Weary Americans face the two year anniversary of the initial reports of COVID-19 and while there are a lot of questions about whether the COVID-19 vaccinations offer immunity, people are slowing becoming immune to the endless fear-mongering from government authorities and the media.
An editorial run Tuesday from Steve Cuozzo, a New York Post restaurant critic and op-ed contributor, suggests that the days of COVID panic “may finally be numbered.”
“Just when you thought the pandemic could hold no more surprises, the Omicron grinch has brought America something new for the holidays: the festive panic,” Cuozzo wrote. “In New York City especially, the number of people, and energy level, in stores and restaurants and on the streets is remarkable given our supposed death rattle. It isn’t that people aren’t afraid. Of course they are. But they’re not as afraid as they were a year ago.”
Noting that he is among the brave, having been jabbed three times, Cuozzo boasts that he has “been out and around town, repeatedly testing negative.”
He pointed to Apple reversing a decision to shutter all stores in the city after serious blowback to say this “is a better barometer of the mood on the street.
“For all the warped coronavirus ‘science’ on which no two scientists agree, most people are voting with their appetites, their wallets and their wanderlust,” Cuozzo opined. “They’re defiant in the face of nerve-grating pronouncements and warnings from the Fauci/New York Times/CNN virus-forever complex. They spew horrible news 24/7: Breakthrough infections among the vaccinated! Omicron’s unprecedented contagiousness!”
“Amidst so much gloom untempered by context or nuance — such as the fact that most Omicron cases among fully vaxxed people are about as eventful as common colds — one would expect a fear-frozen metropolis would be ‘sheltering in place’ as in the darkest days of spring 2020,” the columnist said. “It’s nothing like that, of course — as a stroll on any block except for in a few Hamptons-happy neighborhoods attests.”
Just as it was beginning to appear that the nation had weathered the Delta variation and the worst of the pandemic may be behind us, news of the Omicron variant fell over the country like a dark cloud. But early reports are suggesting that this is a milder form of the virus — not that you would know it based on media reporting.
Former Trump advisor Dr. Scott Atlas saw these early signs as “good news.”
“In fact, this is how pandemics end,” Atlas said recently during an appearance on Fox News.
“Everyone who’s a competent doctor knows that as a pandemic evolves, the viruses mutates. The mutation allows the viruses, or the ones that keep being contagious, are the ones that survive but they’re less lethal,” he explained. “As we get to a stage that’s called endemic, where there is a relatively constant or little ebb and flows of infection, but very few deaths, that’s when there is no more pandemic.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Monday the recommended quarantine for those who have tested positive for COVID-19 has been shortened from ten days to five, the decision coming after Delta Air Lines’ chief executive asked CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to reduce quarantine guidelines for fully vaccinated individuals who experience breakthrough COVID-19 infections to five days.
And just last week, the NFL shortened the return-to-play process for players who have tested positive.
“To this point, vaccinated players and coaches could return once they tested negative twice with at least 24 hours in between, as long as they had no symptoms,” the left-leaning sports network ESPN reported. “Unvaccinated players who tested positive were required to sit out 10 days. In most cases, this was a distinction without a difference. Only about 20% of vaccinated players who tested positive were able to return in less than 10 days.”
Cuozzo pointed to the extent of holiday travel and how busy NYC restaurants have been despite all the restrictions, saying one reason for people’s stiffening resolve “is that most have learned to recognize baloney after being fed it for nearly two years.”
“On Tuesday, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention radically revised downward its estimate of Omicron prevalence — from 78 percent of US cases the week ending Dec. 18 to a mere 23 percent,” he wrote. “Oops, off by 55 percentage points? Never mind.”
Citing the fact that NYC ppublic schools will reopen next week, Cuozzo suggested that leftist and merely liberal politicians are even waking up.
“Maybe it was a warning shot across the bow of the teachers union, which would happily give its members another six months off,” he concluded. “But just maybe it was a sign that panic days are finally numbered.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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