Remember when were shamed in to wearing masks because if you didn’t, you were going to kill all the grandmas and grandpas in the world? Well, a year later and the panic porn pushers in leftist media (but I repeat myself) are still pushing that panic button hard.

On Monday, former Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) let us know that not supporting vaccine passports is the thing that will continue to kill people. She was speaking during a segment on MSNBC with host Nicolle Wallace, who let us know that it was the right politicizing our coronavirus response.

“I don’t know how the right got so far ahead creating such a political connotation around the conversation of vaccine passports but again, down here on planet earth, just about every college that has announced back-to-school policies for the fall has announced a policy that includes proof of vaccination,” Wallace said.

The host would also go on to tell us that we have to compare the need for proof of vaccination for schools or traveling to exotic locales to setting up the vaccine passport system here in the United States.

You know, because, naturally the need to vaccinate against diseases and viruses that are infinitesimally more deadly to kids or to adults upon travel is the same as being able to participate in our free society here in the United States.

But, Wallace only served to feed the fear that McCaskill was about to lay down.

“I don’t know, but it’s bad,” McCaskill replied. “I live in a state that the state legislature is dominated by Trumpers and they are busy making it illegal for a business to require a passport, a vaccine passport.”

McCaskill would continue to instill the fear, noting, “This is just, this is not – the fact that they first politicized masks and people died, and now they’re politicizing the appropriate way to encourage people to get vaccines, which will cost lives.”

All of this comes with the news that Lord, President, Savior, Dr. Anthony Fauci has told us that the federal government wouldn’t implement vaccine passports. But, there is a catch with that statement, because White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that while Dr. Fauci’s statement was true, it would be because the government expected the private sector to do what the government wouldn’t do.

Multiple states have already taken action, on both sides of the vaccine passport debate, with states like Idaho, Florida, Texas and Utah putting in measures to ban vaccine passports and New York implementing a system of opening up society with the vaccine passports required for larger social gatherings.

So, to believe McCaskill and Wallace, some of these states are more responsible for death than others. It’s just too bad that the numbers don’t bare that out. Texas, a state that has lifted all statewide mandates saw just 13 deaths as of April 25, with a rolling 7-day average that is the lowest it has been since early June.

Florida is also seeing a huge downturn in deaths, with the rolling 7-day average at its lowest point since mid-November. New York saw 52 deaths as of April 25, nearly identical to the number in Florida. It also has a 7-day average that is nearly identical to that of Florida today.

That doesn’t mean that one set of policies is right and another set is wrong. However, it does show us the idiocy of McCaskill’s comments, because at a minimum, the differing policies have not led to divergent results in deaths or hospitalizations to date.

The difference in vaccination rates also show little effect has been had, with New York having five percent more of its population (45% to 40%) receiving at least one dose of a vaccine. According to McCaskill and Wallace’s thinking, none of this should be true. We’ve seen months of evidence and data and literally none of it points to their assumptions being true.

Will that stop the leftists in our media from fear-mongering or shaming us in to their way of thinking? A year’s worth of evidence suggests that simply won’t be the case.

Late last week Dr. Anthony Fauci and congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) got in to a viral spat over getting liberties back and the continued lockdowns in much of the United States. During that spat, Dr. Fauci kept repeating that our COVID-19 case numbers were “unacceptable.”

That only served to enrage Jordan, who attempted to pin Dr. Fauci down on a number, any number, that we could quantify as “acceptable.” Amazingly, Dr. Fauci forgot to his hearing aid or suddenly had enough of being asked hard questions. Either way, he refused to give a number that would pinpoint an acceptable rate.

Dr. Fauci was great about telling us what was unacceptable, noting that our daily case numbers of 60,000 weren’t good news. What would bring about good news and the return to normal life? Again, that was beyond Fauci’s expertise apparently, other than to tell us when the rate of infection got to a point that it didn’t pose a risk of an explosion of cases — whatever that means.

If you’re like me, you were left still wondering exactly what would be acceptable, especially considering we’re supposed to “believe science” these days.

Which got me curious about our response to other viruses and what makes COVID-19’s case-rate any more worrisome or different. It turns out, not-so-surprisingly, that the response this virus and even its case-rate is completely out of whack.

As of Dr. Fauci’s testimony last week, we had just over 31 million cases in about 13 months of counting cases. That makes for a case rate of around 2.3 million per month, which is significant, but only in a vacuum.

