Pandemic Panic And The Big Business Of COVID–Cash Registers Are Ringing At MSNBC, CNN, And The DNC

The trend is happily downward.  Rates of COVID infection, hospitalization, and deaths are down in many municipalities; and city officials are preparing to roll back mask and vaccination mandates.  Americans are at least breathing a bit easier after two years of lockdowns, quarantines, masks, and social distancing. 

But, whoa!  There is a new Omicron variant in the wings which will cause renewed mayhem, flood emergency rooms with patients, and require even more draconian measures to stop its spread.  

CNN and MSNBC, advocates of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ sensationalist journalism, shills for ‘let George do it’ government intervention, and carny barkers hawking the latest freaks in the COVID circus side show, cannot give in. Their constituents, progressive worriers about climate, women, blacks, and gays, cannot bear to hear good news.  Collectively they have all ridden the COVID wave and seen a surge in viewership, contributions, and community activism like never before.

In the early days of the pandemic, COVID evangelists formed vigilante groups, neighborhood enforcers of masks and six-foot spacing.  In a reprise of Stasi and Sevak they recruited, trained, and encouraged their children to call out those who did not comply. ‘J’accuse’ was the meme, the howl of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers the cry, and Stay At Home! the injunction.  

It was not so much that these street preachers were worried about getting sick themselves; it was the shameless, risk-taking disregard for others that posed the greatest threat to the body politic. If we are all to reach a better, more perfect world, one with a mild, pollution-free climate, complete tolerance and inclusivity, and a gender-neutral society, naysayers, doubters, and stubborn individualists have to be gelded.  The brave, new world can never be realized while the noxious gasses of hyper-conservative radicalism are in the air.

COVID gave the progressive movement new life after the setbacks of the Trump years – years, his opponents insisted, were reversals of fortune, years of self-gratification and political, gimme adolescence.  Now with the new woke Biden administration committed to resetting the compass and guiding every American on the path to a happier world, the Trump years are a fading, unpleasant memory.  

COVID has been a windfall for Biden and his claque of social reformers, the big opportunity to reassert government intervention and to quash individualism.  COVID can be defeated, the President has said, but only if we all pull together.  Pull below decks on the oars of the trireme, lashed and whipped like the Roman slaves who powered Roman warships to battle he might have better said so convinced was he that only government control and universal vigilance could America be victorious.

The entire establishment cheered and took up the cudgel.  Democrat-led city councils, county governments, and state legislatures needed no prodding to lay down the law, shutter businesses, enforce stay-at-home quarantines, close down restaurants and bars. They were like Salem-era Puritans who loved moral enforcement, evident righteousness, and God’s obvious grace.

CNN and MSNBC, delighted with this renewed turn to Armageddon politics, turned up the heat.  Crowded hospital emergency rooms, respirators, worried doctors, and heroic nurses were News At Six leaders.  The worse things got, the more threatening the claims from official Washington, and the more people, now afraid of their own shadows and who closed themselves off from reality, the higher the ratings went.  News editors shook their heads in commiseration, but were as happy as schoolchildren at recess when planning their broadcasts.

Omicron was just what the doctor ordered.  A new, highly infectious, easily transmissible variant that would kill as mercilessly as the Black Plague.  The call to social activists, neighborhood vigilantes, and government functionaries went out loud and clear.  The Orwellian armies were again mobilized with renewed commitment. 

This was The Big One, the Armageddon extinction level event everyone knew was coming.  CNN and MSNBC were now holding a royal flush and intended to play their hand.  News of the variant’s milder strain were filed and never aired.  European governments who saw Omicron as the new flu, an endemic disease to be dealt with like any other seasonal, recurring illness, were branded as outliers, naysaying ostriches.

Worst of all, those who calculated risk and who entered age, morbidity, and health status as parameters of the health algorithm and acted accordingly were branded as apostates, heretics, and contributors to the divisiveness of the nation.  Those who reasonably judged themselves to be at low risk, or were willing to take the chance of illness to return to a normal life, were dunned, marginalized, and run out of town.

Meanwhile, citizens worldwide have finally had it, and are demonstrating against what they consider authoritarian mandates.  It is high time to return the power to the people, these demonstrators say.

Rather than listen to their constituents, appreciate their concerns, and recognize their legitimacy, liberal governments are ramping up their restrictions, putting more guards on the borders and in the watchtowers of the gulag.  This will not stand, they say.  These crackers, hillbillies, gun-toting, bass fishing ignoramuses cannot be allowed to spread any more moral infection.

CNN and MSNBC are of course delighted in this turn of events, and camera crews have been deployed to chronicle the popular uprising against COVID restrictions.  The commentary is even more sanctimonious than ever.  Unconscionable, they say, an attack on decency, civil harmony, and communitarianism.  Hand-wringing galore. Coffers filled.  

The Biden Administration has added fuel to the fire by distributing free industrial-strength masks and home testing kits.  Lines at testing centers go around the block.  People who have only assumed to have been infected – i.e. been shopping, picked up prescriptions at CVS, walked on a crowded sidewalk – are jamming the phone lines, public health facilities, and doctors’ offices.  If the President has thought it necessary to embark on an emergency program of mask and test kit distribution, there must be a good reason. More panic, more Chicken Little fears, more staying sheltered, alone, and shut in.

CNN and MSNBC are on it – the lines, the masks, the troubled faces are all grist for their mill.  Money in the bank. More viewership, more clucking and hand-wringing. Commiseration – the ultimate inclusivity – is the on-air act of the day.

The cash registers are ringing at CNN, MSNBC and the DNC.  With midterm elections coming up (November 2022) and Republicans set to retake the House and Senate and likely to win the White House in two years, the coffers of the Democratic National Committee need to be filled to the brim.  COVID has been a cash cow for two years, and there is even more reason now to keep milking it.  

Don’t let down your guard….Don’t relax….We’re not out of the woods…Love the millions of poor sufferers, victims not only of the disease but of the capitalist empire which has enslaved them…etc. etc. say Biden and his shills.  Keep those contributions coming.

This too will end, although if you listen to the Doomsday crowd, it is only a matter of time before an extinction level event occurs, a variant more deadly than any ever seen, a pandemic sure to wipe out the entire population of the planet.  It is just around the corner, ready to reap its deadly harvest. For the rest of us, we go about our lives as we have for the past two years, calmly, astutely, cautiously, but never fearfully.