Cooper Lifts Mask Mandates, Doubles Down On Vaccine Pressure

RALEIGH – Governor Roy Cooper and Health Czar Dr. Mandy Cohen announced Friday afternoon that statewide mask mandates would be lifted. The move comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated guidance on masks for the vaccinated. Social distancing restrictions will also be lifted.

The mandate removal is intended for the vaccinated, but Cooper admitted upon questioning that there’s nothing stopping non-vaccinated individuals from taking off the mask and no way for him to enforce the two-tiered system.

Despite Cooper’s insistence that we are not out of the woods, still hyping the hysteria over ‘more contagious strains,’ many will see news of the mask mandates being eliminated and rightly view it as a pivotal event; a turn toward normalcy.

It comes after more than a year of edicts from the executive mansion that saw North Carolinians shelter in place, stay home from work, heed curfew, close their business, fear the grocery store, watch their kids languish out of school, and prohibited from much of what constituted life not that long ago.

Yet, make no mistake, Cooper is not relenting as much as it may appear at first blush. While his cover was blown by the CDC, Cooper is still relentless in his push for vaccination. He and Cohen say they eventually want way more than two-thirds of North Carolina vaccinated, to reach a comfortable level of protection, as if those who have had COVID and therefore have natural active immunity don’t exist.

And even though Cooper reluctantly admitted he’s now powerless to distinguish and force masks upon the non-vaccinated, he openly lobbies the business sector to continue their enforcement role, and social pressure overall, to coerce more people into vaccination.

This is precisely the form of societal enforcement that vaccine passports aimed to impose. Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that the Left hasn’t made much progress here in North Carolina with such a regime, but that’s not to say they haven’t tried. This press conference was a window into how they will continue to try, in subtle and not so subtle ways, to maintain a fear and compliance regime with future ‘guidance’ upon which the mainstream media and corporate interests can act with a knowing wink and nod.

It’s not insignificant that the most redundant part of the press conference was Cooper’s  constant reiterations that the non-vaccinated are still in danger, and are a danger.

The mask mandate may be gone; but the pressure campaign is still building.

In that sense, not much is changing.

Watch the full press conference below: