Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily podcast.

today is Monday, January 25th, 2021. I am John Pudhord. It's the editor of commentary with me as always.

Senior writer Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine. Hi John. Associate editor, Noah Rothman. Hey, Noah.

Hi John. And executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe. Hi John.

Okay, we've got a lot of COVID confusion out there. A lot of COVID confusion.

Is everything getting worse or things actually getting better? Because to hear the Biden

administration talk about it, things are terrible and they're not going to get better and we are

heading into a terrible destructive horrible period. But the stats say otherwise. The stats

actually seem to suggest that the peak horror of the last couple of weeks is actually now heading

into decline. And I note that as I read some of the public health guidance from our friends in

the public health industry, once again, the rationale for masks is shifting. You'll remember that

first we had to wear masks to stop the spread. Then we had to wear masks to protect our front line

workers. Now we have to wear, you know, now then you have to wear masks just to wear masks to

stop the spread in general. And now you have to wear masks because this is the only way to keep

the variants from spreading. So we have a kind of constantly shifting rationale for the need

for masking at all times. Whereas we could just say don't give me any rationales like here's how

it is until we've hit 70% herd immunity. Everybody should wear a mask. Period. Don't start telling me

that there's a 17th reason that you need to wear a mask because I then don't know that I believe

do the other 16 times. If you're going to say, oh, and here's another great reason to wear a mask.

It's like, it's like why you shouldn't smoke. So you shouldn't smoke because it's going to be

lung cancer. It's you shouldn't smoke because it's going to give your sister lung cancer. You

shouldn't smoke because it's going to give people with asthma more asthma. You know, it's like

...