The same people who until now treated catching the virus as evidence of a character flaw have suddenly changed their minds. Don’t expect an apology.
The same people who until now treated catching the virus as evidence of a character flaw have suddenly changed their minds. Don’t expect an apology.
E arlier this week, CNN’s Chris Cillizza lamented that, throughout the pandemic, “Societally we unknowingly turned having Covid into some sort of judgment on your character.” To remedy this, Cillizza suggested, “We need to recognize that getting Covid isn’t a moral failing! It’s a super infectious disease that you can protect against, sure, but can’t guarantee you won’t get it.”
“Unknowingly”? “We need to recognize”? “Societally”? Does Chris Cillizza live in a sensory-deprivation tank?
There has been nothing “unknowing” about the implication that catching Covid is evidence of a “moral failing.” It has been the core of the progressive response to the disease. We see it every time that someone who disagrees with the maximalist approach to lockdowns, restrictions, or mandates is labeled a “Covidiot.” We see it every time the governor of Florida is described stupidly as “DeathSantis,” or the governor of Texas is accused of belonging to a “death cult,” or any politician or writer with a different risk calculus than Anthony Fauci is charged with wanting “to kill grandma.” We see it insinuated by figures such as the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who has compared the states experiencing a seasonal surge to the slaveholding Confederacy. We see it indicated every time that those with rational objections to pandemic-mitigation measures are characterized in the press as conducting an “experiment in human sacrifice.” We saw it last week, when “health-care expert” Gregory Travis told a bunch of kids swimming at a Holiday Inn that, as a result of their indulgence, five out of ten of them would become infected and one of them would die. We saw it in summer 2020’s preposterous assumption that COVID would spread less efficiently if the crowd in question was protesting against racism. We see it each time a Republican celebrity announces that he has the virus and is swiftly blamed for his own illness. We see it in every hysteric who tells desperate business-owners that their desire to reopen betrays a preference for “money” over “love.” It has been the motivation behind the schizophrenic manner in which COVID has been routinely covered by the media — the tone of which has depended almost entirely on where the virus is currently surging, who is being affected by it, and who is the president of the United States. And it is what Nicolle Wallace means when she complains that despite being “a Fauci groupie” and “a thrice-vaccinated, mask adherent” who buys “KN95 masks by the, you know, caseload,” she is beginning to sense that she won’t be able to “outrun” Omicron.
When Cillizza says that “we need to recognize,” what he should mean is, “We need to apologize.” There is one reason and one reason alone that Cillizza and his ilk are running away from the Judgment of God assumption that has marked the press’s coverage of Covid for nearly two years: Now that they’ve contracted Covid themselves en masse, the ruse has become unsustainable. It is one thing to point at the hicks down South and conclude that they’re coughing because they have the wrong politics; it is quite another to reckon with what infection must mean when your own city is inundated, when your own friends are sick, when your own policies have failed. It’s different when it’s you and people like you. It’s different when the “adult” president proves as hapless as the “moron” president. It’s different when the Buzzfeed Christmas party, rather than Spring Break at the Lake of the Ozarks, becomes the super-spreader event of the season.
Much as Antifa seems to have convinced itself that it must be Good because it is opposed to something that is Bad, so our censorious press came to conceive of itself as the Keeper of Science and Public Health. And then, all of a sudden, it lost its sense of taste.
And boy was it sudden! Just like that, President Biden has moved out of his sickly savior mode and admitted that the federal government can’t do much to help after all. Just like that, the teachers’ unions have begun to take hits for their duplicity and their cynicism. Just like that, the efficacy of cloth masks and the workability of the zero-risk approach are being questioned, and some of our most influential voices are acknowledging that there might perhaps be some downsides to shutting down the world. Just like that, we’re hearing talk of previously downplayed concepts such as “endemicity,” “seasonality,” “risk tolerance,” and — heaven forfend! — humility.
Many of the defectors wish to pretend that their shifting approach is the result of their having only recently learned the true nature of Covid. Others propose nervously that Omicron is “different.” But it isn’t — at least, not in the way that matters. In its lethality, Omicron is mercifully distinct from previous variants, but the practical question before us is the same as it was before: Are our public-policy measures able to meaningfully control its spread? And the answer to this question is the same as it was before: Absolutely not. Yes, the consequences of this inability are less grave. But that’s not the point. The point, as Matt Shapiro has observed, is that now, as ever, it is “impossible to understand COVID by looking at voting patterns or mitigation regimes or by setting two regionally disperse states against each other,” and it is especially impossible to understand Covid by looking to the moral character of the people who have contracted it. It doesn’t care how virtuous you think you look. It doesn’t care whom you voted for. It doesn’t care whether your mayor has a nice lawn sign. It’s a disease.
We need to recognize that getting Covid isn’t a moral failing? No, Chris. You do.