The Moral Panic Continues To Abate

All Right Thinking Opinion has suddednly done a complete 180:

Facebook said Wednesday it would no longer ban posts suggesting COVID-19 is man-made amid mounting calls from President Biden and other officials for further investigation into the pandemic’s origins.

The announcement marked a reversal for the social media giant. In February, Facebook said it would remove posts claiming the virus was man-made or manufactured "following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization" who had "debunked" the claim.

Meanwhile,

A professor with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has said that there is a general dismissal of the fact that more than half of all Americans have developed natural immunity to the coronavirus and that it constitutes “one of the biggest failures of our current medical leadership.”

Dr. Marty Makary made the comments during a recent interview, noting that “natural immunity works” and it is wrong to vilify those who don’t want the vaccine because they have already recovered from the virus.

Makary criticised “the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history” for not clearly communicating the scientific facts about natural immunity compared to the kind of immunity developed through vaccines.

Even s few months ago, doctors who made public statements outside the received narrative risked professional repercussions, including loss of license. But the high water mark of the panic has clearly fallen short of vaccine passports.

Even Michigan Gov Whitmer, one of the most vocal moral entrepreneurs in the panic, was forced to relax a few of her COVID restrictions when a photo showed her violating them herself:

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration on Monday rescinded a rule that limits restaurant tables to no more than six people, a day after she apologized for ignoring the COVID-19 regulation while gathering with friends at an East Lansing bar.

The Democratic governor has said tables at the Landshark Bar & Grill were pushed together as more people arrived in her party of roughly a dozen fully vaccinated people.

A revised gatherings and face mask order, issued by the state health department, no longer includes the six-patrons-per-table provision, effective June 1. Whitmer had announced last week the planned easing of capacity restrictions on June 1 but had not specified if other changes would be coming in the new order, which was released as expected Monday.

Vaccines continue to be more effective than had been predicted. As of Tuesday, half the US population is "fully vaccinated", COVID statistics continue to drop, and states continue to eliminate all or most restrictions. California will drop nearly all mask and social distance restrictions on June 15, a little over two weedks away.

This amounts to a major readjustment in public attitudes. I think it's becoming more clear that, as public assent in the form of face masks to a particular set of moral panic assumptions disappears, questions about the performance of elites in the crisis will become acceptable. For instance,

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) introduced the Fauci Incompetence Requires Early Dismissal Act around the same time, saying in a statement, “Dr. Fauci represents everything that President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address: the scientific-technical elite steering the country toward their own ends.”

The final phase of a moral panic is the morning after.