It’s only early January, and already this 2022 thing is obviously not working out. With the “omicron variant” of COVID-19 upon us, politicians and public health authorities are already off on their next round of COVID-19 Hokey Pokey:

You put your school closures in. You pull your mask mandates out. You put your rising case numbers in, and you shake them all about. You do the COVID-19 Hokey Pokey and you order people around. That’s what it’s all about.

A successful COVID-19 Hokey Pokey this time around requires ignoring the fact that, even allowing for a lag between case numbers and deaths, the latter aren’t increasing.

From December 1 thru  December 30, 2021, daily reported cases of COVID-19 (according to Worldometer’s COVID-19 dashboard) in the United States rose from 123,430 to 450,298. During the same period, daily reported COVID-19 deaths fell from 1,697 to 1,584.

Yes, all of those numbers are bad things. But they’re not WORSE things than the pre-omicron COVID-19 landscape. They’re BETTER things. If we “trust the science,” or at least the data, here’s what it’s telling us: Omicron is the next evolutionary step along COVID-19’s path from deadly pandemic to endemic inconvenience.

The data may change. But, despite a month of smug warnings from the usual suspects — just wait for that lag, COVID-19 is going to GET YOU unless you DO AS YOU’RE TOLD! —  it hasn’t yet. Unless it does, President Joe Biden’s prediction of “a winter of severe illness and death” isn’t in the cards.

Here’s the problem:

As the 20 years since the 9/11 attacks have shown us, many Americans are willing to embrace authoritarian rule for as long as politicians are willing and able to curry abject fear — even long after such fear has proven itself unjustified.

With COVID-19, many Americans have graduated from that willingness to, well, eagerness.

They’ve spent the last two years hanging on every pronouncement as to what (and who) they should fear, waiting with bated breath and unconcealed glee for the order to hide under the bed again.

And, evidence or not, they’re downright insistent that we must all spend another year cowering in terror with them.

It seems to me that this is one of those rare cases where Congress might prove itself useful. When the House convenes its second session of the 117th Congress on January 10, it should promptly introduce and pass the Pandemic Saving Time Act of 2022. The Senate should immediately follow suit and get the bill to President Biden for his signature, stat.

Under the Pandemic Saving Time Act, at 2am on Saturday, January 15, all Americans will roll their calendars forward one year to January 15, 2023.

We can all pretend we spent another year obsessing over COVID-19, satisfying the eager beavers.

But we won’t have to actually do so, satisfying those of us who are sick of the COVID-19 Hokey Pokey.

The politicians and bureaucrats can make up stories about how they took the “tough” and “necessary” measures, but we won’t suffer another year of scurrying to comply with their bizarre, ever-shifting dictates.

Everybody wins!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Tennessee Tribune
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/02/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Batesville, Mississippi Panolian, 01/03/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Anchorage, Alaska Press, 01/03/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 01/03/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Chester County, Pennsylvania Daily Local News, 01/04/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pottstown, Pennsylvania Mercury, 01/04/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Trenton, New Jersey Trentonian, 01/04/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Forest Hills / Rego Park, New York Times [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Queens, New York Ledger [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Queens, New York Examiner [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Greenpoint, New York Star [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Long Island City / Astoria, New York Journal [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, New York City Leader / Observer [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Brooklyn, New York Downtown Star [web and print], 01/05/22
• “A Modest Proposal – Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Glasgow, Montana Courier, 01/05/22
• “A modest proposal: Pandemic saving time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Lake Havasu City, Arizona News-Herald, 01/07/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/07/22
• “A modest proposal: Pandemic saving time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sidney, Montana Herald, 01/08/22
• “COVID-19 Hokey Pokey,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times and Democrat, 01/09/22
• “A Modest Proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Columbia, South Carolina Panorama [web and print], 01/15/22
• “A modest proposal: Pandemic Saving Time,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Dillon, Montana Tribune [web and print], 01/22/22

In mid-December, US Senate Democrats cried “uncle,” at least temporarily, pulling President Biden’s $2 trillion “Build Back Better” agenda out from under the Christmas Tree. If the bill  makes it to the Senate floor for an up or down vote, it won’t be this year.

I’m a big fan of gridlock, and not a fan at all of Biden’s Big Basket of Boondoggles, so I can’t say I’m terribly unhappy about this. Thanks, Joe Manchin!

