The Pandemic is Dead - Long Live the Pandemic
Like Malaria, Things May Seem Better But You'll Always Have It
Thanks again to American Thinker for running this piece. You can visit the website at: https://www.americanthinker.com/ . Subscribers may notice this topic was briefly touched upon two days, but I thought it best to expand upon the issue.
On Sunday, September 18, 2022, President Joe Biden declared the COVID pandemic over.
He managed to be – for him – relatively coherent, though making this momentous announcement while walking through an empty car show with a “60 Minutes” reporter seemed to ratchet down the importance of the statement.
Ending something that caused so many deaths and massive societal, economic, political, and personal disruption for two and a half years (as long as the Crimean War) with essentially a throw-away line jumbled in with other Biden gems – inflation is not so bad, unemployment down, Trump is evil, I may or may not run for re-election, we will send troops to defend Taiwan, and something about pudding (really) – is as surprising as it is belittling to the suffering inflicted.
One would think the administration would want to shout the end of the pandemic from the rooftops, claim it as a huge victory, and bask in the glow of the return to normalcy – so why the “oh, by the way…” approach?
A few reasons – first, by this point the overwhelming majority of Americans personally declared the pandemic over months, if not years, ago, so maybe a period makes more sense than an exclamation point. That, of course, is a generous interpretation and is predicated that Biden knew what he was doing and that his administration was on-board with the idea prior to announcement, facts that are, at best, in dispute.
Another “soft landing” reason may be that those who remain obsessed by COVID – the vast majority of which are Biden supporters – may not want to loudly hear that their raison d’etre may no longer be valid. Just as a person would rather be told to lose weight quietly and privately rather than having it broadcast over the loudspeaker at a football game, this move may soften the blow a bit, allowing for extra processing and transition time. It also helped these people that Biden did mention that work still needs to be done, etc.
An example of this possibility could be found in the reaction of University of California – San Francisco Dr. Bob Wachter, a physician that has pushed the hardest of hard COVID lines and as recently as three weeks ago compared people who go maskless in public to reckless drivers said yesterday – after the announcement – that he is now ready to dine indoors again. Follow the science, indeed.
That being said, many many people who have built their lives around COVID and trusting the experts and the SCIENCE and feeling better than other people because they care enough to continue to double mask no matter what and who really really enjoyed the spotlight and getting to wield extra power are not pleased with the announcement from the man they voted for – see here
In other words, cult members get rather irked when they are told the date they were promised the world was going to end has been changed.
Whether or not this announcement – pending it being modified, massaged, muddied by White House staff and the ever vigilant and utterly trusted CDC and NIH – will actually change anything on the ground is unclear. Will Governor Gavin Newsom finally end California’s state of emergency; will other overly empowered politicians – politicians for the most part of the very blue persuasion – do as well?
The declaration also brings up other questions. Will the New York City teachers fired less than two weeks ago – or anyone else fired over the past 30 months- for not getting vaccinated get their jobs back? Or was the vaccination demand made upon millions of Americans more about control than public health? In other words, demanding vaccinations was a very simple – and subtle and legal(ish) if not at all ethical – way to determine which employees were the most willing to be obedient and follow orders – any orders, not just COVID-related strictures – and was used as a justifiable way to get rid of people who cannot be counted upon to automatically tow the line in any circumstance.
It also raises the question of legal and programmatic impacts. While what Biden says on TV is not actually “law” (thank God!), the statement is causing concern amongst numerous groups that have done - and could continue to do - quite well by the pandemic. The pharmaceutical companies have a whole bunch of booster shots they need to get paid for, thousands of different laws and regulations around the nation must either be repealed (be leery if they are merely suspended), and COVID-based programs like eviction suspension and even the zillion dollar student debt bailout (the White House’s wafer thin legal reasoning on that prograam is entirely based on COVID) have to be re-visited.
And, of course, the timing. The declaration of COVID being over comes seven weeks before the mid-term elections , early enough to influence voters – even, in most states, those who vote by mail – but late enough that rolling back any remaining COVID-related voting system changes – drop boxes, ballot harvesting, default vote-by-mail, etc. – is impossible. These changes served Biden and the Democrats very extremely very super well in 2020 and they are clearly hoping they will do so again in November.
One thing that will never be over is the lesson learned by the nation’s power structure – pandemics are extremely convenient ways to impose societal restrictions that would be typically unthinkable.
So, the pandemic is dead, but long live the pandemic!