The CDC’s “Wear your mask” is the new TSA’s “remove your belt”: a pointless gesture unsupported by any data. The goal is not outcomes. The goal is procedures: control, compliance, conformity. And if you question it, be warned as the airlines have reminded me for two years: you will be banned from the airlines, you will be placed on the no-fly list. If you dare ask about the futile TSA protocols, an acceptable response from a TSA suffering “Covid envy” is the rhetorical “so, you want the terrorists to win?”

I outline this because even though Covid regulations may be drawing to a close, Covid envy will never go away, and the greatest sufferers of Covid envy — really those for whom I coin the term — are the eco-left. For decades they have sought the sort of government control and universal submission in the name of climate change which the Covid crowd achieved in mere weeks. Locking people at home. Stopping transportation. Regulating diets. Covid even successfully closed churches. The greens must have observed this in awe. And, of course, with envy.

Prepare for the eco-left to use fear to reorder society for a political end unafraid to trample civil rights because of the public good: the environment.