From the moment COVID-19 appeared, the pandemic became inseparable from politics.
Political frenzy was inevitable since the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have
escaped from a level-4 security virology lab in Wuhan, China.
The rapid-fire spread soon threatened to indict the Chinese communist
government for nearly destroying the world economy and killing millions.
Western elites, in response, feared that their own lucrative investments
in China would be jeopardized by such disclosures - and so acted
accordingly in defending Beijing.
Nonetheless, one scenario that remains intriguing is that the escaped
virus was birthed by gain-of-function research scientists, overseen by
elements of the Chinese communist military. Worse, the lab was given
subsidies by U.S. health authorities, routed through third parties.
Hiding all of that damaging information warped government policy and
media coverage.
Belatedly, a panicked China shut down all domestic travel in and out of
Wuhan - but not flights abroad to Western Europe and the United States.
The rest is history.
From the outset, the World Health
Organization simply spread false talking points about the outbreak from
the Chinese government, delaying a robust global response.
Former President Donald Trump's political opponents initially told
Americans to shop and travel as usual - only to pivot as cases mounted
and they blamed the president.
The U.S. 2020 ban on travel from China was met with charges of racism and xenophobia from presidential candidates. Ironically, many were simply channeling racist and xenophobic China's propaganda.
Many doctors kept hammering the need for therapeutics, including taboo off-label use of cheap generic drugs. The
use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin was widely ridiculed, despite
continuing studies from abroad attesting to their usefulness.
Trump's Operation Warp Speed project to develop vaccinations was also pilloried. Candidates
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden did their best to talk down the safety of
the impending inoculations. But once in power, they projected their own
prior harmful rhetoric onto so-called "anti-vaxxers."
Then they claimed credit for the initial success of the Trump vaccinations.
The Pfizer corporation had promised a major pre-election announcement
about its likely rollout of a vaccine in October, just days before the
2020 election.
Then, mysteriously, Pfizer claimed the vaccine, in fact, would not be ready before November 3. A few days after the election of Joe Biden, the company reversed course and announced the vaccinations would soon be available.
Then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo obstructed most all federal help with Trump's fingerprints on it. That way Cuomo became a media, Emmy-winning darling - before resigning in disgrace.
Cuomo's policies of steering infected patients into long-term-care
facilities doomed over 10,000 of the elderly. New York is now illegally
using race to grant preferences in the allotments of tests and new
drugs.
The rhetoric of the media-progressive nexus that
mandatory, massive lockdowns were necessary all but destroyed a booming
Trump economy and denied critical medical care to millions. Emphasizing
therapeutics, natural herd immunity, and the resilience of the youth to
the disease were all pronounced "anti-science" by the demagogues on the
Left.
Various celebrities and politicos - such as California Governor Gavin
Newsom and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton - boasted the
pandemic lockdown offered the perfect crisis that must not go to waste
politically. Actress Jane Fonda even crowed that COVID-19 was a "gift
from God to the Left" in helping to end Donald Trump.
In the waning days of the 2020 campaign, Biden went so far as to blame Trump personally for all the deaths from the virus.
Once the vaccinations had seemed to work in early 2021, an upbeat Joe
Biden boasted that he would end the virus by summer 2021, by following
"the science." He went so far as to claim that no one had been
vaccinated prior to his inauguration even though 17 million, including
Biden himself, had been.
Then Nemesis answered such hubris.
The unforeseen delta
and omicron variants hit. A new phrase, "breakthrough case," revealed
that the vaccinations often could only prevent serious illness, but not
infection or infectiousness.
Suddenly the best and brightest people with three shots, who had blasted
the red-state rubes as the ignorant un-vaxxed - got sick. More have now
died from the virus on Biden's than on Trump's watch.
A warped economy amid renewed COVID-19 outbreaks helped to further destroy Biden's waning popularity.
In reaction, the Left now calls for realism, emphasis on treatments, and
acknowledgment of the value of natural immunities. It is even newly
curious about the origins of the virus, and the need to "get back to
normal."
We are suddenly told that thousands had died
"with" rather than "because" of COVID - the exact opposite of what we
heard in the Trump era.
A skeptic might suggest terror over the impending midterms finally made the Left face reality.
Politicizing the pandemic is a euphemism. In truth, thousands of Americans have died needlessly because of weaponized disinformation about China's culpability, vaccines, useful drugs, lockdowns, racial preferences, and long-care facilities.