Tuesday’s Biden Covid Speech – Desperately Seeking a Pandemic Exit Strategy
But likely to double down on what hasn’t worked.
Last week, I began pondering why a spate of articles from progressive publications questioning the need for pandemic policies they have cherished for nearly two years.
The New York Times brought up a salient and critical point I noted back in early 2020 about the need for enhanced ventilation
The influx of such analyses makes sense: Biden is reportedly eyeing a pandemic exit strategy.
… Biden and his team have all but ruled out new lockdowns, and behind the scenes, administration officials have been debating how to shift public attention from the total number of cases — which appear likely to surge, even if many are mild — toward the number of severe infections that are overloading health systems and causing interruptions to normal life.
Some of Biden’s advisers are encouraging the administration to begin discussing publicly how to live alongside a virus that shows no signs of disappearing, a potentially stark shift in messaging for a White House that once touted “freedom from the virus.”
Steering public attention away from the total number of infections and toward serious cases only — as some Biden advisers have encouraged — could prove a challenge after nearly two years of intense focus on the pandemic’s every up and down. It is a part of a growing conundrum that Biden faces as the Covid-19 pandemic refuses to abate.
“We’re getting to the point now where … it’s about severity,” said Xavier Becerra, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, in a meeting with reporters this week. “It’s not about cases. It’s about severity.”
Along with many other biosafety professionals, I have often cited the need to focus on the infection fatality rate. While it is difficult to calculate with COVID19, as many asymptomatic people and deaths should be attributed to another cause are listed as COVID19 fatalities, it is reasonable to assume that in the worst case, it is on par with severe flu.
There are also other signs that the pandemic panic that has been imposed upon us is about to subside. The Wall Street Journal just published a piece entitled “The Fickle Science of Lockdowns.”
In it, authors Phillip W. Magness and Peter C. Earle of the American Institute for Economic Research assert that “experts foresaw before COVID that the current pandemic-response strategy would fail,” but “the authorities embraced it anyway.” They reviewed the lessons learned from the Spanish Flu and the Imperial College model used to press for lockdowns and came to a scathing conclusion.
…[L]ockdown stringency is a poor predictor of Covid-related mortality. Our examination of the 50 U.S. states and 26 countries found no discernible pattern connecting the two—a basic expectation if lockdowns performed as “the science” often insists.
So why did public-health authorities abandon their opposition to lockdowns? Why did they rush to embrace the untested claims of flawed epidemiological modeling? One answer appears in the Johns Hopkins study from 2019: “Some NPIs, such as travel restrictions and quarantine, might be pursued for social or political purposes by political leaders, rather than pursued because of public health evidence.”
Yes. There were elections to win and Trump to smear…so sacrifices had to be made.
The Atlantic continued its recent trend of pandemic policy questioning by publishing a piece that analyzed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s assertion that schools without mask mandates have triple the risk of COVID outbreaks. It appears that that claim is based on poor science.
How did research with so many obvious flaws make its way through all the layers of internal technical review? And why was it promoted so aggressively by the agency’s director? I reached out to Walensky’s office to ask about the study, noting its evident limitations and outlier result. How, if at all, does this research figure into the agency’s continuing guidance for schools around the country? The CDC did not respond to my inquiries.
With Biden in the White House, the CDC has promised to “follow the science” in its COVID policies. Yet the circumstances around the Arizona study seem to show the opposite. Dubious research has been cited after the fact, without transparency, in support of existing agency guidance. “Research requires trust and the ability to verify work,” Ketcham, the ASU public-health economist, told me. “That’s the heart of science. The saddest part of this is the erosion of trust.”
Given the continuing projections that 2022 will be a robust year of victory for the Republican Party, the Democrats and their bureaucratic supporters are going to regret all their decisions…both on the president and the pandemic.
Personally, I find it fascinating that articles in leading publications are now questioning lockdown effectiveness and school mask mandates, which would have got them booted from social media six months ago.
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He should be contemplating his own exit strategy.
I don’t think he does much, if any, contemplating these days.
Vanilla or banana? Such are the deep questions he ponders these days.
Hey, trailer-trash Jill: careful what you wish for.
She wishes Kamala would kick the bucket. Kamala is gnawing at the bit. Makes her nervous.
Kamala should be careful what she is wishing for.
I’d say she’d be a disaster as a president, but the disaster would be ours. Despite what the low-life thinks, it’s not all about ‘her’.
That’s a fine report!
What a corrupt, treasonous scumbag.
The standard Democrat response to a failing effort is to do more of it.
If gun control doesn’t bring down the homicide rate, enact more gun control.
If welfare payments don’t eliminate poverty, give away more money.
If affirmative action doesn’t result in “equity,” then use more effective discriminatory measures.
So if vaccinating, masking indoors, and shutting down business doesn’t stop the WuFlu, then find more places to mask, more businesses to shut down, and make people get more shots.
