This Year’s Halloween Will Expose Much of Our Reaction to Covid as an Anti-Science Political Charade

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As a father of two very social young daughters, there have been a lot of awful moments since March of 2020 thanks to our irrational overreaction to the pandemic, which has largely targeted children, the demographic which is least vulnerable to the actual virus. None has been more memorably infuriating than last Halloween, when my then three-year-old engaged in the first such holiday she will remember, and my then eight-year-old still had high hopes for what will probably end up being the last trick-or-treat that she will really care about.

Halloween in 2020, despite landing on a Saturday which should have made it special, was a horror show in all the wrong ways. The CDC “discouraged” traditional Halloween celebrations. Local health officials here in Southern California actually “canceled” Halloween, before, in response to public outrage, reverting to simply mirroring the CDC’s condemnation, leaving the children’s holiday trapped in a spooky limbo.

With no clear determination as to whether it was a “go” or “no go,” my kids went, as they always have, to their grandparent’s neighborhood in suburban Los Angeles, where traditionally the community goes all out, thus attracting hundreds of costumed families from miles away. We knew, and prepared our kids for the reality, that there would not be the normal festivities, but, with nearly half the houses fully decorated for Halloween, there was no reason to believe that it would be a total disaster… but it was.

Not only was there only a smattering of costumed kids on the usually packed streets, about 70% of the houses with decorations displayed and their lights on did not have candy to give away, and about half of those either never even answered their door, or almost literally slammed it in the faces of my distraught daughters. While some houses were quite nice and did their best to make up for the rest of the terrified neighborhood, my daughters will never forget so many people literally treating them as if they were somehow a mortal threat to their health.

To be clear, this was not nearly the worst thing which has, or will, happen to my daughters, but it was the needlessness of the destruction of something they will look forward to for only a handful of times in their lives which was such a travesty. Thankfully, I think I was probably more scarred by the rather depressing experience than they were.

Now we are just a couple of days from Halloween 2021, and it appears as if things are going to be much different this year, both here in California, and around the country. Lord Anthony Fauci has graciously blessed us all with the “safe” sign for this year’s trick-or-treating, and it appears that, while things may still not be absolutely perfect (I’m sure in liberal areas many houses will still be gun-shy to participate, or use the pandemic as an convenient excuse not to do so), it will be much better than it was in 2020.

But why?

I am thrilled that it appears my daughters will not have to endure another Halloween nightmare which has nothing to do with ghosts or goblins. However, it is quite baffling, and instructive, to consider on what possible basis the “experts” have given the thumbs-up this year, after having done everything they could to cut the skeletal legs out from Halloween just twelve months ago. On paper, there is little logic to this radical change in guidance, unless the basis for it is primarily political.

It may surprise even some avid news watchers to know that this week the US is averaging almost exactly the same number of “new cases” of Covid per day as we did last year, with about 400 more deaths per day (year-to-year, California is actually faring slightly worse in that comparison than even the nation is). The data differentials are far more dramatic if you consider the circumstances on the actual day each Halloween “decision” was publicly communicated, with there being well over TWICE as many new cases and deaths per day when Lord Fauci gave his blessing this year, as compared to when the CDC started to smash the metaphorical jack-o-lantern in later September of 2020.

Then there is the presence of the Delta variant, which we were told is more dangerous to children. This would obviously be an important factor against the conclusion that Halloween in 2021 is any safer than it would have been in 2020.

Obviously, the counter argument is that in 2020 we didn’t have anyone vaccinated, but that is where this situation gets really interesting. Clearly, the vast majority of trick-or-treaters, because they are under 12 years old, are NOT vaccinated. What’s more, we know that the vaccinated are still able to contract and spread the virus.

Given the numbers, it’s hard to make the argument that Halloween was less safe in 2020 that it is in 2021. Now, if there was an apology for unnecessarily making children suffer in 2020, you could argue that we learned the “experts” had no idea what the hell they were doing back then and are simply correcting their mistakes (you can make a very similar argument about restrictions on outdoor sports crowds), but unfortunately, no matter how many times the “expert” class gets something very wrong, the words “we are sorry for screwing up” are very clearly not in their vocabulary.

So, without an apology, and with little basis for such a dramatic shift in in policy, we are left to conclude that this decision was primarily political. In late October of 2020, we were days away from a presidential election, and it is highly doubtful that even a single person in power who sabotaged Halloween was not also an ardent critic of then President Trump. Now, with President Biden safely in office, these same liberal activists disguised as “health experts,” have suddenly decided that it is okay for kids to knock on a stranger’s door and interact with them outside for 5-10 seconds.

No matter how hard the news media tries to ignore it, if you wait long enough, the truth will always be exposed. For those with good memories and a keen eye for hypocrisy, Halloween 2021 tells us SO much about what has really happened over the past 19 months.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.