While it is not a revelation to anyone who has been paying attention to the way news is presented over the last decade – and more, really – the mainstream media have fully let their mask slip this year.

There is no more coy bantering about being “impartial” and “fair” to both sides. The news media is quite firmly in the tank for Joe Biden. This is not for any love for Biden, but because of their intense hatred of Donald Trump. COVID-19 was a gift to the press – their audience was captive, desperate for information, and they had the ability to blame the president for the fatalities.

I think it is no stretch of the imagination to say that without COVID-19 – an entirely unforeseeable “black swan” event – this election season would be completely different.

The media nearly wet themselves with joy when Trump contracted COVID – and then melted down when he began to recover and went on a victory lap parade. They were never going to forgive him for being president in the first place, but then he wrecked their COVID narrative by beating the virus. So it’s little wonder that now, they are desperate to see Vice President Mike Pence contract COVID.

People on Pence’s staff, including his chief of staff, have tested positive for COVID-19. The actual number of cases varies from report to report. This has triggered a low-level glee within the media realm that didn’t exist when some of Kamala Harris’s campaign staff came down with the virus. Shocking, I know. The media would love to see Pence sick, but they would settle for a quarantine. Apparently, Vice President Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence both tested negative on Sunday, and will probably continue to be repeatedly tested.

On top of that, the media is completely spinning White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said about COVID-19 on Sunday to CNN’s Jake Tapper. In saying that the virus cannot be contained, the White House is “signaling defeat,” claims the Washington Post. Or, maybe – just maybe – they understand that there is no way to control a microscopic enemy like a virus?

“We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas,” Meadows told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

Pressed by Tapper on why the US isn’t going to get the pandemic under control, Meadows said: “Because it is a contagious virus just like the flu.” He added that the Trump administration is “making efforts to contain it.”

“What we need to do is make sure that we have the proper mitigation factors, whether it’s therapies or vaccines or treatments to make sure that people don’t die from this,” Meadows said.”

What is really striking about this video is Jake Tapper’s snarky tone, demanding “why aren’t we going to get control of the pandemic?” Uh, because NO ONE CAN CONTROL A VIRUS. We can vaccinate against it, we can develop therapeutics to deal with, or we can have herd immunity. That’s it. “Control” is illusory bullshit. Every single time there is a measles outbreak (which is so much more contagious than COVID), there is no “control,” only mitigation. We do not “control” the flu, we can only mitigate it through yearly vaccines. There is no country on earth that has “controlled” COVID. New Zealand was forced back into lockdowns after thinking that they had no more cases, and are now managing new infections. Europe, whom the press claimed was handling things SO MUCH BETTER than the United States, is now firmly in the grip of a new wave of infections and is locking down again. Despite vaccination success, smallpox could always make a comeback. So could polio. Why does the press think that acknowledging that COVID is not a controllable variable is “signaling defeat,” even as they gloss over the FDA approval as remdesivir as a therapeutic?

Not a commentary on the election/who should win etc but I don’t think anybody can realistically expect the virus to be contained when over 8 million people have been infected, 80k people test positive a day, and Europe tried strict lockdowns and couldnt contain it. https://t.co/0nagNX1isb

— Alicia Smith (@Alicia_Smith19) October 25, 2020

Oh, because ORANGE MAN BAD, that’s why. So the media will wring its hands over an “uncontrollable pandemic” while eagerly watching to see if Vice President Pence gets sick. If Joe Biden should (God forbid) be elected, suddenly the press will start airing stories about how no one can “control” a virus and we really have to get through this now, and maybe the worst is behind us, and there’s no reason that there shouldn’t be a big inaugural parade and stuff in January because DEMOCRATS, BABY! Mark my words, the narrative will be flipped so fast heads will spin.

But the masks are already off, and even if a Democrat sits in the White House again, the media has no intention of ever pretending to be impartial again. They got fat and lazy under Obama, and then whipped themselves into a frenzy over Trump. They are determined to see Pence knocked out by COVID, and frantic for a Biden win – not just because they loathe Trump, but because they are hoping to take a nice long nap for at least another four years.

Featured image: Vice President Pence, official White House photo by Tia Dufour, cropped, public domain