The Atlantic Publishes a Piece Stating that Covid Is Over, and Its Readers React Insanely

The leftist media keeps publishing pieces like this -- you'd almost think it was some kind of, I don't know, coordinated propaganda messaging campaign.

I wrote yesterday about the New York Times publishing an Op-Ed -- that's their own editorial board's opinion -- that it's time to stop panicking about covid and treat it as an endemic disease, like the flu, that will be with us seasonally, and live our lives as we live them with the flu. That is, normally.

As I wrote yesterday:

This is hurting the left -- it was this issue, specifically school closures at the behest of the teachers unions, that flipped Virginia to the Republicans -- so suddenly the New York Times is counselling those it instilled panic in for two years, entirely for crude, cynical political purposes, to not panic so much.

Again, for crude, cynical political purposes. They just want to blunt the Red Wave.

Covid Panic had been a useful political tool. Now it is politically harmful.

Democrat politicians seem to be realizing this. Colorado's Democrat governor Jared Polis says he won't mandate masks, because "the emergency is over."

'The emergency is over,' according to Governor Jared Polis, who explained on Colorado Matters on Friday that vaccines have changed the COVID-19 landscape, rendering masks useful but not required in the state's fight against the pandemic.

...

The Governor spoke about why he favors vaccination over mask mandates, despite many metro counties having implemented their own mandates to help control the spread of the virus. "Public health [officials] don't get to tell people what to wear; that's just not their job," the Governor said.

Even the witch Gretchen Whitmer is now... criticizing Biden's vaccine mandates.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in her strongest public remarks to date about President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for employers, said Monday that the requirement is "a problem" for her and state government, according to a published report.

The Daily News in Greenville reported Whitmer as telling business leaders in Montcalm County that she had the same concerns as some of them that the mandate, if enforced, could lead to workers, including those in state government, walking off the job.

"We're an employer too, the state of Michigan is," Whitmer was reported as saying. "I know if that mandate happens, we're going to lose state employees. That's why I haven't proposed a mandate at the state level. Some states have. We have not, we're waiting to see what happens in court."

Whitmer is, get this, up for reelection in 2022. And not only did she impose draconian lockdowns and close the schools for a year and force nursing homes to accept covid patients, killing thousands, but she did all that while also overseeing one of the worst covid infection and fatality rates in the country. *

Biden gave his second big signal of the year a few days ago that covid needs to end. That they need to declare victory and move on.

It's not Republicans he's pleading to. It's the media. "Please stop reporting on cases and new variants every day. I need political capital to pass BBB, and I don't have that if my key campaign promise of 2020 is a pile of smoldering ashes."

Posted by: TheJamesMadison

So it is time to tell the brainwashed left that the war with Oceania is over, and it's time to resume the war with the country we've always been at war with, Eurasia.

Again, this isn't about Science, this isn't about Health, this isn't about Freedom, this isn't about America.

This is solely about the Marxist front organization called the Democrat Party and its electoral fortunes in 2022. The left has finally realized that the majority of the public has had enough of the constant covid panic and will punish whatever party is pushing that constant panic.

Tucker Carlson claims it's The Atlantic, maybe more than the New York Times, which now tells Establishment Media Liberals what to think and what to tell their audiences to think.

So this is The Atlantic now issuing a coding update to the NPCs.

Where I Live, No One Cares About COVID Outside the world inhabited by the professional classes in a handful of major metropolitan areas, many Americans are leading their lives as if COVID is over.

by Matthew Walther

In November, my wife asked me whether I had seen an article with the remarkable headline “Is It Safe to Go to Thanksgiving Dinner?”
“Is that from last year?” I asked.
“No, it’s a few days old,” she said, her voice sinking to a growling murmur. “These people.”

I am old enough to remember the good old days when holiday-advice pieces were all variations on “How to Talk to Your Tea Party Uncle About Obamacare.”

As Christmas approaches, we can look forward to more of this sort of thing, with the meta-ethical speculation advanced to an impossibly baroque stage of development. Is it okay for our 2-year-old son to hug Grandma at a Christmas party if she received her booster only a few days ago? Should the toddler wear a mask except when he is slopping mashed potatoes all over his booster seat? Our oldest finally attended her first (masked) sleepover with other fully vaccinated 10-year-olds, but one of them had a sibling test positive at day care. Should she stay home or wear a face shield? What about Omicron?

I don’t know how to put this in a way that will not make me sound flippant: No one cares.

Literally speaking, I know that isn’t true, because if it were, the articles wouldn’t be commissioned. But outside the world inhabited by the professional and managerial classes in a handful of major metropolitan areas, many, if not most, Americans are leading their lives as if COVID is over, and they have been for a long while.

....

I don’t mean to deny COVID’s continuing presence... What I wish to convey is that the virus simply does not factor into my calculations or those of my neighbors, who have been forgoing masks, tests (unless work imposes them, in which case they are shrugged off as the usual BS from human resources), and other tangible markers of COVID-19’s existence for months—perhaps even longer.

He makes two points: One about the bizarre spectacle of outdoor masking, something you only see it blue cities, which he finds especially strange as people put on their masks to go outside after not wearing them indoors at a restaurant.

