Happy Thursday, C&C! Well, well, well. Chief Covid Administrator Biden previewed the State of the Union in draft form at a blockbuster, record length press conference yesterday; other world leaders gave press conference consistent with Narrative 2.0; Starbucks gets its head right; and more.

🗞 THE C&C ARMY POST 🗞

🪖 Yesterday, after nearly a week of improvement to the point he was being weaned off life support, Dan Pisano experienced a sudden, devastating setback and all hope for his recovery blew away, like tufts gently parachuting off a dandelion after a sudden gust. Last I heard late yesterday, the family was gathering to make those end-of-life decisions that aren’t decisions, not really, and to say goodbye.

My reaction on hearing the new was, mostly, a white-hot righteous anger. These hospitals really have no idea at all how their bad short-term decisions WILL have long-term consequences. There are systemic problems in our corporate hospital system that must be addressed. Like a bunch of things.

Dan is in his reward now; we celebrate that fact. His labors are complete. But it is for us the living, rather, to ensure that Dan’s passing was not in vain, not an unfinished work, that it means something, something that protects our children and their children, as well as all those others like Dan who have struggled and died needlessly in hospitals over the last two years, while hospital administrators dithered and made decisions lifting up money and political expediency, while casting aside life and morality.

I intend to make sure that the loss of all our fellow citizens has meaning. How about you? Are you in?

🪖 For those of you who follow such things, Dr. Joseph Mercola published an article this week highlighting C&C’s Narrative 2.0 theory. [Pandemic Narrative Undergoes Radical U-Turn](https://tinyurl.com/2p8zk6kj).

🪖 Yesterday I was notified I was in Facebook jail, again — this time for seven days. I appealed, and it looks like I’m out.

🪖 Finally — a lot of folks are, understandably, expressing apprehension and doubt about whether the global governments will actually end the pandemic. I think they will, but it is absolutely fair to believe that they are going to take what they’ve learned and roll it into another bigger effort later. It’s now our job to stay awake, to not go back to sleep, not back into our comfortable pre-pandemic lives, but rather to march irresistibly toward re-setting our national foundations to ENSURE this can never happen again. Or at least, make it ten times harder. We shouldn’t rest — we cannot rest — until that job is complete.

🗞COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🗞

🔥🔥🔥 I told you so! Yesterday afternoon, proving that Coffee & Covid readers are the most thoughtful and well-informed group in the world, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. slowly took his victory lap in what can best be described as a draft version of the State of the Union address scheduled for March 1.

Biden’s prior press conference was advertised five days in advance. But for some reason, yesterday’s announcement — scheduled on the one-year anniversary of his inauguration (offset one day) — seemingly sprang up out of nowhere, was described by the WaPo as “a record-long news conference,” and lasted for nearly two hours, which is totally unprecedented for the fledgling Biden Adminstration.

Biden first built a brick-veneer wall of excuses around the administration’s failures. As I pointed out yesterday about the Economist’s septic-tank of a lead story, “It’s not Biden’s fault,” Biden repeatedly blamed Republicans for his failure, even oddly referring to himself as a victim in the THIRD PERSON at one point: “I did not anticipate that there would be such a stalwart [GOP] effort to make sure President Biden didn’t get anything done,” he said.

That was so dumb that even the radically leftwing Nation called it out, observing, “On that point, he’s either posing politically, or he’s hopelessly naive.”

Biden artfully teed up Narrative 2.0, acknowledging his bad polling numbers but saying that his drop in popularity was partly because — thanks to Covid — Americans were used to seeing him acting more like a lawmaker and less like a commander in chief. Well. He’s not wrong. And predictably, Biden attributed his political kryptonite — inflation — to the virus. The Mercury News reported, “Biden blamed the virus for the rising prices that also have bedeviled his first year in office.”

SOMETHING bedeviled his first year in office. I’m not sure it was the virus.

But it was THIS line — the line that CNN identified as the #1 most important line out of Biden’s top seven “best lines” — this is the line his speech will be remembered for — Biden said, and I am not making this up:

”I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.”

Outperformed? What? What on earth could he be talking about? Even CNN didn’t buy that nonsense, albeit focusing on Biden’s failure to pass Build Back Better or the odious bill to federalize elections.

