Everyone, it’s good news! The COVID-19/Omicron/BA.5 pandemic is apparently all over! Done! Gone! How can I know this? Because the Murdoch-owned fachrissakes editorial board New York PostIt is so. Why? Because President Biden is still living. “Biden’s mild COVID case is proof the pandemic is over, and everyone should stop pretending otherwise,” readsThe headline. All that’s missing is a “So there!” at the end.
I’m just going to splash this on the stoop and see if the cat licks it up… but isn’t it at least It is possibleThe president of the United States is recovering so well in part because he’s, well, the president of the United States? With immediate access the best health care COVID treatmentsWhat is the most dangerous place on the planet? This sounds reasonable, even though it is not realistic for a large number of people who do not have access to such health care. Then there is the New York Post doesn’t even begin to consider the fact that scores of people exist who have health conditions that render them severely immunocompromised and much more vulnerable to severe COVID than Biden.
“We wish the president a rapid recovery,” announcesThe editorial’s opening. “So far, it looks like his case is high-profile evidence that the pandemic is completely over — that Americans’ anti-coronavirus efforts should focus ExclusivelyTo get jabs to all who are needed and to treat any new cases as they arise. That means absolutely no mandates — not for mass masking and so on, and not even for vaccination (except perhaps for special cases such as those who care for the elderly).”
Ah, the masks! Ye gods and little fishes, bedeviled masks! Band-Aid technology has never been able to disintegrate such a diverse group of wannabe tough men. Do the people on this page agree? Post ed board understand that one of the reasons this nightmare has dragged on for so long is because Donald Trump — aided and abetted by conservative news outlets owned by Mr. Murdoch — went out of their way to shit-talk the use of masks because Trump thought they made him look weak?
The unconscionable behavior of this epidemic led to increased infection rates and the rise in international variants. These variants are now strong enough to escape the masks. Daily infection rates are still in the thousands. That’s not “over” by even the most wildly irresponsible metric. It’s a perfect circle.
Trump has been shouting about Jesus a lot lately. Fox News empire has long fashioned itself a Christian-friendly organization… but their line on masking is yet another example of their hypocrisy. Protecting others was a major reason for masking. From you in case you have COVID and don’t know it. To put it another way, wearing the mask was a small sacrifice that you made in order to help your neighbor. Unless I am mistaken, that is pretty much what Christianity is about. It’s amazing how hypocritical this is.
“Even as many of our policymakers have focused on deaths,” writesKevin Kavanagh Infection Control Today, “long COVID-19 is continuing to take a toll on society by impacting multiple organ systems. Long COVID-19 is found in 30% to 70% of COVID-19-treated patients. It can also have a devastating effect on the heart and other organs. Also, long COVID-19 is responsible for approximately doubling COVID-19 deaths with 8.39 per 1000 additional deaths occurring after the acute infection.”
And after hearing this, we are supposed to accept that COVID is “over”?
“Hospitals across the country are grappling with widespread staffing shortages, complicating preparations for a potential Covid-19 surge as the BA.5 subvariant drives up cases, hospital admissions and deaths,” reports Krista Mahr for Politico. “The current wave, in which the new number of patients hospitalized with Covid-19 has risen more than 40 percent in the last month, is also putting fresh stress on facilities as federal funding for the pandemic response is running out, leaving some with less flexibility to hire more staff if they need to…. ‘There is growing concern that this money has run out,’ said Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association. ‘It’s not really getting sufficient attention.’”
Over?
“All over, you say?” I wrote back in June. “Someone forgot to tell that to the preschool-aged son of my dear friend and colleague, a 4-year-old who presented with a viciously spiked fever over the weekend. As with nearly 4 million children in the U.S., my colleague’s child is susceptible to seizures if his temperature rises too high. He became unresponsive after the seizure and was rushed to the emergency department, which was fortunately able to accommodate him. As the medical staff worked to reduce his fever, the diagnosis arrived: COVID-19…. You really can’t peddle the ‘all this is behind us’ bullshit to my colleague with her son in the emergency room this weekend, or to my other coworker whose toddler contracted the virus in February and who had to sit up all night listening as their child labored to breathe.”
And then there’s this, the inconvenient weevil in the porridge: Me, and the millions like me who deal with medical issues that leave us permanently open to being flayed by the virus. For me, it’s bad lungs, a gift from a prior bout of pneumonia. Many others are immunocompromised for a variety of reasons — cancer, heart disease, various disorders — and our lives get a little bit worse, a little bit smaller, a little bit more terrifying, every time a large media microphone coughs out another “reason” for people to let down their guard and act like this is over for everyone.
“This pandemic is Done,” proclaimsThe conclusion of the Post editorial, “and it’s not coming back. Fear is all we have to be afraid of. And anyone still pushing fear (status-seeking ‘experts,’ power-seeking pols, etc.) is almost certainly working an agenda that has nothing to do with your best interests.”
It was nice of them to end it with such a rich vein bullshit. “Working an agenda that has nothing to do with your best interests,” you say? I think I know what that’s like. That’s like working an anti-mask agenda to try and get a terrible Republican president reelected. That’s like working a viciously capitalist agenda to hurl unprotected workers into harm’s way so the owners and bosses can start making money again.
That’s the same crap we’ve been hearing from the same self-serving nonsense vectors almost since this whole thing began. It is dangerous and wrong all day.
