COVID-19 is just the beginning

OPINION:

A memo from the Pentagon that was just leaked warns that Department of Defense officials have been quietly working on the assumption that COVID-19 could be a factor on America’s economy and political fronts until, get this, well into 2021.

Yawn. No kidding. You don’t say.

Here’s what the memo, obtained by Task & Purpose and reported in The Hill, said in part: “We have a long path ahead, with the real possibility of a resurgence of COVID-19. Therefore, we must now re-focus our attention on resuming critical missions, increasing levels of activity, and making necessary preparations should a significant resurgence of COVID-19 occur later this year.”

And here’s a sample of what’s already been reported about this very matter of COVID-19 resurgence.

“Coronavirus pandemic may last 2 years and resurge in fall,” Business Insider wrote in May.

“The Fear of Coronavirus and Flu Colliding in the Fall,” The New York Times wrote in April.

“Coronavirus cases in the U.S. likely to resurge in the fall,” The Boston Herald wrote in March.

In other words: Yawn. No kidding. You don’t say.

Here’s the thing: A resurgence will undoubtedly occur.

That’s not news; that’s the normal nature of viruses.

Look at this, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine under the National Institutes of Health, from back in 2015, about the flu: “Influenza pandemic is commonly believed to sustain for a year or two. … “[H]istory tells … resurgence due to pandemic influenza virus is rather a norm than exception, even after the pandemic is over.”

Viruses come, viruses go. Viruses come back again. Why would COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, prove any different?

As more and more people get out and about, as weather changes from summer to fall to winter, as more and more testing for the coronavirus becomes commonplace, as more and more focus is placed on hospitals and the media to report, report, report on numbers, numbers, numbers — a resurgence is most definitely on the way.

Still, the only numbers that matter are the recovery statistics. The only figures that count are the ones that take into consideration COVID-19 as a percentage of population — that give context to how many have it, how many don’t, how many have recovered from it.

Running death counts on television are meaningless because A) they aren’t based on percentages of the population and B) they aren’t factual. Too many hospitals have been incentivized to ratchet up deaths-due-to-the-coronavirus counts as a means of receiving federal stimulus dollars. The data has been compromised; the reporting is suspect.

But as far as politics go, COVID-19, for the left, for the globalists, for the Democrats seeking to elevate a subpar candidate called Joe Biden by pushing voters to stay home and use paper or online ballots — i.e., easily compromised — COVID-19 is the gift that keeps on giving.

Watch and see, wait and watch: COVID-19 is just the beginning of Democrats’ intrusion into Americans’ private lives. Then comes the mandated vaccine. Then comes the door-to-door testing. Then comes the contact tracing — then comes the government surveillance and data mining of private citizens.

Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. A COVID-19 resurgence is coming. If the left has anything to say about it, bank on a COVID-19 resurgence — and then some. Call it the “new normal” of Democratic Party politics.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.