For nearly two years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has treated combating the COVID pandemic as the be-all and end-all of our nation’s if not the world’s existence. Nothing, it seems, was more important than ensuring that everyone was all in on fighting against the coronavirus to the point of nearly excluding anyone who dared to question the legitimacy of this extreme reaction in the face of data that simply didn’t support such an overbearing approach. Questioning the COVID “authorities” like Dr. Anthony Fauci was seen not as engaging in sound, time-tested science but rather as entertaining crazy, baseless conspiracy theories on the level of flat-earthers.

More than ever, when anyone questions the appropriateness of massive lockdowns, closing schools, universal masking, or vaccine mandates, they are derided as anti-science haters. From the beginning, daring to raise the question as to whether COVID may have originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, got one accused of being a racist. Lo and behold, a year later, and in light of revelations regarding the specific research that was being done in the Wuhan lab, the lab-leak theory became the dominant view — if one uttered only in hushed tones.

What Americans soon became familiar with was the routine of moving goalposts. Leadership would declare one thing only to later change the rules as soon as the seeming goal had been reach. Everyone remembers “15 days to flatten the curve.”

Well, after two years of this type of behavior and fearmongering from the CDC and Fauci, it appears that another massive COVID narrative shift is now afoot. It’s clear that all the alarmism hasn’t done a thing to end the pandemic.

Recently, the CDC updated its protocol for COVID-infected individuals, cutting the recommended isolation period following a positive COVID test from 10 days down to five days after being asymptomatic. Furthermore, recovering people don’t need to test their way out of quarantine either. This sudden policy change comes right in the middle of another wave of COVID. Why?

First of all, and what has been predicted by many, the Omicron variant of the virus has shown itself to be much less dangerous than previous variants. But Omicron also has infected people at such a rapid rate that any thought of containment is almost impossible.

It’s not just the CDC changing its tune. The highest paid bureaucrat and Beltway troll, Fauci, is finally concerned about keeping society running. “There is the danger that there will be so many people who are being isolated … for the full ten days,” he worried, “that you could have a major negative impact on our ability to keep society running.” Where was that Fauci 22 months ago?

Of course, Fauci still can’t quite let go of his masking fetish, adding, “Let them go out with a mask, being careful so that they can fulfill their job in society to keep society going smoothly.”

However, beyond cutting quarantine time, Fauci made a shocking admission regarding hospital counts for children, who we already know are at very low risk. Fauci declared the numbers are not accurate because they include hospitalizations with COVID not because of COVID. According to Fauci: “If you look at the children who are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID. If a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID. And they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual when, in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s overcounting the number of children who are, quote, ‘hospitalized with COVID,’ as opposed to because of COVID.”

Notably, all adults are also tested upon hospital admission, and likewise, as we have suggested repeatedly, the number of adult admissions because of COVID versus with COVID are also inaccurate. This also holds true of the number of deaths being reported by the CDC. The question then is, what are the actual numbers of hospitalizations and deaths of all ages with COVID versus because of COVID?

Occasionally Fauci says something that makes sense, but that certainly doesn’t make him trustworthy. The politicization of CDC numbers will be the longest-lasting problem in accurately evaluating this now-receding pandemic and preparing for the next.