Opening presents, cooking a big family dinner and watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” — all part of an annual Christmas tradition for millions of families across the country. As we all wake up from our Christmas hangovers, the corporate media now has a new tradition for Americans to follow. Get ready, they tell us, for a dark winter of death and despair.
This dismal warning seems to have become the norm since COVID hit American shores. For the fourth year in a row, we have been treated to hysterical media coverage of rising case counts, new strains and hysterical hand-wringing over traveling responsibly with masks and boosters out your ears. The pundits are always self-assured that this year is really the year Americans will find out the hard way why they need to listen to the experts. Yet the worse never comes. When can we get back to enjoying Christmas travel, a jam-packed New Year’s celebration and looking forward to the coming year without being harangued about our impending doom?
The short answer is: likely, never. This is a predictable pattern for our over-credentialed elites, whose careers and self-importance hinge on being the strictest voices controlling Americans’ daily behavior. They got it wrong last year — there was no “winter COVID wave” — but they’re back this year playing the same game.
The pieces spelling unprecedented catastrophe began to trickle out the weeks before Christmas. Axios set the stage in early December by re-introducing the notorious COVID map — with a new twist. There’s now even “viral activity” in our “wastewater” they tell us; nowhere is safe. The darker shade of red in your state, the more terrified you should be. The outlet followed up with some added urgency in the days before Christmas. “COVID-19 levels high ahead of holiday season travel,” ran one headline, while another warned of a “new COVID strain” just in time for the holidays.
COVID-19 levels high ahead of holiday travel season https://t.co/WdFB6qWVNT pic.twitter.com/JhyzxC1CVV
— Axios (@axios) December 19, 2023
The Atlantic warned “Winter illness this year is a different kind of ugly.” Between COVID, the flu back in action and the new virus du jour, RSV, Americans had better take more serious precautions this year, lectured the painfully long piece. CNN helpfully reached out to a doctor to explain “how to stay healthy this holiday” amidst the trifecta of plague. But of course, the doctor they chose — cable news regular and former Planned Parenthood shill Dr. Leana Wen — merely echoed debunked talking points. Get boosted, mask up, social distance and gather outdoors — if there’s one thing that “experts” agree on, it’s that you can never go back to a normal life. (RELATED: American Researchers In Bed With Wuhan Lab Misled Pentagon About Civilization-Threatening Virus Research)
While it’s possible to go on mocking the endless flow of COVID pieces, there’s no point. They all say the same thing and more are certain to come. What’s more pressing is the question of “why?” Why do these disgraced buffoons keep making the same pronouncements year after year, long after nearly everything they’ve said has been proven to be at best wrong, and at worst an outright lie?
BREAKING: CNN expert Dr. Wen says that we need to take a new Covid boosters to prevent overflowing hospitals pic.twitter.com/d1vh8iQLF1
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 18, 2023
Perhaps it is genuine fear on the part of corporate media staffers. If anyone’s going to remain terrified, it would understandably be the people who spent years pouring over worst case scenarios. But they too have certainly been living their lives. If ultra-progressive Democratic staffers are having anonymous sex in the Senate, then CNN writers are probably confident enough to go to their parents’ house for Christmas. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Senate Staffer Caught Filming Gay Sex Tape In Senate Hearing Room (GRAPHIC))
A cynic would think the worst. They’re prepping us for a return to lock downs and the whole menagerie of mandates. Next year is an election year after all, and the chaos of COVID proved very useful for Democrats the last time around. The corporate media are nothing if not partisan hacks. Maybe it’s not that diabolical — but it could still be a deluded elitist attempt to control the plebs as much as possible.
On the other hand, it could just be throwing red meat to base in an attempt to farm for coveted clicks. COVID and Trump coverage created a renaissance for corporate media outlets, which were increasingly losing relevance in the independent media era. The new tradition for doom-spelling might just be a ham-handed attempt to remain relevant.
Yet COVID is a losing issue for Democrats now and the salience of the panic is much subdued. Outside the most fervent COVID-fanatics, there is no appetite for a strenuous “public health” response. Nearly everyone is back to their normal lives and too many Americans are wise to the original distortions and lies; the average centrist would not go along as easily as they did the first time. While fear mongering still drives clicks, it’s not going to generate the same consumption it did when case trackers and blood red maps were still novel inventions.
The simple truth is we likely give the corporate media too much credit when we think everything they say is part of a dastardly, calculated plan. They fool even themselves with all their credentials and awards, but when it comes down to it, they’re not that smart or capable.
This is really just a matter of inertia — both individual and collective. Journalists and the “experts” are used to thinking this way now. Their group-think has them paralyzed; no one wants to be the first to tap out and risk denunciation. It’s also a personal coping mechanism. Their subconscious tells them there’s no other way to think, or else their whole sense of legitimacy and worth falls away. It’s a pain to see these pieces on every front page each year, but like going through TSA to get home for Christmas, it’s just something that’s always going to be around.
It’s up to us to ignore them and bring our own holiday cheer. Happy New Year, everybody! Now go out and celebrate.