We know what works in our battle against Covid: vaccines. We tried lockdowns, we tried mask mandates, but numbers only started to drop to endemic levels in some areas when vaccination became mainstream. Our society incentivized vaccination as a condition of a return to normalcy, and millions of Americans signed onto this social contract. We need increased vaccination rates in order to keep Covid at bay, and reneging on the agreement to return to normalcy with the ready availability and acceptance of vaccination would have the opposite effect.

And let’s be truly honest about the crushing social and economic costs that lockdowns bring. We not only know more about Covid than we did in the spring of 2020, and we also know just how catastrophic lockdowns are as well. From the devastating mental health toll on teenagers, to the record number of drug overdoses following a time of isolation and stress and the fact that an estimated 200,000 small businesses didn’t survive…

We also have to remember that America’s culture of self-rule and individualism is at play when we reconsider lockdowns and mask mandates: We can tell people to stay home and mask-up all we want, but government demands don’t necessarily result in compliance. If new mask mandates and lockdowns were to be ordered, compliance would largely depend on the willingness of the populace to do so. It’s not a heavy lift to imagine that the only places willing to comply with lockdowns again are the places that least need to do so — localities with high vaccination rates, and as a result, with low numbers of hospitalization and death.