Is the left-wing journalistic establishment finally willing to admit we told them so?
In the final weeks of 2021, numerous prominent personalities in the mainstream media dialed back former alarmist attitudes toward COVID-19, insisting instead that the virus is endemic and Americans must learn to live with it without letting their lives be dominated by it — a case many on the Right have been making all along.
On December 19, CNN’s Brian Stelter said on Reliable Sources that, in many media circles, there is now an “acceptance” that everyone in the country will at some point be infected by COVID-19.
“The definition of cases is changing,” Stelter said. “With a highly transmissible variant, there are many, many, many cases…. With this inevitability about more and more and more cases, what’s the better metric to be using? How should we be evaluating the fight against COVID?
“Since we’re hearing about schools closing again, we collectively took action to protect the elderly in 2020. Now, shouldn’t we be doing more to protect children by letting them live normal lives? Are we really going to let the kids suffer even more?”
At around the same time, fellow CNN commentator Chris Cillizza lamented on Twitter that he has come to realize getting vaccinated won’t necessarily prevent him from contracting the virus, causing him to adjust to life accordingly.
Cillizza wrote: “Because the reality is — and has always been even if I didn’t realize it — that the vaccines don’t, really, prevent you from getting the virus. Or, at least, they don’t guarantee it won’t happen.”
He added, “According to all the available data, it’s doing its job (preventing serious illness and death among those infected). But it can never do what I had hoped: Ensure no one I loved will become infected. My work now is getting used to that reality. I realize I am way behind lots of other people in doing that. But, you have to start somewhere.”
Chris Hayes of MSNBC had a similar take on Wednesday, likening COVID-19 to the seasonal flu: An illness that, while not good, does not need to completely alter Americans’ lives.
“The risk went from something that we hadn’t really dealt with specifically like this before in our lifetimes — we hadn’t quite had an illness this infectious and this possible to cause serious illness — to something that does look more like the flu. The flu of course can still be dangerous ,,, but we don’t orient our lives around the flu. So that’s closer to the level of risk that 200 million Americans … are now dealing with,” Hayes said.
He added that the “sheer exhaustion” for Americans had changed the “politics of the pandemic.”
The sentiments were echoed by two of Biden’s staunchest apologists in the mainstream media: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin.
“You see how difficult this is for this administration. I mean, I’m a Fauci groupie,” Wallace said December 27. “I’m a thrice-vaccinated, mask adherent. I buy KN95 masks by the, you know, caseload. They’re in every pocket. I wear them everywhere except when I sit down, and I am certain that this is not a variant I can outrun.”
“As we recognize that covid-19 is not a deadly or even severe disease for the vast majority of responsible Americans, we can stop agonizing over ‘cases’ and focus on those who are hospitalized or at risk of dying,” Rubin tweeted.
Rubin had previously been vociferous in criticizing Republicans whom she felt were not taking the virus seriously enough.
The shift in attitude from the media personalities is in lockstep with recent messaging from the White House. As a candidate, Biden vowed to “shut down” the virus, but infections have continued to rise under his administration. He has now said there is “no federal solution” to COVID-19, asserting “this gets solved at a state level.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even lowered its recommended quarantine time for asymptomatic people with COVID-19 from 10 days to five days.
“We’re getting to the point now where … it’s about severity,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said earlier this month. “It’s not about cases. It’s about severity.”
Could it be that the “pandemic” has outlived its usefulness in helping the Establishment rid themselves of Donald Trump, and thus they see no use in continuing to stoke the hysteria as evidence countering the prevailing narrative continues to pour in?
Moreover, as it becomes clear Biden can’t just magically wave a magic wand and stop a virus as he promised, the media has to tone down the alarmism to keep “their guy” from looking bad. “Things are going back to normal thanks to Biden” is the new talking point.
