Less than a week after House Republicans introduced a bill to end the federal mask mandates, new calls to hunker down and cover your face are spreading like California wildfires throughout the national media. Expanding panic and fear among the masses is the endgame. It worked last time, so why shouldn’t it now?

Maybe because the situation is not the same?

Logic is hard to publish in an atmosphere designed to rattle people. The CDC, left-leaning scientists, and the media have teamed up to send the message: get vaccinated or run for the hills because the new and improved Delta variant is coming to a grocery store or restaurant or coffee shop near you. Mask up, comrades!

In Los Angeles County, which is, by the way, the largest county in the country, people are required to wear face coverings indoors – even if they have been vaccinated. Next came the masking of people who live in San Francisco, Sacramento, Yolo, Fresno, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Sonoma counties, regardless of vaccination status. Those make up more than half of the state’s population. The American Academy of Pediatrics jumped onboard the mask train this week, calling for every child over the age of two to cover up their little faces.

The rapid spread of the Delta variant appears to be the culprit because it accounts for 83% of these new cases. While it is true that the number of COVID cases has tripled in the United States over the last month, the dirty little secret that mask-tyrants conveniently forget to mention is that Delta is much less lethal than the run-of-the-mill virus.

Don’t take our word for it – look at the Centers for Disease Control website graph here. In a nutshell, one can see two things: COVID cases up, number of deaths down. Could we be seeing a very contagious variant of a virus that is running out of steam? That does seem entirely possible. The New York Post published a bit of sanity earlier this month: “In other words, Delta looks to be less lethal than previous variants, despite media scare stories. This makes sound scientific sense: Evolution favors variants that are more contagious — but also ones that are less deadly because killing the host reduces the chances for spread.”

It doesn’t take a genius to determine that most newly infected people are those who haven’t been vaccinated. It appears many have decided that fast-tracked, unapproved vaccines might do them more harm than COVID. They may be right; they may be wrong – but they are certainly entitled to make the personal choice. Borrowing a slogan from the left: my body, my choice. Or, as Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) put it, “In a free county, people will evaluate their personal risk factors and are smart enough to ultimately make medical decisions like wearing a mask themselves.”

Got Vaxxed? Mask Up Anyway

Then there’s the business of masking the vaccinated. Yale Medicine points out that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is “88% effective“ against the disease and “96% effective against hospitalization” regarding the new variant. Johnson & Johnson, Yale says, “has reported that its vaccine is effective against the Delta variant, showing only a small drop in potency compared with its effectiveness against the original strain of the virus.” AstraZeneca is “60% effective” against the disease and “93% effective against hospitalization.”

So, is it really a good time to punish those who have been vaccinated by mandating they mask up? An Axios/Ipsos poll recently found 55% of those surveyed “said they were wearing masks ‘sometimes’ or ‘at all times’ in public, down from 68 percent who said the same in early June and nearly 90 percent in February, March, and early April,” according to a prominent Washington newspaper.

To mask or not to mask. That is the question that should be answered by the individual – not federal, state, or county officials.

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Read more from Leesa K. Donner.