Washington Post flippantly acknowledges abdication of public health responsibility in ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

A Memorial Day weekend report in the Washington Post on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Unites States is flippantly titled, “COVID will still be here this summer. Will anyone care?”

The Post makes light of the stark danger to public health under conditions where cases of COVID-19, in many instances caused by new strains of the virus, have begun their summer climb a month in advance of last year’s trend, while beginning from higher level troughs than at any point in the pandemic.

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This socially criminal indifference is par for the course for the newspaper owned by mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos. From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019, the Post has been a leading voice in minimizing the dangers posed by SARS-CoV-2.

But as indicated by Dr. Michael Hoerger, PhD from Tulane University, and data scientist Jay Weiland, who have translated SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentration levels into infection estimates, COVID-19 levels began to rise in late April and reflect between 200,000 to 400,000 infections per day.

Hoerger remarks on the difficulties caused by the decision of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to end its contract with Biobot Analytics, which was providing critical information on the actual state of the pandemic.

He writes: “The PMC Forecasting Model will continue long-term. We have historically relied on Biobot wastewater data … likely in July, expect a new Model that will incorporate multiple data sources,” including relying on the CDC’s WastewaterSCAN.

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The Post article confirms these concerns by pointing out quite frankly that the entire tracking apparatus, including hospital reporting, has been dismantled and public health advisories on mitigating the spread of the disease have been curtailed. It also notes that “free tests are hard to come by, [and] soon, uninsured people will no longer be able to get coronavirus vaccines for free.”

In short, when President Joe Biden ended all pandemic emergency measures last year, the lights were turned off, the premises were vacated, and the last four-plus years were effectively chalked up to a bad dream.

On the campaign trail, Biden can only feign concern and take potshots at Trump, while more Americans have died under his watch despite his promises to follow the science. His CDC director, Mandy Cohen, was promoted from her post as head of the Department of Health and Human Services of North Carolina, where a ban on masks is being pushed through the state legislature.

Cohen has all but removed the word COVID from her vocabulary. Trying above all to offend no one, in a recent interview with the New York Times she ignored the renewed surge in COVID-19 infections, the dismantling of the means to track the disease, let alone prevent it from maiming and killing millions more people, and deadly policies such as attacks on mask-wearing in her own state, and instead mouthed empty promises to focus on “protecting health and improving lives globally.”

In its recent article, the Post observes:

So, we’re left with a virus that continues to hum in the background as an ever-present pathogen and sporadic killer. The public health establishment no longer treats COVID as a top priority. Weddings, vacations, and conferences carry on as normal. Many who do get sick won’t ever know it’s COVID. Or care.

This stupid remark is in keeping with the newspaper’s derisory attitude toward the working class, which has suffered the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also a remarkable admission and self-indictment of the criminal role of both the Democrats and Republicans, with the collusion of the corporate media, in carrying out an anti-public health campaign to conceal the dangers and promote a policy of “forever COVID.”