On the other hand, it seems to me that Democrats are missing a chance to save themselves a savage beating in next November’s midterms. Which, as much as I dislike the Republicans too, might not be a bad thing from the “gridlock is good” standpoint, but let’s look at it as a nuts-and-bolts problem.

Build Back Better is what’s commonly called an “omnibus” bill. Put simply, Democrats threw in the kitchen sink and plunked down 2,000+ pages of everything any Democrat might want.

The point of an omnibus bill is that it lets the members of the majority party bring pressure on each other to get unanimity.

Congresswoman X wants, say, a child tax credit, but doesn’t want to expand Medicare to cover hearing aids (both of these are in Build Back Better).

Congressman Y wants the hearing aids but not the child tax credit.

If both things go in the omnibus bill, Congresswoman X and Congressman Y  must both support what they don’t want to get what they do.

But that pressure can run in both directions. If Congresswoman X hates the hearing aid provision so much that she’ll give up the child tax credit to avoid supporting it (and Congressman Y vice versa), the bill dies.

Democrats are looking at two plausible plays for support next year.

One is to get Build Back Better passed so that they can brag on how much they got done, and ask voters to expand their mandate.

The other is to blame those darn Republican obstructionists (or Joe Manchin) for the fact that they got nothing done, and ask voters to give them more seats. That approach frankly doesn’t work too often or well.

There is, however, a third option.

There are probably a few reasonably popular — even “bipartisan” — things in Build Back Better. Why not break these popular items out into single-issue bills that can actually pass? I don’t support the child tax credit, but I bet some Republican votes could be found for some version of it.

There’s a good argument to be made that this is how Congress should handle EVERYTHING. “One subject per bill” would substantially reduce gridlock.

It would also give congressional Democrats a third, better campaign pitch for midterm voters: “We got some stuff you like DONE — reward us!”

If Democrats step off the omnibus and walk those individual bills up Capitol Hill, they might staunch their bleeding campaign wounds and do reasonably well next November.  That might or might not be good for the country, but it would be good for them.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

When Joe Biden took office as the 46th President of the United States, those of us who desired a more peaceful foreign policy had reasons for both hope and doubt.

The  biggest issue for both was the 20-year US war in Afghanistan, for which Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had negotiated a long-overdue US surrender.

Would Biden fulfill the US end of the Afghanistan peace agreement by completing the withdrawal of US troops? We hoped, but doubted, as he hemmed, hawed, and violated the agreed deadline despite ample time to meet it.

Credit where credit is due: Biden did finally bring the troops home from Afghanistan. He showed incredible backbone,  refusing to extend deadlines and surge new forces into the conflict despite loud calls from the foreign policy establishment to remain knee deep in that Big Muddy forever.

If foreign policy was a game of golf, the Afghanistan withdrawal would sound like the driver making solid contact with the ball for a likely long drive off the tee.

But in foreign policy, as in golf, the initial swing is likely to go bad if the golfer doesn’t “follow through.” Unfortunately, Biden isn’t.

There was room for hope that he’d bring the US back into compliance with United Nations Security Council 2231, the “Iran nuclear deal,” which Trump had violated (he didn’t “withdraw from” it; UN Security Council resolutions are binding on all UN member states).

Instead,  Biden gave in to the temptation (or perhaps the pressure) to  insist on adding conditions he has no standing to add rather than taking “yes” for an answer (the Iranians were willing to reboot the deal as negotiated and agreed, but not to accept new terms).

Similarly, Biden is continuing Trump’s trade and technology war with China, even upping the tempo and timbre of US saber-rattling over Taiwan.

He’s continuing the Obama- and Trump-era policy of constant brinksmanship with Russia over Crimea and the Donbass region republics that used to be part of Ukraine until they seceded in the wake of a US-sponsored coup in 2014. The intent seems to be to creep NATO right up to Russia’s borders. What could possibly go wrong?

If Biden had followed through on the impulse that ended the war in Afghanistan, we could have had a “peace dividend.” Instead, on December 27, he signed a $768 billion  National “Defense” Authorization Act. He ended a war — then ADDED $30 billion to military spending.

In the game of foreign policy golf, the hole is Thomas Jefferson’s “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.”

Instead of following through for a solid drive onto the green and an easy putt, Biden let his ambitious swing become a slice into the rough.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY