Contact tracing too is back, even though that never works for respiratory viruses. Rumors are swirling about new lockdowns for some new variant that is being touted by the World Health Organization (WHO). The predictable CNN is interviewing Pfizer employees about the glories of their new booster just rubber-stamped by the FDA.

And Fauci is out and about defending lockdowns and suggesting that we could have more.

The first time is tragedy, said Karl Marx, and the second time is farce.

We might be headed into the realm of farce, as masks that everyone knows don't work are mandated and shots that everyone knows don't work to stop the spread are widely encouraged. Mandates for them could easily be next. In fact, not one government policy from the entire pandemic period achieved anything but destruction.

Now we see the problem with the failure to have a real reckoning over the COVID response. It means that the whole panoply of failed and brutal policies could come back again.

As NPR reminds us on a daily basis, we now "have the tools" necessary to combat another pandemic or even the spread of seasonal viruses—and never mind that none of these tools actually work and all of them demoralize the population.