CBS Spews Fear Porn Over Axing Vax Mandates, Laments ‘Freedom…to Kill’ People With Virus

Over two segments, Wednesday’s CBS Mornings served an important purpose in reminding many that, though we’ve moved on from the COVID-19 pandemic (while still acknowledging the lives lost and how little we knew early on), others like co-host Gayle King haven’t and instead fear going to a restaurant without a vaccine mandate and opposes the idea of “personal responsibility.”

Michael Lewis, the guest author, lamented that too many Americans are not educated. have embraced a “freedom…to kill” others by exposing them to COVID-19 and refused to adopt a mentality of stricter measures.

Speaking to Dr. Celine Gounder, co-host Tony Dokoupil said there’s “a growing concern about a new subvariant of omicron, now the dominant COVID strain in the U.S….called BA.2 and, according to the CDC, it makes up more than 72 percent of positive cases nationwide.”

Dokoupil added another regret, saying that “governments of our country seem to be putting responsibility back on individuals to decide how to handle the pandemic.”

Gounder correctly suggested that the best thing for everybody is to evaluate their risk levels when it comes down to their health and safety, as well as their jobs, family, or loved ones.

That didn’t sit well with King as the Democratic Party donor griped for those left still in a fearful world divorced from reality:

Personal responsibility is something I don’t believe in. I don’t think people take the — tell the truth about it. It’s possible to go to restaurants and go anywhere. You don’t have to show them your vaccinations. So, you’re in a room with a bunch of people, you don’t know if they’re vaccinated, not vaccinated. 

King was then asked this question by Nate Burlseon and Gounder (who both complimented King’s answer): “How are we supposed to move in the world these days? What are our options? What are we supposed to do?”

Gounder tried to ease the landing but Burleson came up a moment later and mentioned how Shanghai was locked down amid increasing cases. Burleson also wondered if more infections were coming to America.

Lewis rejoined the program just 30 minutes later in order to promote his new paperback on the pandemic.The PremonitionThis Burleson said “investigates why the U.S. struggled with its coronavirus response despite being considered one of the best prepared countries in the world.”

Of course, there was plenty of veiled Trump bashing as Lewis said Americans haven’t “accept[ed] that [we] failed” and conducted a proper “postmortem.”

But worst of all in his smug view, too many foolish Americans “have dug in their heels” about not accepting mass, indefinite restrictions on our lives when they could have been convinced otherwise at “the beginning” if “the country…[had] been” better “led.”

To the chagrin of Lewis and King, there’s resistance to any talk of closing schools and mandating masks and vaccinations (click “expand”):

LEWIS: Instead, it’s — it’s divided. And if you come in now and you try to, I don’t know, close schools —

KING: Yeah.

LEWIS: — in response to something more dangerous —

MAKING: Wearing masks

LEWIS: — wearing a mask, getting a vaccine, you’ve got people — their heels are dug in. 

BURLESON: There’s a stubbornness.

LEWIS: It’s stubbornness. So, there’s like a — a public education thing that didn’t happen in the beginning that would be harder to do now because people think they know. 

BURLESON: Yeah.

Dokoupil wanted to discover the reason. “But isn’t it that people do know something, and there are two political strains here and some people are valuing freedom over a pure public health approach.”

Lewis responded by saying: “There’s some truth to that, but what — freedom — freedom to do what?”

When Dokoupil said it’s to “do whatever they want,” Lewis stated that the it would be “[f]reedom to infect other people and kill them.”

Dokoupil & King agreed that Lewis had spooled the American way. “a perverted idea of freedom”And that our tight lockdowns were good for the economy.

Channeling Tom Nichols, Lewis explained his thoughts on the need to find experts who can better communicate public policy (click “expand”):

LEWIS: [T]His perverted view of freedom is right. I mean, I think that it’s — it’s — there was this false dichotomy that was introduced very early on that we were choosing between, like, the economy and health and the truth is it was never a choice. You wouldn’t have either if you let the thing go in New York the way that it did in New York. I mean, the — the constraints on the freedom actually enabled the economy to motor along a bit, so I think — like, that wasn’t explained. 

KING: Mmmhmm.

LEWIS – All of this is quite grim. What was so interesting to me about this story — it’s — which all takes place kind of before the pandemic was it’s amazing the talent we had that we didn’t use. 

KING: And —

LEWIS: People we had — 

KING: — yeah.

LEWIS: — who were sitting in places waiting to be accessed —

THE KING: You knew everything. 

LEWIS: — who knew stuff —

KING: No — no — you call them the experts. You said experts — your words — suck at telling their own stories. They can even find it difficult to make the information they already know fascinating, which is often very tedious. When there is a crisis you tell the L-6 person. The person who’s at level six. Don’t go to the top person. You should go to L-6 people who know what they’re doing. 

Wednesday’s COVID fear porn and smearing of those concerned about the fallout from lockdowns and becoming more like communist China was made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as Nature’s Bounty and Sandal’s. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.

Click here to see the CBS transcript pertinent from April 6.