I think most observers on the right have figured out by now that the world’s most ardent COVID hysterics have no plans of giving up their newfound power, whether that be government or financial in nature. Control is a heck of a drug, and those on the left want no part of losing it.

Thus, we see the COVID grifters moving on to their next project, which is to insist that people stay masked and locked down over other illnesses.

2) RSV is a cold-like respiratory illness that produces symptoms similar to COVID, and can cause severe illness in older adults and young children. It disappeared for a year because of #COVID19 mitigations. It’s now back because masks are coming off, especially in the South.

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) June 14, 2021

The thread continues, but I’m not going to bother to post all his rantings about the evils of states lifting mask mandates. If you aren’t familiar with Feigl-Ding, he’s an epidemiologist who has been rabidly political over the course of the pandemic. He’s also a hypocrite who stumped for closing schools in the United States while shipping his kids to Austria to attend classes.

Regardless, anyone paying attention knew this was coming. Part of the broader left-wing ideology is a false sense that they can bring about utopia. If that means stomping on your freedom and forcing you to wear a piece of dirty cloth on your face at all times, that’s just fine with them. Does the country have COVID under control? Well, let’s stop RSV now, which they say is totally like COVID even though they insisted that COVID wasn’t like RSV for a year and censored anyone who suggested such.

The control is the point. How the left gets that control is largely ancillary, but what the last year-and-a-half have shown them is that they can use any “crisis” to get what they want. That’s why you’ve seen a shift to demanding action (which just so happens to cost you money and freedom) over “climate change” as COVID has waned. There’s always a new grift on the horizon. It’s just a matter of timing, and to be fair, voters were warned this wasn’t going to stop.

All of this comes with a cost, of course. Decades of building trust in institutions and expertise have been thrown into the garbage to satisfy the left-wing wants of partisan ideologues. “Following the science” was not supposed to be influenced by politics. It has been, though, and that has meant devastating effects on the credibility of the scientific community. When the next, actual crisis hits, no one is going to buy what they say. It didn’t have to be this way, but grifters like Feigl-Ding own the consequences.