As Roosevelt Was To Polio, Biden Is To COVID

I came up with that a few days ago, but little did I realize how quickly events would reinforce the perception:

President Joe Biden announced Saturday that he would return to isolation after testing positive again for coronavirus.

“Folks, today I tested positive for COVID again,” Biden wrote on social media Saturday afternoon.

. . . The president’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said in a letter to the public the reoccurrence of the virus was “rebound COVID,” something that takes place with some patients treated with PAXLOVID.

Think about the manifold ramifications that emanate from this succinct announcement. First, the big guy has been fully vaxxed, and his masking, if not fully consistent, has been in general supererogatory. Second, a week ago, I quoted Dr Birx, who if not the pope of COVID is at least an influential cardinal:

So that's why I'm saying even if you're vaccinated and boosted, if you're unvaccinated right now, the key is testing and Paxlovid. It's effective. It's a great antiviral.

Except that this was in the context of how the vaccines don't work, but now the sure thing, the key, is Paxlovid. It's effective. It's a great antiviral. Except if you give it to the President of the Unitred States, well, er, you might get a rebound effect, which takes place with some patients. Sure helps build the credibility of the public health authorities, huh?

Third, let's recall that two years ago, the COVID panic-hype had many people believing that a positive test was practially a death sentence. The authorities were reassuring those who were flooding the emergency rooms over positive tests that actually a positive test didn't mean a whole lot, they should only go to the ER if they were having trouble breathing and stuff. This fussing over a mere positive test is an aftershock of that panic, which was cynically generated for clickbait and to increase the screen time of the anointed talking heads.

In fact, this episode exposes the dishonesty of the public health establishment at the start of the pandemic, when contrary to past practice, they equated "positive test" with "case", when in the past, a "case" (as in the 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic) was a person who had been hospitalized with symptoms. This inflated the perceived prevalence of the disease, which had the short-term effect of spreading panic, but over the longer term created an underlying sense that the Birxes and Faucis were lying to us.

Two years ago, if the president tested positive, they'd have been figuratively dusting off the bier so he could lie in state, though probably in a lead coffin. That Trump could catch the 'rona and recover only months later had a deeply reassuring effect. Now, Brandon's second positive test is a trivial event worthy of a trivial guy.

Next, that Biden should effectively return to the basement studio of COVID quarantine is just another reminder of how he won the 2020 campaign and the persistent sense that something was hinky about that whole exercise. It simply allows Trump, who is gradually returning to public discourse, to repeat a probably counterfactual but figuratively resonant claim that the election was "stolen". Biden apparently will have no strategy to counter this beyond renewed retreat to his Delaware basement.

This is why we seem to be feeling a need for more optimistic, confident leadership. President Zelensky is to the current European crisis as Victor Laszlo was to Casablanca, a thoroughly commendable fellow, but in the background and not really what we need to solve the bigger problem. Victor Laszlo was actually a problem Major Strasser should have been able to deal with but couldn't quite manage. The West needed someone more like Roosevelt to solve the bigger problem.

Let's face it, Joe Biden can't even solve COVID. The real problems now are Russia and China. Going forward, this isn't going to work.