National Public Radio was in a frenzy this morning but it felt like the movie Groundhog Day: they were spreading tremendous alarm about the rise of Covid cases. We have to stop the spread, the announcer said, and that’s why masks are coming back to classrooms. However, they added, relief is on the way in the form of a new vaccine.

Rinse, repeat – as the shampoo bottles say.

This line of thinking – stop the spread to reduce strain on hospitals, mask up, and so on – is being echoed by all major media organs. Leading the way is of course the New York Times.

[Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I’d guess that this will only be successful in the deepest of deep-blue enclaves; everyone else will ignore it, and rightly so. We are back to the same bad data on hospitalizations — correlative rather than causal — along with zero evidence of significant danger in the latest of the variants. Viral variants get progressively less lethal through mutations in human populations, not more lethal. At this point, for almost everyone except the very old and infirm, this will be the equivalent of a bad cold or moderate flu. — Ed]