Another good point is about the absurdity of "public health authorities," who make pronouncements that no one takes seriously like "having one unit of alcohol per day" is dangerous to your health.

He points out that almost all adults are capable of dismissing this crap as pure CYA bureaucrat busywork bullshit.

Except in the singular case of covid -- where blue state progressives take every similar hypercautious, ultra-alarmist claim about the perils of jogging maskless perfectly seriously and perfectly gravely.

Now this is written from a conservative point of view and is published more to stir discussion than to convert progressives to this way of thinking.

But yet it is published in The Atlantic, which would have been unthinkable just six months ago (LETHAL DISINFORMATION!).

And it does seem as if it's being positioned as an "extreme" which will allow leftwingers to "triangulate" around, to find a more reasonable mode of living. In other words, by offering this "extreme" (spoiler: it's not extreme), leftists can then say "well maybe we can move away from our own extreme overreaction to covid, and find someplace more reasonable in the middle."

Again, a push to deprogram the left from the hysteria the media-political complex had previously programmed into them.

Not for any noble purpose.

Just out of terror for the coming carnage of 2022 if the Democrats go to the polls with more Lockdowns Forever and Masks For Toddlers messaging.

But it's very hard to deprogram a cultist. It's even harder when the cult itself tries to deprogram the cultist -- say, isn't this the exact opposite of what you were saying about the Cosmic Omni-Squid Gleitzuraq and his All-Connecting Astral Tentacles just five months ago?

John "pro-norms" Ekdahl has been retweeting the Faithful reacting violently to the Science Priests issuing these new heresies.

Here is a sampling. I will omit names and handles unless it's blue check or something.

I mean, thanks for keeping us informed that people are still huge pieces of shit who will keep this pandemic going for far longer than it ever had to. What an utter "common man" fuckwit.

He means "will keep the pandemic going by not keeping on their masks during sex and giving their toddlers nineteen boosters." Not "keeping it going by seeding constant panic about it."

Please get this fake bible thumper moron off my timeline. He lives in a little uncaring bubble, good for him. Next.

Love when deranged cultists accuse others of being too religious.

I'm cancelling my subscription, this is ridiculous!!!!

1, tolerance for free speech and all that, 2, no one on Twitter reads anything not on twitter. Who you foolin', dum-dum? The four exclamation points are a dead give-away that you do not read anything on paper.

What is this garbage? I expect articles like this in Redneck MAGA fan weekly, not The Atlantic. Seriously rethinking my subscription. Ew.

"Ew." Push "X" to doubt she reads anything.

At least this guy admits it:

And this is precisely the type of BS garbage article why I don't bother subscribing to this magazine. Its like those so-called antivaxxer conspiracy FB friends/acquaintances I've blocked & got rid of. Good F*@kg riddance.

If I've learned anything in my almost 29 years on this earth, its that anyone who brags about blocking "friends" on FaceBook as one of his major accomplishments is totally Winning At Life.

Do better Atlantic. Publishing this Rightwing AstroTurf cult-driven propaganda only harms the vast majority of REAL Americans trying to save lives and mitigate mass death, at 800K dead and counting. Please take this down.

Do Better, I love it.

I think The Atlantic might just take it down -- and I will love that.

people just keep dying when you publish irresponsible, badly thought-out, badly written pieces like this from people who already have their own outlet. You should be ashamed of this kind of article. It's beneath you. It's dangerous.

They already have their own schools, I mean their own outlet.

Note the ever-reliable justification for censorship and the stifling of debate: "It's dangerous." It "causes harm." It makes people "feel unsafe."

Why the f*ck did you publish this drivel? Seriously, why?

Super-emotive language. This person has a male name.

Shame on @theatlantic for publishing this anti-science screed.

The Science Priests shall enter your names in the Book of Woes!

How the f*ck can you publish incredibly insightful and clear-eyed pieces on COVID from the likes of James Hamblin and Ed Yong ... and then run THIS wildly insulting and irresponsible take?

Two key words there:

1. "F*ck." Leftwingers really love cursing, especially those who live on Twitter. They think it makes them seem "authentic" and rebellious. To be honest, that's why I've really reduced my own cursing. They've made it seem really uncool.

2. "Insulting." He makes it pretty clear that his worldview, his identity, is all about covid panic, and this article insults his identity as a proud Hysteric-American and Person of Neurosis.

What in the actual Jesus f*ck is wrong with you people?

It just goes on and on and on and on. Check his timeline for more.

A search for "@theatlantic" and "subscription" yields a lot of returns of people cancelling or threatening to cancel subscriptions.

Or pretending to have subscriptions which they then pretend to cancel.

John 'pro-norms' Ekdahl

@JohnEkdahl

AllahPundit should start a Substack with all these people cancelling subscriptions.

* But see also Gavin Newsom, who, fresh off his recall win (if you can call it that), feels invulnerable and has imposed yet another statewide mandate.

But he now knows he is King of California and has nothing to fear from the peasants. Not every blue state governor enjoys that privileged position.

posted by Ace at 03:34 PM

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