We’re more than a year into the pandemic, with vaccines pumping out at a swift clip, and these people still talk in their mastered language of a perpetual pandemic.
Michael Osterholm, the director for the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, and one of the media’s favorite alarmists, said Thursday on CNN that “now is the time to do all of the things that we must do to slow down transmission, not open up.”
If you laughed, it’s OK. They’ve been saying that exact thing for months.
The previous day, Biden said in an interview with ESPN that “it’s going to be a little while” before people should be gathering in large crowds. He added, in exasperation, “I don’t know why we don’t just follow the science and beat this. Just flat out beat it.”
That good old “follow the science” mantra that roughly translates to, “Do as I say, and ask no questions.”
By the way, how long is “a little while”? Is it a couple of weeks? Is it three months? We’re never told that part. In fact, any given moment is apparently just as dire as ever.
Last week, Biden declared that “Now is not the time to let down our guard.”
Two weeks before that, he said, “This is not the time to let up” and, “Just as we are emerging from a dark winter into a hopeful spring and summer is not the time to not stick with the rules.”
The week before that, he said, “Now is not the time to let up.”
On Feb. 26, he said, “It’s not the time to relax.”
Amazing! No matter when it is, “now” is the time we have to be at our utmost alert. Just on Monday, Biden’s director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remarked on the “impending doom” we’re facing. But don’t worry! If you just hunker down, only a little while longer! We’ll get there! Sometime. Soon.
March 14 on Fox News, the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci declared that “if you wait just a bit longer to give the vaccine program a chance to increase protection in the community, then it makes going back much less risky.”
We’ve heard that one. In September 2020, a whole six months before that, Fauci said in another interview, “There is an end to this. We just have to hang in there a bit. One of the rescuing elements is going to be a vaccine, and hopefully, that’s only a few months away.”
It turns out “a few months” is half a year. And then some. But don’t ask how much is “some.”