It’s been a hectic week of messaging, if you can even call it that, from the White House on COVID-19. Despite the objective data showing that the Delta variant is not only not a crisis, but that we are nearing lows in deaths across the country from the coronavirus, politicians and bureaucrats must seek to protect themselves with mindless distractions like mask mandates. It’d be way too much to ask for them to actually follow the science.

In USA, #COVID mortality is now the lowest since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. pic.twitter.com/bc3zRxIAiO

— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) July 28, 2021

But CDC Director Rochelle Walensky took things a step further today. While appearing on CNN with John Berman, who himself is insufferable, Walensky endorsed the idea of vaccine passports in the European mold.

JUST NOW: "That may very well be a path forward. "@CDCDirector on European-style health passes allowing extra access for people who are vaccinated.pic.twitter.com/K3GN9DuIg6

— John Berman (@JohnBerman) July 28, 2021

I’m trying to think of someone worse at their job not named Joe Biden than Walensky, and it’s kind of tough. This woman is incoherent on so many levels. Just yesterday, she came out and announced that we could be a few mutations away from the vaccines not working at all. Now, how do you think that’s going to affect vaccine hesitancy?

She might as well have emblazoned in the sky "don't bother getting the vaccine." How can someone be this stupid? https://t.co/np9VxPf0JD

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) July 28, 2021

No one is going to bother to get the vaccine if they are being told it might not even work a month from now. It’s that kind of insane lack of forethought that has marked Walensky’s tenure.

Endorsing vaccine passports such as those in France (which have caused rioting, I might add) is just another ridiculous misstep. It eschews the real issue, which is not showering vaccines on every person who is breathing, but rather, the need to target those who are actually most vulnerable. People with natural immunity (i.e. via prior infection) have been shown to have protection from the major effects of reinfection. Both the vaccine and natural immunity do their jobs in protecting a person from death, and that’s the primary issue. Nothing is full-proof, and the fact that government officials have often insinuated otherwise about the vaccine has not helped matters. Ignoring natural immunity breeds distrust because it appears to many people to be a political decision.

Regardless, it is not the government’s job, state or federal, to tell people they can’t exercise basic rights of movement and commerce without having a piece of paper that ignores millions of people who scientifically have protection from the virus. This kind of “all or nothing” hysteria involving the vaccine has actually caused more hesitancy, in my opinion. Lots of people look at the CDC’s incoherence, see them ignoring science, and conclude they can’t trust anything they say. And is that unreasonable given their track record? I don’t think so, and it’s solely the fault of the Biden administration and its incompetence.

Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who got out in front of any vaccine passport push with a ban, deserve accolades for staying on the offensive. In doing so, they’ve ensured they aren’t left fighting a losing, reactionary battle. That so many GOP states haven’t also banned vaccine passports is not going to end well because once the federal government gets its nose under the tent, the whole thing is going to eventually come crashing down.

Walensky needed to be fired yesterday, but I have no confidence the Biden administration would replace her with someone actually capable of doing a good job. Rather, politics and irrationality under the guise of playing it safe have overtaken the CDC fully. They’ve destroyed the credibility of the scientific community along the way, and that’s unfortunate. No one is going to be listening to them on mask guidance nor vaccine passports.