The Headline: Adapting to the
virus
The sudden swerve is enough to give the reader
whiplash. Until Biden surrendered to
Covid, the press (and that includes the Virginian Pilot) were all about eradicating
the virus. Now suddenly, our press overlords tell us we have to live with it.
Better communication, guidance, testing, resolve all needed
to fight COVID-19.
Wait, are we going to fight it or learn to live with
it? Think the common cold or the
seasonal flu, both viral infections like Covid; do we constantly test for
these?
Just as the start of the new year provides individuals an
opportunity for a fresh start, the omicron variant of COVID-19 should encourage
public and health officials to rethink how our nation and our communities
battle this disease from now on.
The hope for eradicating COVID is gone. We must find ways to
manage the disease, to protect the vulnerable and to live with the virus in the
safest, most workable way possible.
Biden gives the OK to admit that the virus will be with
us and NOW the press decides that we must learn to live with it. Something that got you labeled a conspiracy
theorist mere weeks ago is now declared common sense. Many prominent
virologists said this a year ago but were branded “fringe” by the CDC , Dr. “I am SCIENCE” Fauci and their allies in
the press .
That should begin at the top. One year ago, President Joe
Biden rolled out a comprehensive national strategy for battling the virus. It
emphasized vaccinations, testing and other mitigation strategies, use of the
Defense Production Act, and efforts to open schools and businesses.
The Pilot doesn’t explain how Biden’s “comprehensive
national strategy” was any different from the plans developed by the previous administration. Vaccines were developed under the Trump
administration who also recommend looking for drugs to treat those who got
sick, used the Defense Production Act to build ventilators and personal
protective gear and advocated opening schools.
But that was in 2021 when the Pilot was blaming Covid on Trump and
advocating closing in-person learning in schools.
That strategy worked — until it didn’t.
Forget the fact that more people died under Biden than Trump.
COVID variants — first delta, then omicron — opened new
fronts in the war on this virus.
Viruses mutate so the variants were totally expected,
except to the Pilot’s editors. In fact,
viruses often mutate because of vaccines developed to manage the original
variant.
A stubborn reluctance to get the vaccine served as fuel for
that fire.
Blaming the unvaccinated is becoming more and more
laughable as the vaccinated are getting Covid despite getting the shot plus
one, two, many boosters. And it's begging to come out that the vaccinated are MORE likely to get the Omicron variant.
And political differences proved too polarizing for some
communities to overcome.
Right! Telling the people with natural immunity or who
had medical doubts about the vaccines that they were killing grandma was not
polarizing at all. Telling people who have their doubts about vaccinations that they would lose their jobs and could not leave their homes was not polarizing at all.
There are plenty of things the federal government should
have done better, especially when it comes to testing. It is also inexcusable
that Americans must translate instructions from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control about proper testing and quarantine procedures, and Biden’s December
announcement that his administration would provide rapid tests to Americans
free of charge came months too late.
Having a test to see what’s making you sick is a good
idea, but how testing is supposed to be THE key to adapting to the virus is
never made clear. If you test positive
for Covid but don’t get sick, what does that tell you? One thing it tells you is that Covid is not
nearly as deadly as the hysterics in the press pretended.
The strain of those failures is evident in Hampton Roads.
On Friday, Sentara Healthcare announced it would postpone
“all hospital-based non-emergent [sic] surgeries, procedures and diagnostic
testing” in order to handle the growing influx of patients infected with omicron.
A Chesapeake testing event scheduled for Monday was postponed for lack of staff
(again, thanks to COVID infections).
A real newspaper would ask Sentara just how busy their
facilities are with patients who are there because of the virus or because they
are there for other reasons but tested positive. In New Yor City emergency hospital facilities were
constructed, and hospital ships were deployed that were never
used. That influx of Covid patients
never happened even in the nation’s epicenter of Covid. Remember “two weeks to flatten the
curve?” Incidentally, how many of the
staffing problems were caused by firing staff who refused to get the shot?
It’s not just affecting health care. Schools are returning
to virtual learning because teachers or critical support staff — bus drivers,
in particular — are infected. Government agencies are shutting their doors
temporarily; Virginia Beach Department of Human Services was closed on Monday.
More will follow.
It’s simply not true that schools are closing because
teachers are infected. Teacher unions
are refusing to teach for a number of reasons.
Children are simply not in serious danger because of the virus. Teachers are not in serious danger because
they can be infected by students.
European schools have been operating regularly all through this
epidemic. But getting paid for not
working seems to be something that teachers like.
Some have called this the “D.I.Y. wave” of COVID because
Americans have been left to determine for themselves when to get tested (and
how to find a test), when to quarantine (and for how long), when to get a
booster (and where), when to wear a mask (and where it’s required), and so on.
This was once called freedom. People decding things for themselves. Evidently, our overlords don’t like this.
Two years into the global pandemic, you might think that
we’d be better at this. You’d hope that the self-proclaimed “greatest country
in the world” could come together to battle a virus that’s claimed more than
835,000 American lives.
The Virginian Pilot continues to parrot this claim of
deaths attributed to Covid. It's a lie and even the CDC is gradually forced to admit that
dying of Covid and dying with Covid are not the same thing. Apparently, the Pilot employs hysterics who form their opinions by watching “The View.”
We should be capable of providing clear, straightforward
guidance so Americans know what to do when faced with another wave of
infections, at providing the tools so people can make smart decisions to limit
the spread of disease, and at demonstrating the collective resolve needed to help
health care workers and health systems endure yet another wave of illness and
death.
Who is the “we” the Pilot talks
about? The American people have been willing to go along, or been bullied inbto going along, by institutions that have been revealed as liars. Incompetent liars whose lies have been spread by organs of disinformation like the Virginian Pilot.
The virus has evolved but we have not evolved with it.
At this point, we should be worried about hospitalizations
and deaths rather than case numbers, to better focus our concern on the
problem.
Again: who is the “we” the Pilot talks
about? Look at yourself in the mirror.
We should be making decisions about schools and businesses
based on factors such as community infection and vaccination rates, to make
every effort to keep them open and operational.
Who is the “we” the Pilot talks about? Is this the Pilot that every day advocates that schools should be closed and people wear masks indoors, outdoors and while driving alone in your car?
We should be focusing efforts on vaccination, testing and
mitigation measures (such as masks) but also improving ventilation and
rethinking how we use shared public spaces.
All efforts should be made to protect the vulnerable, but
our public policies will have to increase our capacity for risk.
We need better communication from elected officials — Biden,
yes, but also Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin as he prepares to take office and those
in local positions — as well as leaders in public health.
And we will need more from individuals, who shouldn’t need
government to tell them to wear a mask indoors, but who do it because it
protects themselves and others.
Another call for Covid theater. Masks, especially the masks people buy in the
story, don’t work to stop the virus.
It’s theater for the uninformed.
Thoughtful adaptation is our only way forward. All have a
role to play.
The role of the Virginian Pilot is to shut up and let
people make their own decisions about their own health care and stop spreading
fear and hysteria with fake data. How
about setting up a Truth Commission to force the press to admit the lies they
have spread, not just in the last two years but in the 4 years before
that. That may be the way for the press
to begin the long, slow road to rehabilitation in the eyes of the public. The nation needs a press it can trust, not a
press that spreads lies.
