Great, Our Very Old President Has COVID

C'mon man.

Getty Images

Welp: President Joe Biden, 79, has COVID-19. According to the White House, which also went to great pains to say how vaccinated he is, Biden is “experiencing very mild symptoms.”

Lucky for us, the American people, one elderly man’s contraction of a deadly virus won’t stop the important work of….pretending to do something amid the myriad threats facing our nation. Per the New York Times:

Mr. Biden is receiving Paxlovid, an anti-viral drug used to minimize the severity of Covid-19, Ms. Jean-Pierre said. The president will isolate at the White House but will “continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time,” she said.

The White House statement also notes that Biden will be following “White House protocol for positive COVID cases, which goes above and beyond CDC guidance.” Interesting, isn’t it, that the rules the CDC is telling all of us to follow are apparently not serious enough for the White House to follow!

Meanwhile, I’m taking a long sip of cold brew and remembering the last time a president in this country got COVID. (A case we now know was, unsurprisingly, far more severe than his administration let on at the time.)

Biden’s COVID diagnosis comes as new cases and new hospitalizations in the U.S. are each up nearly 20 percent over the last two weeks amid the rise of the BA.5 variant, which Reuters euphemistically characterizes as being “particularly good at evading the immune protection afforded either by vaccination or prior infection.”

Well then! Nothing to worry about, I’m sure! No need to wonder if maybe we shouldn’t have a government run almost solely by geriatrics!

Also, why’s this pandemic still going on? Oh, wait we know why? What are we going to do about it? Nothing? OK THEN!!!