To the administration, the contrast between the in-group and out-group isn’t that one is rid of COVID. It’s that one has ‘done the right thing.’
By now, you’ve likely seen or heard the latest coronavirus messaging from the White House, which President Joe Biden is scheduled to talk about again later on Tuesday. The president gave the first doomsday message for the unvaxxed, COVID response chief Jeff Zients repeated it, and chief of staff Ron Klain doubled down on it, so the comments were no slip of the tongue. This is the administration’s official line.
“We are intent on not letting omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated. You’ve done the right thing, and we will get through this. For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm,” Zients said, one day after Biden made nearly identical comments.
This messaging is problematic for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is its remarkable ability to further harden 50 percent of the country against the so-called “unity” president, who has shaped up to be leagues more divisive than his predecessor.
But buried under the latest “dark winter” threat is an admission from the Biden White House that its detractors have been right about its aims all along. The contrast between the in-group and the out-group isn’t that one is rid of the virus while the other isn’t. The difference is that one has “done the right thing.”
In fact, the message for the vaccinated seems to assume omicron infections as a foregone conclusion. It assures the vaxxed that the administration is there to help make their lives easier, omicron or not, because they’ve done the righteous thing by falling in line with the White House’s vaccine goals.
Frankly, it makes sense to assume widespread omicron infections regardless of vaccination status. Breakthrough cases are the new norm, with plenty of high-profile Democrats, including Jen Psaki, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren, among those statistics. That’s because, as we’ve known for a while now, the vaccinated can still get COVID. They can still spread COVID. And they can still be hospitalized with COVID.
What doesn’t make sense, then, is the insistence that remaining unvaccinated is a death sentence. For behind all the hysterical fearmongering, many people who have not gotten the jab will not come anywhere near “severe illness and death” this Christmas, nor are they more of a risk than the vaxxed to others, nor will they be overwhelming hospitals.
If the administration’s “dark winter” threats are intended for young people of a healthy weight without preexisting conditions, for instance, they’re a bald-faced lie. A vaccine can’t decrease a person’s chance of death any lower than 0.001 percent. And judging by the fact that the warning was in the context of disrupting “work and school,” this is exactly the demographic the White House is barking at.
It’s here that the White House can no longer cling to its “pandemic of the unvaccinated” talking point. The data flatly debunks it. Instead, it must differentiate the groups not by who is getting and spreading the virus, but by who has “done the right thing.”
This is all to be expected, of course, because it’s part of the same pandemic theater we’ve been subjected to with masks and distancing. Aside from the most at-risk groups (who have had plenty of time to get vaccinated), vaccine pushes for those not at risk have the same flavor as mask mandates that permit those ubiquitous homemade cloth face coverings.
In both cases, the science is pretty clear. Unvaxxed young, healthy people and those with natural immunity are well protected from serious COVID, and masks don’t really work unless they’re specific kinds like N-95s (which the mask mandates never differentiate between or require). Yet the Biden administration and other bureaucrats want you to get vaxxed and mask up — science be damned.
If it hasn’t been clear in the last two years, it should be clear now: The forever pandemic and all the nasty rules that come with it aren’t about “shutting down the virus,” “following the science,” “slowing the spread,” “flattening the curve,” or being “all in this together.” They’re about doing the Democrat-prescribed “right thing.”