Our friend, influenza? The yearly thing that we get a shot for in the hopes and prayers of not getting put in to a hospital or dying from? It infects between 9 and 41 million people in the United States alone. That means in an epidemic level year (which 2020 was, and likely because COVID-19 was already here, we just didn’t test for it) we see an average of nearly 4.5 million cases per month.

Lest we forget that the flu season isn’t year-round and lest we forget that influenza case numbers are a guessing game because we really have no official or recognizable test specifically for influenza itself.

But, so far we see a nearly 3-to-1 ratio in the difference between case numbers per month, a measure that is more accurate that total numbers given the seasonality of the flu and the ongoing positive case rates with COVID-19.

Ok, so, let’s say 41 million influenza cases is a bit out of whack? How about an average or median year then? It turns out that’s more like 25 million cases, which translates to 2.8 million cases over the typical 9-month flu season.

Last time I checked, 2.8 million is still more than average per month of COVID-19 as it stood last Thursday during Lord, President, Savior, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony in front of congress.

Does that mean that we shouldn’t take COVID-19 seriously? Of course not, but what these numbers do is give us some badly needed perspective. So, once again, I ask (and I wish someone in congress would ask), “what is acceptable and what makes these case numbers any different than what we see in an influenza outbreak every year?”

I’m not, nor should congress be, interested in rehashing just how much more lethal a novel version of a coronavirus is than the typical flu that we have become accustomed to, even if what’s being sold to us there is also a lie (or at best wrong because the data around these viruses sucks).

What congress and myself should be interested in is getting the likes of Lord, President, Savior, Dr. Anthony Fauci to recognize just how disproportionate our response has been, or at least asking why the response from within society, not science, had to be so different this time around.

Now, for the likes of Dr. Fauci and Co. maybe the case I am making is that we must mask up all the time, must shut our lives down for six to nine months a year. But, that response has never, ever, had real momentum during even epidemic levels of influenza outbreak here or in the rest of the world.

Why? Why are the responses here any different? Are we to believe that an epidemic year of the flu is not as important? Do those deaths not matter? Do those with life-altering hospitalizations from influenza and pneumonia caused by influenza not matter? Are they not worth protecting?

If we have to believe science, as the left has been telling us for over a year now, shouldn’t we believe the science that tells us we live with a virus that infects more people, in a shorter amount of time, and that we shouldn’t be afraid to live life in this case either?

One of the two responses is out of whack. I’m not willing to let Lord, President, Savior, Dr. Anthony Fauci tell us how our society should react anymore, nor should you.

Over the past few days you’ve likely seen the news that Americans have gained a ton of weight over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic. American’s have put on some 29 pounds on average and the Millennial generation an even worse 41 pounds.

Troubling numbers, all coming out of the American Psychological Society’s (APA) recently released survey. There’s just one rather large problem (pun intended) — that’s not exactly what the APA study and it’s findings told us.

You see, when you actually dig in to the findings of the study, the numbers presented above are correct, but only if you take in to account the 42 percent of people that who said they put on unwanted weight. When you actually account for the entire population we get a much different and much less dire scenario.

It turns out, that according to the data of the survey, the median weight gain is just 15 pounds amongst all adults. Far different than the 29 pounds on average that the media has been telling you. It also turns out that the Millennial and total numbers are likely skewed by the fact that 10 percent of the participants report putting on 50 or more pounds.

Given the known numbers, it turns out that a larger portion of that 42 percent reporting an unwanted weight gain would have to have gained less than the 15 pounds as the median. While still not the best thing in the world, it’s a far cry from the huge weight gain numbers the media has been panicking American’s over the past 24 hours.

You can see for yourself in this chart from the APA’s survey:

But, we aren’t done, because the other number highlighted by many reports is that 61 percent of people report “undesired weight change since the start of the pandemic,” and yet again that has been spun in to something it is not. Looking further in to that group, you’d notice that a full 18 percent of those respondents report weight loss, not weight gain.

The average weight loss in the group was 26 pounds and the median at 12 pounds.

Interestingly enough, men were the ones to drop more weight than women during the pandemic. According to the APA’s numbers, 20 percent of men vs. 17 percent of women reported unwanted weight loss.

You can also blame the young-in’s for the spike in weight gain, as those under the age of 24 had the biggest gains of any age range in this survey. A whopping 52 percent reported putting on unwanted weight, while Millennials weren’t far behind with 48 percent reporting those same numbers.

So, while it may be true that most in society have put on weight during the pandemic, it’s far from the bleak picture the media has been trying to paint this whole pandemic. Instead, it turns out that people were likely to make vastly different lifestyle choices as their daily routines of work and home life changed.