by Kerry Dougherty

Well, the ball’s now in Ralph Northam’s court. The CDC announced yesterday that it’s recommending vaccinated people lose the masks.

Indoors and out. Imagine that!

And, no, the science didn’t magically change yesterday. Many of us knew all along that a piece of cloth couldn’t stop a virus.

What changed is that the Biden administration is up to it’s wrinkly neck in problems. Gas lines, inflation, a border crisis, poor employment numbers and a war brewing in the Middle East are quickly eroding the president’s popularity. Getting rid of masks — which normal people hate — is a way to curry favor with the public.

There is no need for vaccine passports, although the CDC seemed to set the table for them. Predictably, Karens are screaming for them.

They miss the point. Vaccines are widely available, so those who aren’t vaccinated are on their own. The vaccinated should mind their own business. It matters not if the maskless guy next to you hasn’t gotten the vaccine. You’re protected!

Oh, and there’s a bumper crop of empty hospital beds if the unvaccinated get seriously sick. Therapeutics are excellent, too. Let those who haven’t gotten the shots determine their own tolerance for risk.

Yet, the overlords can’t seem to bring themselves to loosen their grip on us entirely. Children suddenly seem to be in the CDC crosshairs. The clowns running that agency said Thursday night that kids should be treated like unvaccinated adults and be forced to wear masks until their parents line them up for shots.

That’s a hard NO.

Kids are not good vectors of the virus, neither do they get very sick from it. They should never have been masked in the first place.

The pandemic is over. No matter how hard Northam — the Rajah of Richmond, the Viscount of Virginia, the King of the Commonwealth — clings to it.

His messaging has been all over the place, anyway.

Last week the Governor staged a press conference where he said he might lift all COVID restrictions on June 15, provided Virginians dutifully did their part to keep the pandemic numbers falling.

He quickly added that he was going to keep the idiotic mask mandate indefinitely or at least until the CDC gave the all clear.

Guess what, Ralph? They just did.

Yet even as he was making more weak promises about a possible end to the emergency orders last week, Northam had quietly filed yet ANOTHER amended emergency order — one that takes effect today — and doubles down on the anti-science, Ouija-board inspired regulations he’s imposed on Virginians.

I discovered this latest order courtesy of State Sen. Bill DeSteph, who pays attention to such things.

Check it out on the governor’s website.

Yep, while his colleagues around the country- – including the loathsome Mike DeWine of Ohio and the French Laundry-dining hypocrite Gavin Newsom of California — are lifting restrictions and repealing mask mandates, Northam wanted to continue smothering Virginians in face diapers.

And, despite the fact that the CDC was forced to concede recently that the chance of contracting the virus out-of-doors is less than 1%, Northam continued in his latest order to single out farmers’ markets as places where mask must be worn. Same goes for kids at camps.

Does this doctor bother to keep up with scientific data? If not, he should. If he does keep up and is continuing to mandate masks where they clearly do no good, the only conclusion we can reach is that Northam’s on a power trip.

Last Saturday morning I visited a small, outdoor farmers market in Onancock. The booths were surrounded by yellow police tape. Masks were required of the 5 or 6 shoppers inside the tape. No masks outside of the tape. As if the virus only attacks people carrying pints of strawberries.

This is pure idiocy, courtesy of Northam. Much like his ban on music on the beach.

And don’t get me started on his order that children as young as 5 must be masked, even outdoors.

I thought Northam was a pediatric neurosurgeon. Yet I sometimes wonder if he’s ever met a child. Is he unaware that kids suck and chew on their masks all day? When I pick up my granddaughter from pre-school her mask is often a soggy mess. Same for her little friends.

This is unsanitary and disgusting. Who knows what’s incubating in the fibers of those nasty, damp cloths? Researchers that studied children’s masks a few months ago and found them crawling with E. coli.

Sciency!

Fact is, with about 80% of those over 65 vaccinated and more than 600,000 Virginians with natural immunity from previous infections, we are fast approaching herd immunity if we aren’t there already.

That’s why the COVID test positivity rate for the state is 3.6%. That’s the lowest it’s been since the state began seriously testing folks for COVID about a year ago. Cases are a tenth of what they were at the height of the pandemic and hospitalizations are low — only 602 confirmed Covid patients are hospitalized in Virginia now, down from a high of 2,823 on February 19.

The gig is up, Governor. You’ve had your fun. You showed us who was the boss.

Your mandates did absolutely nothing to slow the spread in Virginia, our numbers went up and down despite your ever-more ridiculous rules, curfews and closures.

If Northam hasn’t scrapped the entire mask mandate by Friday afternoon Glenn Youngkin should demand that the Governor follow the science.

Northam should go back to apologizing to the African-American community for his awful adventures in blackface and leave the rest of us alone.

Especially the children.

We want to breathe the sweet Virginia breeze again.

This column is republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed & Unedited.