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The omicron era has begun, and with it the same political arguments that have grown as tiresome and troubling as the coronavirus itself.
Joe Biden isn’t doing enough! Joe Biden is doing too much! The Democrats are just looking for an excuse to lock down the country. The Republicans don’t care about people dying.
And maybe the whole thing is just a hoax!
Plus, Anthony Fauci is an evil guy who wants to give people shots forever. And can we please stop with the Nazi references?
The measures that the president announced Thursday won’t stop omicron, which is basically impossible, but could limit its spread. These include more vaccination sites, available boosters for all adults (which should have been done months ago), at-home virus tests covered by insurance and mandatory testing for international travelers.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021. (Associated Press)
"It's a plan that I think should unite us," Biden said. "I know Covid-19 has been very divisive in this country, has become a political issue, which is a sad, sad commentary."
And here’s the contrast: Donald Trump, calling in Thursday to "Fox & Friends," said the vaccines work well but "people don’t want to take them because they don’t trust Biden, they don’t trust the administration."
There is so much we don’t know about omicron, which has now surfaced in 30 countries, with several confirmed cases in the U.S. Is it more deadly than the delta variant? Would existing vaccines offer some protection? Would boosters help?
Donald Trump and Joe Biden. (Associated Press)
Sure, many media accounts offer these and other caveats. And we now know that cases in South Africa doubled in 24 hours. But any notion that we were going to beat this thing into submission — with 40% of Americans not fully vaccinated — was a fantasy.
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As National Review puts it: "Sacrifices that may have been manageable or policies that may have been defensible for a short period of time are much more unrealistic when the time frame becomes indefinite. And the existence of omicron suggests that ‘indefinite’ is now the reality."
The Atlantic, weighing the pros and cons of the variant being powerful or mild: "In the next few weeks, we’ll find out whether omicron will have its own silver lining--or whether it’ll be catastrophically worse."
Meanwhile, every utterance by a public official gets amplified beyond recognition. As journalist James Surowiecki tweeted, "Fauci can't win. He said it was possible we might need annual boosters, but that ‘the honest answer is we don't know what's going to be required.’ So he was acknowledging uncertainty and offering possible outcomes. And it still generates scare headlines."
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The Daily Mail: "Fauci warns Americans might need to get Covid booster EVERY YEAR." Except he didn’t.
President Biden speaks about the COVID-19 variant named omicron, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Nov. 29, 2021, in Washington. (Associated Press)
The media’s retreat to partisan broadsides suggests a belief that the only way to get ratings is to pump up or tick off your side. And even the restrained accounts, sprinkled with appropriate caveats, can feel overwhelming when they fill the front pages and hourly newscasts day after day.
In media terms, omicron is going viral. We’ll have to see what the virus itself does.
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