Coronavirus case records are falling like the blizzard that engulfed Washington, D.C. this week, with a new record that almost doubled a rec...
Coronavirus case records are falling like the blizzard that engulfed Washington, D.C. this week, with a new record that almost doubled a record set just last week.
On Monday, more than 1 million people were diagnosed as having tested positive for the virus, according to Bloomberg, citing data from Johns Hopkins University. The skyrocketing case counts are attributed to the omicron variant of the virus, which was first discovered in South Africa in late November.
That total eclipsed a record of 590,000 set as 2021 came to a close last week -– the year in which President Joe Biden had said he would put into action his promise to “shut down the virus.”
The medical news to date shows that the percentage of deaths from the omicron variant remains low, but the virus has still upended everyday life, with businesses sending employees back to remote work, schools and colleges opting for online classes and hospitals that are overwhelmed with sick Americans.
A Danish study has noted that vaccination is not a barrier to the omicron variant, according to Fox News.
Coming at a time when the Biden administration, which came into office vowing to “follow the science,” the study — a pre-print that was not yet subject to peer review — found vaccinated people were 2.7-3.7 times more susceptible to the omicron variant than the delta variant, which emerged earlier in 2021.
“Our findings confirm that the rapid spread of the Omicron [variant of concern] primarily can be ascribed to the immune evasiveness rather than an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility,” the University of Copenhagen researchers wrote.
As cases pile higher, the Biden administration’s image among Americans sinks lower.
“The challenge for Biden is we’ve now seen this on several fronts where his core promise was that his team of pros were going to be competent as opposed to the Donald Trump ‘Addams Family’ cast and they failed at that,” said Republican strategist Doug Heye.
“There’s not much room for error if you’re a Democrat right now,” he said, according to The Hill.
“Joe Biden and Senate Democrats ran on shutting down the virus,” said National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee press secretary Katharine Cooksey Noyes.
“They failed. Democrats have in fact failed on all fronts: inflation at a 40-year high, an ignored supply chain crisis, an unchecked border crisis, and a botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Whatever the task, Democrats can’t get it done,” she said.
One strategist quoted by The Hill, whose name was not used, said Biden’s recent admission that states need to take the lead in fighting the virus can be seen as an admission of defeat.
“He literally ran an entire campaign based on the fact that the federal government’s response to the virus, if done correctly, would shut down the virus,” the national Republican strategist said.
The lack of an effective response has left Americans disillusioned, one journalist noted.
“His first act as president was to pass $1.9 trillion, trillion with a T, in COVID relief. Here we are 10 months later and we don’t have tests and there are lines around the block for PCR tests, you can’t get the at-home tests and no treatments,” Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen said in a recent Fox News interview.
“Where was the Operation Warp Speed for treatments? Why do we not have a surplus of all of these different treatments? Of course his poll numbers on that will decline. His poll numbers are underwater on every single topic. No president in my lifetime or probably American history has fallen from grace so far, so fast like Joe Biden. He started out with 56% approval rating. Today he is 10 points underwater, a 30-point slide in one year. No other president has fallen that far that fast,” he said.
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