It's hard to believe it has been more than six years since COVID turned American life upside down. For those of us on the right, the pandemic isn't a distant memory we've quietly filed away. It's a warning. Lockdowns, school closures, vaccine mandates, censorship of dissenting doctors — all of it happened in the name of "protecting the population," and much of it turned out to be built on lies. Dr. Anthony Fauci misled the public about the origin of the virus, whether masks actually worked, and the risks associated with COVID vaccines. Once you know that, you don't just move on. You stay skeptical of the next expert who tells you to shut up and comply.
That's exactly why the left, with plenty of help from a compliant media, has been trying to sand down the sharp edges of what really happened during COVID.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz found himself on the receiving end of that effort Sunday on Face the Nation, where he defended the idea that parents should be allowed to question, delay, or seek exemptions from vaccine requirements for their own kids.
"We already experienced what happened during COVID when we took away that right from parents," Oz said. "They were forced to give their kids COVID vaccines."
Host Margaret Brennan disputed that characterization. "They were not forced to give their kids COVID vaccines," she shot back. Oz didn't blink. "They were pushed hard and oftentimes hindered from doing what they wanted to do, like going out socially, if their kids were not included in these programs," he said.
This is all very true, depending on what state you lived in, anyway.
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Brennan insisted that there was no federal mandate, and technically, she's right. There wasn't one. But that's a convenient dodge, and Oz called it out.
"It's not up to the state. It's not up to the federal government. It's up to the state. States do this," he said.
And states did. California tried to implement its own COVID vaccine mandate. Local school districts across the country imposed their own requirement, and while many didn’t, lots hosted in-school vaccinations. Some states allowed minors to consent to the COVID vaccine. Some schools even vaccinated kids without parental consent, like in Maine and Vermont, which resulted in lawsuits. Dozens of colleges and universities made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for students, including plenty of minors under 18.
CBS’ Margaret Brennan says parents were never forced to give their kids COVID vaccines pic.twitter.com/KFTbpV2fsR
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) August 24, 2026
Pretending that these things didn’t happen doesn’t change the fact that they did. The pandemic may be over, but the left is counting on the public forgetting just how far the government reached into people's lives, and how many "trusted" officials looked the country in the eye and lied about it the whole time.
Sometimes, it would be nice to forget the pandemic ever happened. But the truth is, we should never forget what happened and what was forced upon us during that time because we should be intent on making sure it never happens again.
