The last few days have certainly been noteworthy as far as the left’s views of COVID-19 are concerned. After almost two years of them calling people grandma killers and keeping a running tally of cases in the South, things are suddenly shifting.

As RedState reported, the president himself admitted defeat on COVID, proclaiming that it cannot be solved with a federal response. Of course, that’s something the rest of us have been saying since the beginning, but I digress.

Hilariously, some of Joe Biden’s supporters in the media are doing their best to explain away his statements.

Biden's "this gets solved at a state level" is only a thing if you feign ignorance that:
–he was simply affirming NGA chair's plea not to stifle "state solutions"
–it's routine presidential "laboratories of democracy" talk
–he discussed federal action and "need to do better"

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) December 28, 2021

This is the left’s version of “take him seriously, not literally.” It’s a weak, pathetic attempt to pretend that the senile old man who currently resides in the White House (at least a few days out of the week) didn’t actually mean what he said. That courtesy wasn’t given to the last president, and I’m certainly not going to extend it here.

Regardless, the biggest change involves case numbers, though. For the entirety of the pandemic, Democrats and their media allies have used case numbers to trash red states. It never mattered that New York dwarfed Florida in deaths per capita despite the latter having a far older, more vulnerable population. Ron DeSantis was evil and every new infection was a moral failing, according to the left.

But now that COVID is slamming the Northeast at higher rates than the South’s summer wave, the goalposts have been uprooted and launched into orbit.

As we recognize that covid-19 is not a deadly or even severe disease for the vast majority of responsible Americans, we can stop agonizing over “cases” and focus on those who are hospitalized or at risk of dying.https://t.co/S4OQD7R58u

— Jennifer 'pro-voting' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) December 28, 2021

Here’s a little comparison for you, just to show how different of a standard Rubin held when it came to DeSantis. Again, those goalposts are in danger of hitting the International Space Station at this point.

Spot the difference pic.twitter.com/tPugLv8bNC

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) December 28, 2021

So, why this massive shift from treating caseloads as the be-all-end-all to now admitting they don’t matter? It’s all about politics.

You see, Biden is now the proud owner of the nation’s highest COVID caseload ever, and that award goes along with his medal for having more deaths on his watch than the previous administration. No longer can Biden and his cohorts point the finger at Donald Trump and pretend they handled things better. And with case numbers now blowing up to unseen heights, the left needs a way to obscure that reality.

That’s how you get Jennifer Rubin now claiming that only serious outcomes matter. Well, no crap, that’s what many of us have been saying since the first recorded death. But these people pushed lockdowns, fretted about cases, and used the ridiculous term “DeathSantis” anyway. Now, they think they can seamlessly flip-flop without anyone noticing? Nah, that’s not how any of this works.

We all remember these headlines from the summer.

Has Paul Krugman ever been right about anything? pic.twitter.com/HwK2PhlZBd

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 24, 2021

Well, now it’s a blue state crisis (to the extent that it’s not an every state pandemic) because COVID-19 is seasonal and hits different regions of the country at different times. Intellectually honest people were willing to admit that back in August while absolute hacks acted as though outbreaks were solely depending on the rubes not listening to the federal government.

The truth is out in the open now, though. And while the media may believe they can run from the very standards they put in place with the express intent of trashing Republicans, we are going to hold them to them. And by those standards, Biden is a colossal, abysmal failure.