Remember the pandemic? It’s over, according to President Joe Biden.
Except when it isn’t.
Biden ran on ending the pandemic and promised that he would “shut down the virus.” Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that the first thing she and Biden would do after taking office is “get this virus under control.” Biden even declared victory on this point, claiming in September that “the pandemic is over.”
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But Biden was immediately contradicted on that by his staff, who claimed that the pandemic was ongoing. That was accompanied by Biden’s own policies contradicting his words as he continued to push student loan amnesty under the guise of pandemic relief. And on Tuesday, Biden decided to add his own personal contradiction to his previous comments, claiming that COVID is still a “global health emergency.”
Biden has now settled on the idea that the pandemic can’t be defeated unless Republicans agree to every Democratic spending spree that has nothing to do with COVID, but even that doesn’t hold up. If more spending in Congress can solve COVID, why did Biden say there is “no federal solution” and that the pandemic “gets solved at the state level” last December? At the time, those statements contradicted his promise of shutting down the virus. Now, Biden is contradicting his own contradiction.
The pandemic, of course, is over. It has been for some time. The only people who have not returned to normal life are COVID-panicked liberals who will continue masking and quarantining until the end of time and children who have the displeasure of living under authoritarian Democrats in cities such as New York City. COVID vaccines have been available to the public for 18 months, effective treatments have been found for those who get infected, and everyone else has moved on.
The pandemic is both politically convenient and inconvenient for Biden. He can continue to push Democratic boondoggles, like erasing the student debt of white, upper-class professionals (i.e., the Democratic base). It gives him a justification (however shoddy) to continue to usurp the powers of the legislative branch through executive orders. But every time he cites the pandemic as an issue, it also reminds voters that he knows he isn’t telling the truth and that he failed to fulfill his biggest campaign promise.
Therefore, Biden is stuck in this ridiculous dance, cycling between claiming that the pandemic is over and that it is still raging across the country. He is using it as a power grab while trying to prevent it from becoming an electoral liability, no matter how ridiculous it makes him sound.
