The surge in COVID-19 cases and the final weeks of 2021 have led to elite liberal media figures realizing that coronavirus is here and must be addressed. Nearly two years after defending and advocating various mandates to eradicate the virus, more journalists are beginning to accept that COVID-19, despite the effectiveness of vaccines, is still an endemic disease.
Brian Stelter, CNN’s executive director of “Reliable Sources”, stated that there was a consensus in many media circles that people would be infected as the virus spreads through the country.
Stelter stated that the definition of cases is constantly changing. Stelter stated that there are many, many many, many cases with a highly transmissible variant. What is the best metric to use? What should we use to evaluate the fight against COVID
“We collectively took action in 2020 to protect the elderly, as we heard about schools closing again. We should be doing more for children and allowing them to live normal lives. Do we really want to make the children suffer more?
Stelter’s decision to change their mind about what they have been advocating for over a year, was criticized by conservatives who had long supported schools being kept open. This is due to the statistically safer outcomes for severe COVID cases. Others were more grateful.
Chris Cillizza, Stelter’s coworker, mourned the loss in a long Twitter thread. He said that getting vaccinated would not necessarily protect him from contracting the virus.
Chris Hayes, MSNBC’s host, had a similar realization Wednesday. He said that the disease was more like a seasonal virus: it wasn’t good but not something you should be rushing to get rid of.
The risk changed from something we had never dealt with in our lives – we hadn’t experienced an illness as infectious and potentially deadly to our health – to something more like the flu. Although the flu can still be very dangerous, we don’t live our lives entirely around it. He said that this is closer to the risk facing 200 million Americans. He said that Americans’ “sheer exhaustion had changed the “politics on the pandemic”.
Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC’s Nicolle, and Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin were two of the most loyal Biden White House supporters in media. They made similar comments to liberal colleagues about coronavirus acceptance and how to cover it. “Covid-19 is not a fatal or severe disease for the vast majority of responsible Americans,” Rubin tweeted. She was promoting another of her pro-Biden columns, which often receives praise from White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain.
Rubin’s critics were harsh, considering her past rhetoric attacking those making similar points about not taking the virus seriously enough.
This shift seems to reflect the messages coming from the federal government, President Biden who promised as a candidate that he would “shut down the virus”. However, the recent record-setting cases have been caused by the omicron version of COVID-19. Although milder than the highly transmissible variant, it is still affecting American lives and breaking through even among those who have been vaccinated. However, the vast majority of people who are in hospital and are dying from the virus remain unvaccinated.
Chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said this week that child hospitalizations are overinflated. Children admitted with the virus are counted regardless of whether they were hospitalized. Biden said that there is no federal solution to the virus and that many issues around coronavirus would need to be resolved at the state level. This seems to be a departure from Biden’s earlier language against Republican governors who he wanted to “get out the way”. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced the recommended quarantine period for COVID-19-positive people from 10 to 5 days. This was partly due to what people can “tolerate.”
However, that doesn’t mean everyone in elite liberal media circles gets the message. Joy Reid, Far-left host, has advocated hyper-caution and disparaged Republicans as “COVID loving death cults.” She boasted that she wears two masks while running despite having been vaccinated. Joy Reid also mourned Friday’s College Football Playoff bowl games being “superspreaders”. She recently compared the pandemic with the “apocalypse.”
