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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35161 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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Biden: Pandemic is over

Of course, for all important purposes, pandemic has been over in most of the Western world for most of this year - ie. sure, there's a disease going around, but the "pandemic mentality" is gone, and so have at least the most visible and onerous restrictions - but this sort of a declaration, offhand and qualified as it is, seems like a point in the general development.

It's already evident in social media that COVID doomers - the ones who would still want to mask up, keep up restrictions etc. - are angry and frustrated, as they've been for months, but I also wonder how the sort of "reverse doomers" who declared a year ago that Western world is never going to declare the pandemic over and give up restrictions, either out of stupidity or out of a malignant conspiracy, are interpreting it.

The White House has already walked back the President’s statement. (Pause here to reflect on the zen of that.)

Do you have a citation? I see no news stories, and https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/ does not have it although I admit I do not know if it normally would.

On CNN the headline is: White House says Covid-19 policy unchanged despite Biden's comments that the 'pandemic is over'. First sentence: (CNN)The Biden administration is largely downplaying President Joe Biden's comments declaring the coronavirus pandemic "over," suggesting his remarks signal a continuation of the White House's evolving stance toward the pandemic over the past few months.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/19/politics/biden-covid-pandemic-over/index.html

As I said, Biden's remark is a part of a continuing process, and this statement also explicitly frames it that way. The direction of the process is still what's important here.

I couldn't find it either. I mean, "White House clarifies the President's statement" is an expected routine now (and not just for Biden...), but in this case, I tried several keywords on Twitter and found nothing.

I would point you to a specific CNN article, but the paste function seems to be disabled on my iPhone, /u/ZorbaTHut.

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