In support of outperforming, Biden touted … his response to the pandemic! He said that his administration had succeeded in vaccinating nearly 75 percent of all adults, while allowing that he wished he had “moved a month earlier” to ramp up testing capacity. Maybe, maybe not. A month from now, at the State of the Union in March, Biden can claim that his free test program put the bow on the box that the pandemic will be buried in. That reference to a “month earlier” was a signal of some kind, providing the basis for his claim of success in March.

He repeatedly stressed that people are “frustrated” about Covid-19 mandates and restrictions. The Wall Street Journal also noticed that, highlighting it in an article headlined, “Biden Concedes Covid-19 Frustrations, Sees Path for Stalled Bill, Warns Russia on Ukraine.“ At one point, he said:

“After almost two years of physical, emotional and psychological impact of this pandemic, for many of us, it’s been too much to bear. Some people may call what’s happening now ‘the new normal.’ I call it a job not yet finished. It will get better.”

It will get better! Forget about that “new normal” stuff. Never mind!

MSN referenced that quote in its headline about the press conference: “‘It will get better’: Biden says US headed toward time when virus won’t be a disruption.” The first line of MSN’s article described, “Joe Biden highlighted the progress his administration has made in the fight against COVID-19 and assured Americans the pandemic would come under control as it approaches two full years of upending daily life.” MSN then quoted Biden assuring everybody it was almost over:

“We’re moving toward a time when COVID-19 won’t disrupt our daily life, when COVID-19 won’t be a crisis, but something to protect against and a threat. Look, we’re not there yet, but we will get there.”

Yes, we will get there. Probably by March 1. MSN reported that Biden — in the midst of an Omicron surge! — bottom-lined it for Americans, assuring us that the worst is now over:

“The bottom line on COVID-19 is that we’re in a better place than we’ve been and have been thus far, clearly better than a year ago. We’re not going back to lockdowns. We’re not going back to closing schools … We’re in a very different place now. We have the tools — vaccines, boosters, masks, tests, pills — to save lives and keep businesses and schools open.’’

Biden also defended his faithful hound-like CDC Director Walensky, who at this point could be fairly compared to that hilarious news chief Saddam Hussein used in the final days of his reign, or maybe just a talking parrot — saying:

“To the extent [her mixed messaging is] confusing, it’s because the scientists are learning more,” Biden said. “She came along and said, ‘Look I’m a scientist and I’m learning, learning how to deal with stating the case for what we’ve learned.’ ”

It wasn’t confusion. It was Science! The old fallback.

Don’t hallucinate that all this means the injection battles are over. Biden doubled-down on jabs: “We’re going to stick with our vaccination efforts because vaccinations work.” But do not worry. Narrative 2.0 is directly opposed to mandates. You can’t have an ended pandemic and also a desperate emergency need for jab mandates at the same time. It’s going to give us a vast swath of new rhetorical tools to push back with.

In summary, the whole speech was designed to tee-up the State of the Union in about a month. If you read all the myriad headlines and see all the wide-ranging topics that Biden touched on, it looks exactly like a little pre-State of the Union speech. In other words, it was a warm-up. This lets them test the messages, find out what critics will say, adjust talking points to fit the criticism, and polish up the final points to perfection. In other words, his speech yesterday WAS Narrative 2.0, just in draft form.

To further confirm this, check out what was happening at the same time all over the world.

🔥 The president of the Czech Republic also held a press conference yesterday and ashcanned plans for a national jab mandate that would have switched on March 1. “This does not change our stance on vaccination. It is still undoubtedly the best way to fight COVID-19 … however, we do not want to deepen fissures in society,” Czech president Petr Fiala said. He also announced shortened quarantine and isolation times.

It is NOT a reversal. It’s an ADAPTATION. It’s Science. Science plus a new narrative. Good boy! Now maybe that foreign aid will show up on time in the Czech Republic.

🔥 The prime minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, also held a press conference yesterday. Guess what? He announced that England’s Covid restrictions and vaccine passports would be terminated in March — at the latest. “People in England will no longer be required to wear face masks anywhere or work from home from next week,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. Zoom! That was fast.