If welfare payments don’t eliminate poverty, give away more money.
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You do know you’re dealing with the American public don’t you? Group stupidity is a hallmark of their voting for tax increases.
Especially schools, they are a favorite of mine. The battle cry is “It’s for the children”, the hushed part is “It’s really 95% for teachers pensions”.
If more criminals on the street doesn’t reduce crime, then release even more criminals onto the street. It’s not a coincidence that when our jails and prisons were emptied due to ‘equity’ and pandemic reasons, crime increased precipitously particularly in our urban areas.
There is precedent in this administration: unconditional surrender, a viral apology (to the Wuhan, Indian, South African, etc. variants), [long-term, diverse] immunity impairment, and, of course, the baba “burdens”. Add a Roe rite held in a sanctuary state h/t California, and this is a regime for affordable, available forward-looking “healthcare”.
There is no clean way FJB can get out of this without getting squared with the science and that will require that he admit a lot of difficult truths like… the pandemic was over more than a year ago, like September 2020. I don’t know how he then dodges all of the phony data and fear porn but it would be a big step forward if he firsts fired Fauci, Welensky and the entire advisory team. In fact, shut it down completely.
Surely they can find some narrative where he was ill-served by that crew (even if it exonerates Trump from all of the lies) and is now only concerned on getting on the right path. He will come off much better just admitting it was a mistake and taking the flak for ending it.
Yeah, fat chance. I’m sure Trump will get blamed instead.
The media will dutifully just start reporting on all the “lives saved” by the vax and boosters
Trump was still in office in September 2020.
He could have done something.
what pandemic?
Exactly. Because of all of this jabbing with a vaccine that accomplished nothing else than hindering the virus’ natural path to herd immunity, 80% of the deaths are occurring among the vaccinated, even among countries and states who are the most vaccinated. The “vaccines” don’t work!
https://andmagazine.com/talk/2021/12/20/the-covid-vaccines-are-a-myth/
I’m feeling safe these days knowing I dodged having to take the poison poke. Heck, I probably got infected and didn’t know it. The poke is far more dangerous than the disease which has now mutated into the latest virus variant to join the common cold.
If it’s like an economic recession, looking back at previous-period conditions, I declared the EMERGENCY here in N.Y. State concluded last June.
a. We knew it wasn’t the deadly threat of the Black Plague.
b. We KNEW who the most vulnerable -by far – were (and still are).
(The former #CaesarCuomo reversed his disastrous nursing-home order the 2nd half of May, so HE knew.)
c. Not transmitted on surfaces. (So no more wiping down grocery bags.)
Couple of facts and my opinion:
1. Fact: Biden admin doesn’t want to lockdown
Opinion: They would not be able to recover politically from the economic impact of a lockdown. It would pull back the veneer message trumpeted by their media allies that Trump messed up the economy. We all know it was the lockdown and coming out of it with a vaccine that Trump developed brought it back rather than anything Biden did.
2. Fact: Biden admin doesn’t really give a crap about deaths unless it’s for political mudslinging.
Opinion: The numbers are low, but most of the people who will die are advanced in age, regardless of BMI. The demographics suggest these people are either conservative voters or don’t vote. Therefore, they aren’t useful to the left. Besides, when they die their votes can be rigged more easily.
Fact 1 may not take into account Cloward and Pevin window of opportunity. As a major politico in Massachusetts said… you can’t grow a new forest without burning down the old.
Fact 2: They have to prepare a contingency if (as early findings suggest), the shift in morbidity and mortality is toward the vaccinated. The swing is from either ADE to AID…. pick your poison. They NEED to recreate the electoral environment in 2022 and 2024 as they did in 2020.
Fact 3: Lock down gives democrats an excuse to push mail in ballots so people don’t have to go to the polls
It is more a question of can they do a lockdown? Many governors will not go along. They would have to resort to martial law.
These ghouls care about nothing but power. This is the beginning of a cynical ploy to convince the low information majority that there is a “return to normal” given poll numbers. It will merely be performative of course.
Power = money. It’s all about money.
More repression coming. Extremism grows when ideologues realize they are about to fail.
Prediction for the themes of this upcoming speech:
1. Patting the heads and a ‘good boy/girl’ to the 2x vaxed
2. Vax +booster = public virtue
3. Vax hesitancy cast as immoral and unpatriotic
4. Threats of ‘no fun of any kind’ for those who don’t comply
5. New $ pots for assisting compliance, loss of $ for refusal
6. Banal references to ‘were all in this together’ rhetoric
7. Likely no mention that there are zero US deaths from omicron
8. No mention that the vaxed are contracting and being hospitalized at a higher rate
9. No mention that naturally acquired immunity has a very real role to play in public policy recommendations
10. No mention of the % of those with severe Covid outcomes who are obese or elderly
11. No mention that more deaths occurred in less than one year under Biden than a full year under DJT
12. Some off script rambling
9a. and never, but never mention anything about the death rate among those with compromised immunity
They’ll eventually attribute deaths to Omicron. People only need to die ‘with’ it. Death from a heart attack with Omicron is an Omicron death.
