This is not the same pandemic

But, as has been noted, this potential introduces a remarkable situation: omicron may have become the form of coronavirus that Trump and his allies insisted the original strain was. It may be highly transmissible, hard to avoid contracting and less dangerous for most people.

There have already been attempts to conflate the now-virus with the then-virus, as in a Twitter thread from right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro. His goal is simple: use the apparent nature of the omicron variant to disparage efforts focused on the pre-omicron virus. It’s immediately transparent, but almost certain to convince some people — particularly those who are inclined to assume that everything was made up and all initial efforts to address the virus some combination of insincere and evil.

A term that could describe this effort is “context collapse.” To understand that omicron is (again, apparently) different is to understand that the response is different and the old recommendations potentially less effective or appropriate. But by simply sweeping it all under the umbrella of “the virus,” you can score political points at will, proving yourself right over and over by ignoring the distinction between what we were fighting then and what we’re fighting now. It’s a bit like waving away someone’s cancer diagnosis by comparing it, a disease, with the disease that is the common cold: They’re just diseases, after all, and as I’ve been saying all along, diseases simply require some tissues and DayQuil. This is not a generous analogy, to be sure, but it’s about what’s deserved.