Across the country, COVID cases are surging.

The omicron variant is spreading like wildfire, and while it seems vaccines are still mitigating it somewhat, omicron is proving more resistant to those vaccines than previous variants were. After I posted last week about coming down with COVID ahead of Christmas, I got a lot of texts from friends who were in the same boat or knew someone in the same boat.

This variant is getting a lot of people sick. Many of those who are vaccinated are seeing less severe symptoms than those who are not, but the variant itself is not nearly as severe as the previous incarnations of the virus. In truth, getting COVID-19 right now is not the danger it was two years ago, or even one year ago.

But omicron has up-ended the talking points on COVID-19. We have known for a while that the numbers to track are hospitalizations and deaths, but it seems like only now that the ever-panicking media have decided that this might be the best course of action to take.

The loudest voices on mitigation efforts – from vaccines to vaccine passports to masking to school closures – are the self-proclaimed adults in the room. They are the Dr. Fauci’s. They are the Randi Weingartens. They are the Joe Bidens and Kamala Harrises. They have been telling us for months that the South, with its ignorant Republican voters and its vaccine hesitancy, deserved those high case numbers. Then, as soon as the omicron surge started raging in the Democratic states, the talking points changed.

Those self-proclaimed adults did come at this in part to preserve their authority. Keep in mind Joe Biden’s threat to use his executive power to get Republican governors out of the way.

Let me be blunt.  My plan also takes on elected officials and states that are undermining you and these lifesaving actions.  Right now, local school officials are trying to keep children safe in a pandemic while their governor picks a fight with them and even threatens their salaries or their jobs.  Talk about bullying in schools.  If they’ll not help — if these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as President to get them out of the way.

But Biden has all but admitted defeat on that front. He is now insisting that governors take up the charge because there is no federal solution. That won’t stop people like Fauci from continuing to spout off on incoherent policy on his continuous media tour.

Because as much as this is about control, it is also about the “experts” and the arrogance of the Authority. They cannot admit defeat in this arena because it is a blow to this bubble of importance they have built around themselves for the last two years. Even as the data continues to show that not only are they wrong now but that they’ve been wrong for a long time, they cannot give it up.

They are thoroughly embarrassed now, but they refuse to let up.

That’s why the teachers’ unions need puff pieces gaslighting readers on just how much they screwed up our kids’ education. That’s why Democratic politicians need to increase their enforcement of vaccine mandates despite omicron being the “great equalizer” on the spread among vaccinated and unvaccinated. That’s why they have to go after a man who said “Let’s go, Brandon” to the President rather than focus on just how wrong the COVID experts have been.

The media went to bat repeatedly for the Left and its figures of authority on all of this and it was all for naught. They are as embarrassed over this fiasco as the experts, and they can’t just back down, either. No one who pushed for any of this, from the politicians to the so-called experts to the anchors and reporters, comes away from this looking anything less than completely and embarrassingly wrong on all of this.

As a result, they will all get more hostile. They will push harder for things that, frankly, make no sense in this moment. They will continue to push ahead on their calls for lockdowns and shutdowns and barbaric treatment of the unvaccinated because they are too arrogant to admit they have been defeated by this virus.

Joe Biden admitted defeat to a virus. One year after saying he would shut it down. The lame-duck presidency continues apace. But the people below him? The Democrats and experts who need to be right and be in control of the situation? They won’t let up.