The Biden administration, other prominent Democrats, and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) have all started to simultaneously roll back their messaging related to COVID-19.
President Biden said at the end of 2021 that there is “no federal solution” to COVID-19 and that pandemic response needs to be “handled at a state level.” This is a grave departure from the candidate who claimed he would “shut down the virus” while on the campaign trail.
Since then, the CDC shortened the quarantine time by half for people who tested positive, regardless of vaccination status. The director of the CDC explained that this decision was to “make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while ‘following the science.’”
Additionally, there has been a broad effort across the federal government to exchange metrics counting the high total number of cases—an unfavorable statistic—for data that is more favorable to the Biden administration, like deaths and hospitalizations.
This same campaign of in-depth data science has been sorely missed for the past two years.
CNN’s Jake Tapper criticized inflated COVID-19 case counts on his show last week, saying that “if somebody’s in the hospital with a broken leg and they also have asymptomatic COVID, that should not be counted as hospitalized with COVID, clearly.” Republicans have been questioning the case counts for well over a year, but mainstream media, including CNN, dismissed concerns as baseless conspiracy theories.
It’s no surprise that Democrats want to pivot away from Biden’s authoritarian attitude about COVID-19 response. Cases are higher than they have ever been and blue areas are facing the brunt of the most recent spike.
Democrats have realized that their hardline positions on COVID were incredibly unpopular and would only further contribute to an already-short supply of labor. Biden’s approval rating is just 33 percent, and Democrats cannot risk a steeper decline by further weakening our economy.
Even with the new changes, several industries are reporting labor shortages, meaning flight cancellations, bare supermarket shelves, and retail stores being forced to close early. Inflation continues to be a problem, and its effects will harm consumers for months to come.
All of these factors contribute to American dissatisfaction with the Biden administration. Their best plan of attack, now, is to dissociate from the problem and depict it as a situation that is completely out of their control. However, it won’t work.
Midterms, which were already favored as Republican victories, are less than a year away. In an effort to prevent an outright landslide, Democrats have favored damage control, and they have perfectly demonstrated just how political the Democrats’ approach to COVID-19 truly was. What measures that were taken to “slow the spread” and “protect our healthcare systems” are being arbitrarily walked back whether or not any supporting evidence even exists.
Democrats realize they are in trouble for midterms, but they set down a path that makes their partisanship opaque. The Democrats’ priority is power. “Shutting down the virus” was just a way to gain it, and the same reasoning is motivating their current messaging.
Dace Potas
Dace Potas is the President of Lone Conservative. He previously served as an editor and columnist. He is a senior political science student at DePaul university. He has bylines in The College Fix and Just The News.
The views expressed in this article are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Lone Conservative staff.
@DacePotas