There’s a new COVID variant, and it doesn’t sound so good. According to The New York Times, it’s called the Omicron, and it was first detected in South Africa, with cases already popping up in the U.K. and suspected cases in Germany. It’s still early days, so it is so far unknown whether or not it’s resistant to the vaccines that have withstood previous variants, such as the Delta. It’s important to remain calm. But of course, that is not what’s happening over at Fox News.
As per Mediaite, the network kicked off Saturday by having the weekend hosts of Fox & Friends recklessly speculate about how it’s all a conspiracy theory hatched by Joe Biden. Rachel Campos-Duffy, Will Cain, and Pete Hegseth (the latter already not a trusted source on health issues) put their brains together and wondered if a virus — which has been allowed to fester and mutate by either a shortage of vaccines or, in the U.S. and parts of Europe, irrational resistance to it — was being controlled by a world leader they routinely depict as out of it.
Following up on Michael Flynn’s comments that “global elites” will be releasing a new variant soon, Fox hosts now suggest Biden will create and release new variants “every October” because he loves covid restrictions. pic.twitter.com/4OrldM4Zz5
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 27, 2021
“[He] has said we can’t fix the supply chain problem until the pandemic is over, until Covid is over,” Campos-Duffy told viewers. “And now we see these new variants. So that’s the answer: more lockdowns, more lockdowns, more fear and therefore he doesn’t have to do his job of fixing the supply chain because ‘we’ll keep this whole thing going.’”
“Always a new variant,” Cain quipped, which led Hegset to claim that, thanks to Biden, “you can count on a variant about every October, every two years.”
Campos-Duffy laughed, saying Hegseth is “probably right,” but joking that they “could speed up. The variants could come more quickly.”
To her credit, Campos-Duffy earlier warned that Omicron “could possibly wreak more havoc on our economy and American way of life.” But Fox News viewers still need their red meat, no matter how top brass really feels about the vaccines their hosts trash on air.
Besides, news of Omicron’s emergence was only made public the day before, and though word is that it’s a more virulent, more transmissible strain, research still needs to be conducted to see if, among other matters, it can’t muscle its way through the various vaccines used to treat COVID.
But there is one thing you can do in the meantime: Get vaxxed, if you haven’t already. And if you have and enough time has elapsed, get a booster.
(Via Mediaite)