Per a new report, the White House is preparing to surrender on COVID. What exactly the word “surrender” means in this context is up for some debate, but I’ve got some thoughts on the matter.
To get us there, though, the Biden administration is laying the groundwork to make the case for living with the coronavirus. That’s in stark contrast to the lofty promises Joe Biden made during the 2020 election, namely, that he’d “shut down the virus.”
So is the administration actually surrendering to the virus itself? I wouldn’t say that because there was never any reality where we eradicated a virus that is clearly endemic and seasonal. “Winning” against COVID always looked like developing therapeutics that allowed humanity to coexist with it. And given the waning efficacy of the vaccines and the fact that they don’t stop infection, they are basically a type of therapeutic at this point.
But what the Biden administration is surrendering on is the pie in the sky notion that if everyone gets vaccinated, that COVID will cease to exist. We’ve known for a long time that the vaccinated both spread the coronavirus and contract it. In light of that reality, the situation has now become so untenable that the White House simply can’t continue to pretend that their lies about the vaccines and transmission are true any longer. I’ve lost count of how many times Biden claimed in the past that if you got vaccinated, you wouldn’t get COVID. That talking point is dead, and for the record, it was never factual.
Then there’s the political part of this. Biden spent all of 2020 insisting he had the plan to beat COVID. He was going to shut down the virus, stop the spread, and lead us into a new era of prosperity. Putting aside arguments about election security, Biden took office almost solely because he made those promises to a naive public. He’s now broken them, and the president is left having to concede to his critics that they were right.
Those of us that have been saying for almost two years that we needed to stop with the lockdowns and fantasies about eradicating COVID and let people live their lives were right. Those that said we needed to prioritize treatments and not just vaccines because the virus is going to become a seasonal event were right. Joe Biden and all the rest of the COVID hysterics who were too busy accusing people of killing grandma instead of thinking rationally were wrong. All of those who attacked Donald Trump by pretending there was some simple solution to COVID that Biden would enact were wrong.
In short, this entire administration is a sham. They promised heaven and delivered hell. And while you can expect them to once again try to blame others, no one should let them forget how badly they failed here.