Bari Weiss: ‘Pandemic of Bureaucracy’ on COVID Is a ‘Moral Crime’ and People Are Afraid to Say That

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” writer Bari Weiss said the coronavirus pandemic is “a pandemic of bureaucracy” that “is going to be remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime.” And that “many of my liberal and progressive friends are with me on this and they do not want to say it out loud” because they’re afraid of being attacked as science deniers.

Weiss said, “I went so hard with COVID. … And then, we were told, you get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven’t gotten back to normal and it’s ridiculous at this point. I know that so many of my liberal and progressive friends are with me on this and they do not want to say it out loud because they are scared to be called anti-vax or to be called science denial[ists] or to be smeared as a Trumper. I’m sorry, if you believe the science, you will look at the data that we did not have two years ago and you will find out that cloth masks do not do anything. You will realize that you can show your vaccine passport at a restaurant and still be asymptomatic and carrying Omicron, and you will realize, most importantly, that this is going to be remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime.”

She continued, “The city of Flint, Michigan, which is 80%, I think, minority students, has just announced indefinite virtual schooling. In the past two years, we have seen among young girls a 51% increase in self-harm. People are killing themselves, they are anxious, they are depressed, they are lonely. That is why we need to end it, more than any inconvenience that it’s been to the rest of us. … At this point, it’s a pandemic of bureaucracy. It’s a pandemic of bureaucracy. It’s not real anymore.”

Weiss later added, “Every adult in America has had access to this vaccine for more than a year. … But the point is that if you’re choosing not to get it, which I think is a foolish decision, we are not stopping the world for the sake of those foolish people in the same way we wouldn’t intervene for the people, who, like me, want to eat a Big Mac every day.”

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