Kids are already back to school in some areas of the country, and the rest are right around the corner. So it’s interesting that the CDC just released new guidelines for COVID that greatly affect schools. The teachers unions previously “helped” write those guidelines. We can only wonder what role they played in some drastic changes this time. The guidelines are more than interesting, however — in a way, they’re infuriating. More on that in a minute.

Many of us have largely ignored the CDC’s COVID guidelines for a long time already because they’ve been so thoroughly politicized and distant from believable science. The real protocol? Get sick, stay home. Wash your hands. Don’t cough on people. Wear a mask or get vaccinated if you choose to do so; don’t if you choose not to. Basic stuff in a free country.

Of course, there are many for whom extra caution is necessary due to various medical considerations and risks. From the beginning, COVID policy should have been geared toward protecting these people, not hammering everyone with a one-size-fits-all policy of shutdowns and mandates.

And then there are the true believers. Will that last group ease up now that the CDC has reduced a lot of restrictions? Don’t hold your breath.

The CDC dropped quarantine recommendations for exposure, as well as social distancing at six feet. Significantly for schools, the CDC ended recommendations known as “test to stay” — the practice that students exposed to COVID should keep testing negative in order to remain at school instead of quarantining.

But the change that really jumped out to us was that there’s no longer any distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Read that again.

The novel vaccine was an exciting achievement and it brought hope of ending the pandemic. That did not, of course, actually happen. First, it wasn’t as effective at preventing infection or transmission as advertised. Second, the Left not only wholeheartedly leapt on the bandwagon but lectured, harassed, condemned, mandated, censored, and fired anyone who disagreed. It was an appalling descent into tyranny capped by Joe Biden’s mandates and firings.

Now the CDC tells us there’s no difference? Oops, we were wrong all along, the CDC now says. Where do the unvaccinated folks who lost their jobs go for recompense? Where do kids go to get those lost years of education? Where do all of us go to get back the money and sanity lost to economic devastation caused by shutdowns and government-induced inflation?

“We know that COVID-19 is here to stay,” said CDC epidemiologist Greta Massetti Thursday. The new guidelines she authored are possible because “high levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection, and the many tools that we have available to protect people from severe illness and death, have put us in a different place” [emphasis added].

She ought to be censored on social media for such dangerous right-wing misinformation.

The Associated Press reports, “An estimated 95% of Americans 16 and older have acquired some level of immunity, either from being vaccinated or infected” [emphasis added].

And just like that, we’re all immune to COVID.

According to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, “While COVID continues to evolve, so has our understanding of the science.” He’s right, but man is this whole Leftmedia-labeled “strategic shift” convenient for Democrats just ahead of the 2022 midterms. A little humility would have gone a long way in 2020, but Democrats had a Bad Orange Man to defeat. It would have gone a long way in 2021 also, but Democrats had just taken the White House and they couldn’t let up when there was more power to seize.

Now that Joe Biden has survived a double case of COVID — which he caught despite having every available booster after promising “you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations” — it appears that he finally kept his pledge to “shut down the virus.” After all, Democrats need voters to think they’ve achieved this progress, which means we can work toward normal again. Politics is as politics does.