Oh, Oh, Omicron! The new COVID variant is an excuse for control - Roger Kimball

The new COVID variant is an excuse for control—the little frisson that comes with the exercise of power and lording it over other people.

Oh, Oh, Omicron! The new COVID variant is an excuse for control - Roger Kimball Opzy1yWwgt4nG7Yr1UJ2zCRebf6Z6bq__zhtJ8MQqsQ

Oh, Oh, Omicron! The new COVID variant is an excuse for control - Roger Kimball Opzy1yWwgt4nG7Yr1UJ2zCRebf6Z6bq__zhtJ8MQqsQ

Last week, I dusted off my Chinese-flu soapbox and said a word or two about (cue the scary music) the Omicron variant. It sounds like the title of a Robert Ludlum novel, doesn’t it? A friend told me about a parlor game that the journalist Christopher Hitchens and his pals used to play in which the object was to contrive names for Shakespeare’s plays that sounded like the title of a Ludlum novel. Hamlet was “The Elsinore Conundrum.” I am sorry that Hitch is not still with us to try his hand at the Omicron variant.

So far, I have to say, it’s been pretty much of a dud—unless, that is, you’re the stock market, which has taken a beating this last week or so, in part because of this new kid on the medical block (there is also that much more toxic financial emergency, the Biden Administration, but that’s for another day). The new variant has also been a godsend for scolds, nags, bureaucrats, and meddlesome so-called public health officials nannies who are just itching for another excuse to lock down your world, introduce new travel restrictions, and impose new testing protocols.

How will it all play out? TSTS—Too Soon to Say, but I suspect this sequel is going to be a flop at the box office. For one thing, although only recently named, there is abundant evidence that Omicron has been around for months. If it had been previously unnamed, that is perhaps because it is no big deal. The South African doctor who first identified the strain noted that while the virus was possibly more contagious than versions named for letters earlier in the Greek alphabet, symptoms tended to be mild, indeed “very mild.” A typical news report notes that “patients mostly suffered from mild muscle aches, scratchy throat and dry cough.” (Remember colds? Remember the flu?)

So why the panic? Partly, it is because panic is an antidote to boredom. People are heavily bored. Panic also licenses the people who want to run your life to, well, run your life. “Most Omicron cases so far have been mild,” runs one headline, “but experts say it will take weeks to understand how severe the variant can be.” Ah, “experts”! What would we do without them?

One thing we’d do is ride public transportation without wearing a mask. But apparently there are sufficient numbers of people who are cowed enough, or bored enough, to don the little badge of their submission and pretend that they are not only “staying safe” but keeping you safe, too. Where did your mother tell you that road paved with good intentions led?

Here’s the reality: the COVID “pandemic” is over. I hasten to add: also, it will never end.

No, I am not pretending to be G. W. F. Hegel, for whom no day was complete that did not include a little contradiction masquerading as wisdom.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/04/oh-oh-omicron/

Oh, Oh, Omicron! The new COVID variant is an excuse for control - Roger Kimball

Oh, Oh, Omicron! The new COVID variant is an excuse for control - Roger Kimball

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