The United Kingdom is usually following the lead of the United States, but it’s time for that script to flip, at least this one time.

On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that face masks will no longer be mandatory and that Covid-19 “passports” will be dropped. Mandatory COVID-19 passes will not be needed to gain entry to large-scale events beginning Jan. 27, and face masks will no longer be legally required anywhere in England as of that day.

“We will trust the judgment of the British people and no longer criminalize anyone who chooses not to wear one,” Johnson said.

“There will soon come a time when we can remove the legal requirement to self-isolate altogether, just as we don’t place legal obligations on people to isolate if they have flu,” he added.

Think about that for a moment. “We will trust the judgement of the… people.” Imagine if the United States would take such an approach. Imagine if the politicians and public health officials calling the shots would face reality, like the UK is, and admit that Covid-19 is not being stopped, there is nothing to do about it other than perhaps get vaccinated, and there is no reason why the country should be hamstrung by restrictions any longer.

“There’s a vital need now for greater consistency in how we live with the virus in the longer term. Swinging back and forth between restrictions and normality has been damaging,” said Matthew Fell, chief policy director of the Confederation of British Industry, the Associated Press reported.

He’s exactly right. We need to learn to deal with the virus as a long-term, endemic problem, not a short-term, temporary issue. We went from 2 weeks to flatten the curve to 500 days to flatten the curve. When will they face reality?

Sadly, I think the answer might be never, or at least not until the people leading the country are booted out of office. The Democrats are tied to their Covid-19 policies. It was recently widely acknowledged that the face masks we’ve been wearing don’t work. Did they tell anyone to stop wearing them? Did they at least tell children that they no longer have to be worn at school? No. They doubled down and are now talking about making children wear N-95 masks at school.

They can’t back away from their position that draconian steps must remain in place to fight the virus. If they do that, it’s an admission that everything they’ve done and called for until now was stupid and not in the best interests of individuals or the US as a whole.

They will never admit that. So they will just keep doubling down until they’re voted out.