Biden’s Covid-19 winter plan

Yesterday President Biden went out to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda to deliver “Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-⁠19 Winter Plan.” He spoke in the animatronic style to which we have grown accustomed, with the occasional short circuits and misfires included. He opened with a haywire attempt at humor:

I’ve seen more — (laughs) — of Dr. Fauci than my wife. We kid each other, but — (laughter) — they look — who’s President? Fauci. (Laughter.)

But all kidding aside, I sincerely mean it.

It is not clear to me what he “sincerely means.” That he sees the fallacious Dr. Fauci more than the fake Dr. Jill? That Fauci is really president? How unfunny can you be?

Biden delivered the remarks setting forth his big plan to stem the panic he has helped foment over the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus. Does this make sense? Are we going to develop seasonal campaigns to address each new variant of the virus? This is madness.

As always, the remarks stressed a theme with monomaniacal intensity. We are all voyagers on the good ship Pequod. Biden is our Captain Ahab. Covid-19 is his Moby Dick. The prospects are not good.

The theme of the speech was vaccinations. For example, he will be:

…expanding the nationwide booster campaign with more outreach, more appointments, more hours, more times and sites to walk in, providing boosters shots for up to 110 [100] million Americans who are eligible for boosters.

Here is point two:

But the second point is that — launching new family vaccination clinics to make it easier for children, parents, and whole families to get vaccinated in one place, and new policies to keep our children in school instead of quarantining them at home.

There is more:

The fifth thing we’re doing — we’re going to accelerate our efforts to vaccinate the rest of the world and strengthening — strengthen the international travel rules for people coming to the United States.

They’re coming for the children:

[W]e’re expanding our efforts to vaccinate children ages five and up. For any parent worried about Omicron variant or the Delta variant, get your child vaccinated at one of 35,000 locations in the country, including doctors’ offices, pharmacies, children’s hospitals, and 9,000 pop-up clinics at schools.

If you’re wondering where to go, again, visit Vaccines.com [Vaccines.gov].

And they’re coming after the toddlers and babies on board:

We know parents of children under the age of five are wondering when the vaccine will be available for their little ones. That’s the question I most get often asked now at functions.

We had a function celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas and various things at the White House. The parents coming up to me, they’re saying, “I have a three-year-old. Is there going to be a time that that can — am I going to be okay? Is she going to be okay — or he going to be okay?”

And let me say this: I strongly support the independent scientific review of vaccine usage for children under five. We can’t tak- — take shortcuts with that scientific work.

But I’ll do everything in my power to support the FDA to do this safely and quickly as possible when we get to that — to that point.

Vaccinating our children is also critical to keeping our schools open. But while over 99 percent of schools are open now, we need to make sure we keep that throughout the winter — this winter.

Man the lifeboats!

Incidentally, the second American to be diagnosed with the Omicron variant is a Minnesotan who recently traveled to New York. He was fully vaccinated (including a booster). Kevin Roche comments in “The moronic variant comes to Minnesota — tine for super-panic!!”

In her weekly Wall Street Journal column Kim Strassel rightly characterizes the scenario as a “quagmire.” We are trapped in a permanent state of war. Success is not in sight. As I say, man the lifeboats.

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