“I Want To Start By Acknowledging How Tired And Worried You Are"

I tried to watch Biden's latest COVID speech on the web, but it became plain after just a few minutes that it was flat, listless, and desultory. I think it's fair that he himself may have been tired and worried, but the country at large was busy with Christmas and fairly confident that Biden would be too terrified to try to lock anything serious down, so nobody actually paid much attention. I looked at Politico's account of the speech:

But even he must know he faces a near-impossible task, as he tries to glue back together some sense of unity in a Humpty Dumpty of a nation consumed by disease, division and distrust. The combination of a worn-out public, mixed messaging from health officials and stiff skepticism from large swathes of the country mean the president will struggle to break through.

. . . But restoring trust, and his own political sheen, is difficult when Biden is also the de facto voice of pandemic response at a time of plummeting trust in science and expertise, particularly (though not exclusively) among Republicans.

It's notable that in this address, unlike prior ones from both Trump and himself, he wasn't flanked by the likes of Drs Fauci and Birx. No prestige to be drawn from them now. His problem is that the moral panic narratives that drove the 2020 election and the leftist optimism of 2021 have run their course.

It didn't help, for instance, that in the public health establishment's effort to revitalize vaccination hysteria, two fully vaxxed and boosted US senators tested positive over the past weekend, but this simply confirmed the growing public awareness, and indeed the forced acknowledgement by the public health establishment itself, that the fully vaxxed and boosted can contract and spread COVID. As one commentator noted, it's as though the highway safety people have had to acknowledge that seat belts don't necessarily work.

This in turn destroyed the most recent attempt to identify folk devils for the panic, the anti-vaxxers and the unvaxxed. Last week, Biden tried to threaten them with, if not the power of the law, at least the wrath of the Almighty:

"For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death... for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm," Biden continued.

This week it was,

“If you’re not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned. You’re at higher risk of getting sick and at higher risk of passing it to your friends and family.”

. . . “Because Omicron spreads so easily, we will see some vaccinated people test positive – perhaps in large numbers. Vaccinated people may get sick, but they are still protected from severe illness and death.”

This is not the FDR of Pearl Harbor:

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

. . . I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

. . . With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

If from nothing other than a rhetorical standpoint, Biden's speech in contrast was a tired acknowledgement that there's really not much we can do. Get vaxxed. It's actually slightly better than not getting vaxxed. Please get vaxxed. But the daily reports are that the most vaxxed US regions, and the most vaxxed countries, are the ones with record COVID surges.

The justification for the BLM riots, systemic racism in society merely reflected in universal police misconduct, has been steadily collapsing in the second half of this year. The COVID narrative, that Science led by Dr Fauci would prevail over an anti-Science Donald Trump and defeat COVID, is collapsing with Omicron and a determination to restore a normal Christmas season.

Ex presidents don't hold press conferences. Period. Donald Trump will hold one on January 6 to contest the House "insurrection" investigation. I'm not sure if he'll make a comeback, nor if he does that it'll be an unalloyed good thing, but it's a sign that things are changing. Big time.