Biden’s Handmaidens: Is it surprising that the women on the frontlines of Biden’s effort to minimize Covid are not all doing that well, physically?

Some of Biden’s most effective Covid propagandists, including Leana Wen and Rochelle Walensky, have been quietly walking back their minimization of Covid.

Some of Biden’s Covid propagandists: Leana Wen, Rochelle Walensky, and Jen Psaki

It was under Biden, more than even Trump’s first administration, that medically vulnerable people recognized the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as responsible for spreading disease more than preventing it. Conservatives wrote the Great Barrington Declaration early in the pandemic, pushing for a full re-opening of the economy based on the false premise of “herd immunity.” Biden’s administration made their ideas palatable among liberals by voicing them through propagandists, especially women, who seemed to present Covid minimization as a rational and even healthy solution.

There were men too—Fauci, of course, among others—but Biden’s women seemed to play a specific role. They offered confident reassurance and normalcy, especially to other women, who had reason to be concerned about Covid. Studies show that women are far more likely to develop Long Covid than men, and that’s still early data. Covid causes a host of chronic diseases over time, and we already know that women represent the vast majority of people with chronic diseases.

I call these propagandists Biden’s “handmaidens,” because of the sacrificial role they played on the frontline of Covid minimization, an essentially patriarchal project. Perhaps “Serenas” is more appropriate: like Serena in the Handmaid’s Tale, they functioned as propagandists for a cause that contributed to their own destruction—collectively and, in some cases, individually. That is, at least some of Biden’s handmaidens/Serenas seem to have personally paid the price.

Leana Wen

Most notably, there is the fate of Leana Wen, a long-time Democratic public health official. She spent much of Biden’s presidency desperately writing op-ed after op-ed arguing that we shouldn’t worry about Covid now that we had vaccines, except in rare circumstances. Wen was one of the loudest champions of what some disabled activists now call the “great unmasking” of 2022. For a year, she pulled every trick she could, even arguing that Covid deaths were being “overcounted.” It got so bad that people were frequently comparing her to Goebbels on social media.

Wen became especially aggressive after a March 2022 memo written by Democratic consultants circulated. It urged a “return-to-normal” for political and economic reasons (not health reasons). Wen’s own rhetoric often mimicked the memo’s language. (Compare the tweet above to the memo.) She was so prolific in her campaigning on behalf of Biden’s eugenics plan that it was as if she were desperately auditioning for a job in the administration.

Sadly for her, Wen never got hired for Biden’s administration, not even in a small role in one of his Covid task forces. She did get something else in return for her efforts: Long Covid, or the equivalent.

In June 2023, Wen was hospitalized for what she said was pneumonia. She made media appearances, laughing it off as if it were no big deal, could happen to anyone. That, alone, was creepy and disturbing but it had become trademark Biden-era media by that point. The huge explosion of infections causing whole schools to close, even in the summer, was passed off by these pro-disease weirdos as normal.

A few months later, Wen admitted in the Washington Post that she was still struggling with long-term illness since her infection. But it wasn’t just the chest pain and other issues traditionally associated with pneumonia. She was suffering from severe energy limitations, the same sort that she acknowledged, in an article a week before, are commonly associated with Long Covid. She couldn’t even exercise minimally without system collapse.

In that previous article, she argued for more research funding for Long Covid. Wen was vaccinated and boosted when she developed what is, if not Long Covid, an equivalent infection-associated chronic condition.

Wen never mentioned Covid directly when she described her horrible bout with pneumonia. But there is plenty of data to support that Covid, through immune dysregulation, has contributed to a spate of “opportunistic infections” (as they were called in the days of untreated HIV/AIDS), which is why antibiotics are often given as front-line responses to Covid.

For all we know, she actually had Covid, and she didn’t want to break Democratic protocol by admitting it. The odds are very good, considering that she had a respiratory illness in the summer.

Wen speaks more openly now about Long Covid, with Biden out of office. “Long Covid” was never to be named by his administration, because it complicated what they were promising: they said you probably won’t die from Covid if you are healthy and vaccinated. They left off that you might develop a life-long debilitating chronic illness, which doesn’t spare anyone.

