledge hammer is the only tool in your pickup truck.

Related: Law Professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit wrote an op-ed arguing that the American public becoming fed up and refusing to comply with more draconian edicts from (mostly) Democrat politicians is healthy.

https://nypost.com/2021/10/14/covid-regime-is-driving-americans-to-a-healthy-noncompliance/

This may be a case where the combined wisdom of the masses is not only greater than their elitist leaders, it may also finally force them to back down, because when enough people simply refuse to go along with their orders, they can’t arrest everybody. He makes an excellent analogy of marijuana, which is now legal in many states – except it actually isn’t. It’s still illegal under federal law. But when enough people decided to ignore that and treat it as legal, there was no way for the feds to stop them.

For instance, what if the Chicago Police union refused to comply with the mayor's vaccine mandate and threatened to leave the city with 50% fewer cops on the street? Considering what happens in Chicago even with a full contingent of cops, that would seem more dangerous than dropping the vaccine mandate. And what do you know? The union is threatening to do just that.

https://www.westernjournal.com/head-chicago-police-union-calls-officers-openly-defy-mayor-lightfoot/

And what if every business in New York or Los Angeles simply refused to demand that customers show their medical records or be denied service – or if we all committed civil disobedience by taking our kids trick-or-treating or celebrating Christmas together? There wouldn’t be a whole lot that the politicians, or even the omnipotent Dr. Fauci, could do about it.

I have a feeling that day may be coming soon, but the people who love having so much power won’t give it up easily. They’ll try to intimidate everyone by making examples of some. They won’t arrest criminals, drug addicts or illegal border crossers, but I suspect they’d gladly arrest people who refuse to wear a mask or get vaccinated. After all, those people are dangerous!