Coronavirus Week 109A: Really? "Cases don't matter"?

At The Nation, Gregg Gonsalves demolishes this claim.

Unfortunately, he doesn't look at the politics behind this, especially the politics behind the CDC's officially backing the "cases don't matter."

It's StatusQuoJoe and Democrat Congresscritters worried about the midterms, just like Trump was about the 2020 election. I've said this more than once. And, because they're also worried about the inflation they caused, in part (through poking the Russian bear with the NATO sharp stick too much), they won't adopt most of Gonsalves' push, like new money to get people boostered, get more masks, support school masking etc.

I've talked about this before, and again. Already in February, I said politics were likely behind St. Anthony de Bureaucrats Fauci's talk about the "timeline" for COVID becoming endemic. Before that, in December, I noted Status Quo Joe's fails on not having a multipronged COVID strategy. Then in March, I first blogged about a possible new surge, which Gonsalves references.

The biggie? In April, I said Biden's CDC basically went Shrub Bush and said "Mission Accomplished" in the face of Judge Mazelle's ruling on federal mask mandates.

Meanwhile, Ed Yong also weighs in on the "cases / hospitalizations don't count," and makes clear the CDC is saying BOTH. And, it's Biden's CDC, in case Ed doesn't emphasize that enough. As part of that, he notes the health care system remains in crisis, even if COVID deaths themselves are not (yet) at crisis levels.

This:

Is the bottom line.

Much of the system is still intolerably stressed, even in moments of apparent reprieve.

Well, the line below that is that Biden doesn't care. 

Yong notes how PTSD is ripping through the system. And, again, white wingnuts who think you're safer? Just as deaths are higher per capita in your rural areas, so are the health care effects.