Rochelle Walensky

Biden’s first CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky, will best be remembered for her persistent promise that almost everyone could safely unmask after being vaccinated (aka “vax-and-relax”). She even claimed that not everyone even needed to be vaccinated. And she indicated often that people with compromised immune systems don’t really matter. She was smiling and laughing constantly as she delivered these messages.

Walensky did face a bit of backlash when she said, in early 2022, that it was “really encouraging news” that most Covid deaths happened to people with multiple pre-existing conditions. Her rhetoric could be harsh. Walensky also referred to masking as “fringe” and a “Scarlett Letter.” She took the instructions in that memo I mentioned above literally. Walensky did not talk about Long Covid.

So what happened to Walensky? I don’t want to leap to any assumptions, but I will point out a few things:

• On October 21, 2022, she reported that she had tested positive for Covid. After taking Paxlovid, she said she tested negative, promised mild symptoms.

• On October 31, 2022, she reported that she had tested positive for Covid again and her symptoms “returned”. Was it a new infection, or a long infection? Some media outlets talked about “Paxlovid rebound” as if that were a scientifically established thing.

• Despite pushing guidelines that people with a Covid infection return to work after five days, Walensky became radio silent for a while after both infections. The CDC Director Twitter account, which had done regular twice-weekly or more posts, didn’t tweet for weeks, to the point that people started wondering what happened to her.

• Walensky’s media and social media presence picked up a bit after she reemerged in November, but with far, far less frequency, particularly in early 2023.

• In May, she announced her resignation, the end of “one of the shortest tenures of a CDC director in decades,” per AP News.

• She cited feeling exhausted.

It could all be unrelated, sure. Walensky has been relatively quiet since her resignation, for a former prominent official.

But here’s something: In March of 2024, she gave an interview to a small outlet in which she……….

(I need to dramatically pause for this one)

… admitted that the Biden vax-and-relax strategy was probably a mistake!!!!

You should read all of it, but especially this excerpt

Phew. Thanks for reflecting, Walensky. Both Wen and you owe us a lot more though. You owe us saying this on CNN, for one. And you owe us an apology, jeepers! You put immunocompromised (and newly immunocompromised) people through hell with your impersonation of Goebbels.

The Other Propagandists

In the middle of Biden’s term, Walensky was replaced by Mandy Cohen. She had an edge over Walensky in her manner and appearance. She didn’t tend to give a diabolical laugh while pushing Nazi rhetoric, so she appeared less controversial. Cohen had gained recognition for her stern efforts to protect people in North Carolina when the pandemic first broke out. Yet, under Biden, she was no less strident in her messaging that we should all catch, spread, and suffer from Covid.

In addition to the CDC Directors, Biden had two women spokespersons who both repeatedly let the public know that not only was Covid no biggie but also that the president was “strong” and “well” in the aftermath of his own infections. The first of them, Jen Psaki, now has a talk show where she is very focused on Trump not being physically or cognitively well.

Psaki acquired Covid twice, six months apart, while serving under Biden. She resigned less than two months after the second infection. Phew.

There have been other casualties in Biden’s administration. Here’s his former Deputy Director of Long Covid:

Granted, Ms. O’Donnell was a rarity in the Biden administration, as she never denied Long Covid existed. At the same time, she was hosting and attending events unmasked and contributed to publications that push exercise and therapy as treatments, despite ample evidence of the harms of exercise on MECFS, one of the conditions very commonly caused by Covid. It is no wonder that the Biden administration entirely blew the first billion in research funding on attempting to psychologize the illness.

I’ve encountered many others while working in the nonprofit field, which is dominated by centrist liberal women. I saw them shift in 2022, celebrating letting go of precautions. I have heard them dismiss their ongoing coughs and other suddenly new illnesses as no big deal. I have seen many become sick with new and strange maladies, and I have seen the anxiety in their eyes.

I’d like to propose a fifth wave of feminism that is really grounded in our bodies and aware of how all of the structures that build our society are designed to benefit men and their bodies. I’d like us to take a radical approach to rejecting whatever the powers that be declare is healthy or normal until we know exactly how it is going to affect women. I’d like to consider that being a woman is a pre-existing condition in our society—and start from there when people tell us only people with pre-existing conditions need to worry.

And I’d like women to stop selling their souls and bodies to our destruction in the name of status. Other than Psaki and her talk show, what did these women ultimately gain from it?