Policy set by politicians and uttered by a demented fool. The new meaning of science.
I initially misread that, in haste, as “tool”. My apologies to you both.
The Imperial model was junk science personified
They will not give up power unless forced to do so.
They will attempt to lord over you everything but that which they can’t.
The federal balance of power may be at stake, but do not be fooled into thinking that Ca, Or, Wa, Ny or other fascist blue state governments and even more so county governments will yield their emergency powers. This will go on for a decade if they have their way. They will never be tossed out of office and they will NOT give up this new power over their enemies.
I am grateful for the past 2 years as I have no illusions of the depths of depravity and insanity in the enemy and who they are. The vail and illusion that these people are not evil is gone. They are every bit as evil as Lenin’s/Stalin’s goons. The fact that you are seeing sadistic language about making things difficult for the unvaccinated is EXACTLY who these people are and the Soviet Union at its worst is their exact goal.
“Overloading health systems’.
Jesus fucking Christ.
AT NO POINT in this entire ‘pandemic’ has ANY HOSPITAL, ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES, been ANYWERE CLOSE to being ‘overloaded’ by Covid.
With the exception of city-run hospitals in NYC, which are mostly shitshows 24/7/365 already. That’s why so much COVID panic porn was filmed in Elmhurst Hospital.
Here is proof for how insidiously dishonest today’s CDC is:
https://www.citizensjournal.us/the-cdc-suddenly-changes-the-definition-of-vaccine-and-vaccination/
I’ve brought this up a couple of times in the past few weeks but here it is again:
Old definition (universal) of “vaccine”
” Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.
Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.
Immunization: A process by which a person becomes protected against a disease through vaccination. This term is often used interchangeably with vaccination or inoculation.”
New CDC definition:
” Immunity: Protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.
Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response [no immunity] against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.
Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection [no immunity] from a specific disease.
Immunization: A process by which a person becomes protected against a disease through vaccination. This term is often used interchangeably with vaccination or inoculation.”
If these genetic experiments are not vaccines and are already producing serious side effects, where are the scientists to protect us from these evil people? Paging Klaus Schwab!
I think it’s much more a ‘continuation strategy’ rather than an ‘exit strategy.’ Ending the ‘pandemic’ does nothing to help them consolidate their power.
Ignore ‘cases’ and only count deaths ‘from’ Covid and suddenly the pandemic will be over.
The case counts are meaningless. Especially considering how many false positives they are likely producing, Imagine if we tracked common cold cases this way.
And people dying from already fatal comorbidities who happen to also test positive for Covid on entry to the hospital, or after death, are not Covid deaths.
The power hungry control freak Marxists who created the pandemic can end it any time the want. The hard part is ending it without exposing their fraud and power grabs. Which will require even more lies. Lies on top of lies on top of lies.
The number of hospitalizations and fatalities from Covid , as opposed to the number of diagnosed cases , is the key which the legacy media and Democrats will never get because power is what they want and desire. Diagnosed cases range in severity and the treatment required-Hospitalizatons and fatalities are the true barometer of the range of the pandemic.
I don’t think they’re looking for any sort of exit strategy. These leftists thrive on perpetual crisis and intentionally stoked division. I’m thinking Biden is going to triple-down on the stupid worthless covid policies.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes even further, such as threatening to link vaccination status to Social Security Disability Benefits, etc. No shot, no money.
They have more problems…
https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/gates-fauci-and-daszak-charged-with-genocide-in-court-filing/article_76c6081c-61b8-11ec-ae59-7718e6d063ed.html
What time is he scheduled to speak? I see that some restaurants start the senior early bird dinner discounts as early as 3pm. The fiscal conservative that he is, it is safe to assume that he always cashes in on the specials to save our tax dollars. Yet what time does his nap usually end? His current meds seems to work better but may need an empty stomach to create a semblance of mental acuity. Please add the time to your article, I dont want to miss his next Lincoln-esque moment.
Actually, since the BBB debacle , DC restaurant maybe be calling them early lame duck specials these days.
There is no exit strategy. The pandemic will do what it is going to do, regardless of FJB. There is only a power grab strategy.
So this is the grand strategy he had for handling the virus, cut and run. Sounds like we have already executed this strategy, in Afghanistan.
Fauci saying that masks will be required forever on airlines doesn’t sound like an exit strategy to me, and I hear no rumblings about dropping Federal mask requirements at airports. I’m not getting on a flight until I can do so unmasked for the entire duration of the trip.