Becker News reported that Boris Johnson’s current assessment is that the nation’s plummeting Omicron infection numbers and stabilizing hospital rates indicate that the UK can “safely live with Covid.” We can live with it! No need to get all hot and bothered. It’s fine. Nothing to worry about.

🔥 The leader of Ireland’s lower house, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, told his party leaders yesterday that it was time to wrap up the pandemic. “I think it’d be really good if we could set March 31 as our target for ending all legal restrictions, the legislation around masks and Covid passes and all the rest of it expires on March 31,” he told Irish lawmakers. He said that the Irish people have done all they can as a society and there should be a dividend for that. So … it’s not our fault after all! We’ve done all we can. And we should get a nice reward.

Varadkar spent most of his time explaining the costs and bad effects of Covid policies and lockdowns. He just discovered them and it was alarming, or something. “I think about a particularly negative impact on younger people, and young adults who haven’t had a normal youth,” he said. Ireland has been particularly strict in the lockdowns.

🔥 Mega-coffee-chain Starbucks Corporation announced yesterday that it will no longer mandate that its U.S. workers be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. The policy was to take effect next month. The coffee giant attributed the change to the Supreme Court’s recent blocking of the OSHA Mandate.

🔥 Yesterday, Corporate Media giant and administration mouthpiece Bloomberg ran an article headlined, “Early Omicron Breakthroughs Show MRNA Vaccines’ Weakness.” The headline is even more blunt on Bloomberg’s news feed: “MRNA Boosters Don’t Block Omicron, South African Study Shows.” The first sentence of the article said boosters are basically useless at controlling spread of the virus:

“Booster shots with messenger RNA vaccines such as those made by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE failed to block omicron in a study of some of the first documented breakthrough cases caused by the highly contagious variant.”

Failed. And the study wasn’t buried immediately beneath a coal mine where radioactive waste is stored. No. Instead of being deep-sixed and cancelled, it was highlighted in the headline and first sentence of a major article published by a media source that most likely confers daily with the White House about messaging. So.

The study was very small — just a handful of German tourists — and could have easily been swatted aside and disregarded by the usual suspects. Just anecdotal! Instead, Bloomerg said the tiny study “shows” that boosters don’t block the dominant variant. Shows.

🔥 Fauci seems, more and more, like a little old man on an island. While all of THAT other stuff was going on, the press conferences and announcements, the diminutive medical advisor told media that Pfizer’s vaccine “might be” approved by the FDA for kids UNDER FIVE next month. At least he HOPES it will be: “My hope is that it’s going to be within the next month or so and not much later than that, but I can’t guarantee that,” Fauci said.

And, guess what? Since early studies have shown that young kids don’t produce ineffective antibodies from the shots, Fauci suggests a solution: INCREASE THE DOSE. According to CNBC, Fauci said younger children will likely need THREE doses, because two shots did not induce an adequate immune response in 2- to 4-year-olds in Pfizer’s clinical trials.

Good luck selling THAT to parents of young kids. CNBC’s report on Fauci’s comments cited Walensky, who IS up to speed with Narrative 2.0, as saying there’s no indication that the omicron variant causes more severe illness in children. So. Fauci vs. Walensky. Who wins?

🔥 Remember how China has been the media darling this whole time with its “aggressive approach” to controlling the virus? Maybe not so much, not anymore. CNBC ran an article this week headlined, “China’s zero-Covid policy could deal another blow to global supply chains, Moody’s says.” See how it works? Media giveth and Media taketh away.

But it gets worse. CNBC cited an economist who said that China’s policy will have “important ramifications for inflation.” Inflation is China’s fault! Because of its stupid zero-Covid policies! And supply chain problems. Dumb China.

🎺 Okay, okay, at some point I’m going to have to stop doing all these Narrative 2.0 stories. What can I tell you? It’s a target-rich environment. Let’s just make sure it sticks first.

Have a terrific Thursday! Just to get everybody prepared, given an aggressive travel schedule to get me to the wintery-wonderland of Washington DC to speak at the March for Freedom this weekend — and back — I may have to cancel weekend posts and possibly even Monday’s post, since we have an early return. Just saying. Don’t cancel me!

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