As the propaganda-generated fear in America about COVID-19 has dramatically waned, the Editorial Board of The Washington Post want to ramp it up again:

The worst virus variant just arrived. The pandemic is not over.

by the Editorial Board | Thursday, July 7, 2022 | 1:58 PM EDT

The pandemic is a relentless race against Mother Nature. Waves of infection took millions of lives, and only highly effective vaccines prevented even more deaths. Now, the coronavirus is speeding up once again, mutating, evading immunity and still on the march. The arrival of subvariant BA.5 should be a reminder that the finish line in this race is nowhere to be seen.

What’s BA.5? This is the latest subvariant of omicron, which stormed the planet late last year and caused a huge wave of infection. As of now, BA.5 and a closely related variant, BA.4, account for about 70 percent of all infections in the United States, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in part on modeling. These two newcomers are easing out an earlier variant, BA.2.

The obscure names should not hide the punch of BA.5. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, says that BA.5 “is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.” He adds, “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond earlier versions of omicron. There has not been a marked increase in hospitalizations and deaths, he reports, because there is so much immunity built up from the winter omicron wave. But there are aspects of this new variant very much worth keeping an eye on as the United States remains stuck at an uncomfortably high plateau of pandemic misery. And the new variants are driving a case surge in Europe.

At the core of the BA.5 difference is its biology. Evolution has given it more fitness, a term that incorporates its ability to transmit, grow and evade immunity; the variant shows “marked difference from all prior variants,” reports Dr. Topol. One way it does so is by evading the body’s immune system, and BA.4 and BA.5 together are “the most immune-evasive variants” seen in multiple studies to date.

As we have previously noted, this past winter, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” This was during the BA.1 variant’s primacy, and two months later, the American Medical Association warned that the then-new BA.2 subvariant could be “30% to 60% more transmissible” than BA.1. While playing Blondie’s One Way of Another, we noted that BA.4 and BA.5 are gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya! Yale Medicine also said that BA.4 and BA.5 appear to be more transmissible.

But here comes the money line from the Editorial Board, five paragraphs down:

Whether BA.5 will lead to more severe disease isn’t clear yet. But knowing that the virus is spreading should reinforce the need for the familiar mitigation measures: high-quality face masks, better air filtration and ventilation, and avoiding exposure in crowded indoor spaces.

Translation: while no one yet knows if BA.4 and BA.5 will actually cause more serious symptoms, Our Betters want us to return to the fears of 2020. Yet, despite not knowing, the editorial headline declares it to be “the worst virus variant.”

Yale Medicine already stated:

The second question has been whether Omicron—and currently the BA.4 and BA.5 variants—is more likely than Delta or other variants to cause severe disease. While there is more to learn about BA.5, early data from South Africa has not shown a sharp rise in deaths from the subvariant. The original Omicron caused a record number of cases, but while it has also caused its share of hospitalizations and deaths, factors such as lengths of hospital stays, ICU admittance, and death have been “lower than during previous pandemic peaks,” according to a CDC report in January.

The CDC says the presence of severity of symptoms can be affected by vaccination, history of prior infection, and age and other health conditions.

Click to enlarge.

As the WaPo wants us to return to “high-quality face masks,” I will note here that for many, perhaps most, American men, including me, an N-95 face mask cannot be worn properly: a third of all American men always wear a beard, while another 27% say that they sometimes do.

It would seem that the Editorial Board want to control our facial hair as well. After all, it’s only us evil reich-wing conservatives who wear beards, right?

OK, OK, so I’m projecting here, but one thing is clear: the Editorial Board want more subservience to control — from the government? — by the population in general. As Glenn Greenwald said:

Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.

Mr Greenwald, certainly no conservative, was writing about the desire of governments for more security control, not the virus, but the same statement applies. And the Editorial Board, worried to death as they are that, Heaven forfend! the evil Republicans will win significant majorities in the November elections, want us all to be more subservient to the federal government.