Chuck Todd, host of Meet the Press, took a turn being a guest on NBC’s Sunday Today. Todd is very concerned about the new COVID-19 variant impacting President Joe Biden’s political appeal. Honestly, if four people in Botswana having a cold and some people in South Africa experiencing fatigue and a mild cough are enough to torpedo your legacy, you never had one.
Host Willie Geist framed the issue for Todd, saying,
“So, the president took a few days off there in Nantucket and he comes back to this big legislative fight over the social spending package that passed through the House. Now that big mountain to climb in the Senate. And this new variant, we should underline what the doctors and the scientists are saying. We don’t know much about it yet. No documented cases in the United States, maybe we get lucky. We hope that it passes. But, it’s a reminder that COVID is with us and with this president while he tries to get other things done.”
There is so much wrong with this intro. First of all, health officials in Botswana and South Africa say the new variant, Omicron, is causing no symptoms or mild symptoms. Dr. Angelique Coetzee, a board member of the South African Medical Association, told The Telegraph:
“It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well,” Coetzee explained. “So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer the loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home.”
The Botswana Ministry of Health and Wellness also noted that the four cases detected were incidental testing for air travel. The travelers had no symptoms, and their contacts tested negative. What we do know is that the spike protein has undergone over 30 mutations.
Additionally, Barry Schoub, chairman of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19 Vaccines, told Sky News on Sunday that while the variant does appear to be spreading rapidly, there’s been no real uptick in hospitalizations. He also added that the high number of mutations might make the variant less virulent. He speculated, “But because it has all these mutations, does it in fact destabilize the virus? It might make it less fit than Delta.” In the world of viruses that compete for hosts, the more fit version will dominate.
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Politically, it may have been a better move for the Biden administration to take a wait-and-see approach. Instead, they went full panic mode, putting Dr. Fauci all over television and instituting travel bans when the new variant was identified in early November and is likely already here. With the slow and steady rise of cases in the Northeast and upper Midwest that Todd noted and the corporate media’s breathless coverage of them, of course, the pandemic will be front and center again:
“I think one of the things about his [Biden’s] COVID response over the last couple of months is one could argue he is not, he has not been the face of the COVID response. Not in some time. Not really since we declared our, back in July when he declared our independence from the virus. Obviously prematurely.” Todd then posed a question, “Does he use this opportunity to push back at all of the Republicans, particularly in various states who have been anti-vaccine mandate, anti-mandates in general.”
Like a good little stooge, Todd has probably been vaccinated and will likely line up for boosters. He is under the impression that vaccinated individuals may be at an advantage of not catching the cold from South Africa. Perhaps he missed the memo that the only part of the virus that the vaccine creates an immune response to is the spike, and that is the part that is mutating.
If the media wanted to help Biden, they would emphasize the positive news from Africa about the variant. They would not create a new scariant and pit him against Republican governors. States like Georgia, Florida, South Dakota, and Utah have been fully open for a year and a half and will not start mandating things and locking people down now.
Nearly two-thirds of counties in the U.S. are reporting less than 100 cases through Nov. 23. The only counties with higher numbers are metropolitan areas, and the CDC uses the number of positive tests rather than positive tests per 100,000. Over three-quarters of U.S. counties have less than ten new COVID-positive hospital admissions. Forty-two percent report zero prior to Thanksgiving week, according to the CDC.
Todd asserted, “The social spending bill, all of his other political problems, none of them can be solved until COVID is behind us. And I think this is a reminder that he [Biden] needs to be more front and center on the COVID response than he has been so far.”
Suppose the administration and the media continue making a mountain out of a molehill by using positive tests as the metric to measure the pandemic. In that case, President Biden should take front and center. Somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the country will think he sounds insane and Republican governors and candidates could use the foil heading in 2022. Because it isn’t COVID-19 that is central to Biden’s political problems. Every trip to the gas pump, the grocery store, and the administration’s insensitive response to working Americans makes every other issue a problem for Biden.
WATCH the complete interview below:
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