Tim Blair: Barack Obama invites Covid-19 to spread at his 60th birthday

If you’re going to a Black Lives Matter demonstration or a lockdown protest, a presidential birthday bash or a biker festival, Covid always knows your intentions, writes Tim Blair.

According to various federal and state leaders, the coronavirus is “cruel”, “insidious” and “unpredictable”.

No argument there.

But the coronavirus and its Delta variant – great name for a Goodrem tribute act, by the way – are so much more besides.

Remarkably, they are somehow able to detect a group’s political purpose and adjust its infectivity to suit.

That’s why, when Australian activists staged US-imitating Black Lives Matter demonstrations during the first coronavirus surge last year, social justice types were hugely supportive.

Protestors at a Black Lives Matter event in Sydney in July last year. Picture: NCA Newswire/ Gaye Gerard

As The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen noted, ABC presenter Patricia Karvelas cheered the demonstrations. “You don’t get many chances to elevate an issue like this,” Karvelas said. “This idea that this is imported from the US is baloney.“

Like the imported US word “baloney”, for example.

But while those demonstrations represented “chances to elevate an issue” with no apparent Covid risk, more recent lockdown protests infuriated Karvelas: “I’m genuinely shocked that there are that many people stupid enough to protest and spread a virus that might kill them. My brain hurts.”

If both groups of protesters swapped their causes, signs and chants, Karvelas would presumably swap views. Group A suddenly bad, Group B suddenly good.

The same would likely be true for Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who described lockdown protesters as “selfish idiots” but slammed attempts in NSW to stop BLM marches: “The government is taking its own citizens to court to stop a peaceful protest. What the?!”

Singer Erykah Badu took a picture of the former president at his birthday party and posted it to Instagram.

We don’t need vaccinations or herd immunity to protect us from Covid. All we need to do is loudly support all the right causes and Covid will know to leave us be.

Or we could surround ourselves with all the right people, which also seems to reduce Covid concerns.

Former US president Barack Obama took that precaution for his grotesque 60th birthday party last weekend at Martha’s Vineyard.

One guest, lightweight pop star John Legend, had a few days earlier told his fans to wear masks.

“Being unvaccinated and/or unmasked at a large indoor gathering is like literally begging to get Covid,” Legend wrote on social media.

And then he turned up at a big indoor gathering where hardly anybody wore masks.

But that’s OK, because as New York Times White House correspondent Annie Karni pointed out, Obama’s celebrity groupies were a “sophisticated” crowd who followed “all the safety precautions”.

Indeed. US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry is so into social distancing he arrived aboard a private jet. No filthy mingling with the riffraff for him.

No reduction of his carbon dioxide output, either.

Another US gathering, however, was condemned as a potential Covid superspreader event.

The gigantic annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, featured very few people who’d have received Obama invitations – and they were therefore deemed quite the infection risk.

“I’m very concerned, Chuck, that we’re going to see another surge related to that rally,” White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci told NBC interviewer Chuck Todd.

No such worries over Obama’s birthday bash.

Incidentally, there’s been an infection surge since all of Obama’s friends returned to the mainland. Some 63 people on Martha’s Vineyard – population 15,000 – have tested positive for Covid.

That’s the equivalent of more than 22,000 people testing positive in Sydney. Perhaps backing all the right causes and being “sophisticated” isn’t particularly safe after all.

Not that Obama’s party seemed especially sophisticated. Even New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, generally an Obama admirer, found the whole thing a little distasteful.

“It’s hard to stop thinking about the over-the-top fete the former president held at his Martha’s Vineyard manse for his 60th birthday. It is such a perfect taxonomy of the Obama arc,” Dowd wrote last week.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry came to Barack Obama’s birthday party in a private jet. Picture: AFP

“As president, he didn’t try hard enough on things we needed. He was a diffident debutante with a distaste for politics.

“Post-presidency, he is trying too hard on things we don’t need. The culture is already swimming in Netflix deals, celebrity worship, ostentatious displays of wealth, not to mention podcasts.

“We already knew Obama gravitated to stars but it was disillusioning to see it on such a grand scale last weekend.”

Should’ve gone to Sturgis.

The New York Times claimed revellers at Barack Obama's 60th birthday on Martha's Vineyard would be safe from spreading the disease due to superior means and intelligence.

Condemnation of common folk and exceptions for the wealthy are part of the class war that’s been raging since the pandemic began.

This was neatly summarised in a recent letter to his local Coast Community News by Forresters Beach man Kevin Armstrong.

Noting zero health consequences after 150 Central Coast residents allegedly attended the lockdown protest in Sydney, Armstrong wrote: “At the time, our esteemed Parliamentary Secretary for the Central Coast, Adam Crouch, claimed (protest attendance) was the main reason for our extended lockdown.

“Maybe Adam can clarify how he estimated those numbers.

“Maybe he could also clarify his estimate of the number of wealthy Sydneysiders currently residing in alternative/holiday accommodation on the Central Coast – and why they present no Covid threat to our community.”

Kevin’s answered his own excellent question.

They’re wealthy, and thus incapable of any Covid badness. Just like BLM support and Obama worship, money can buy you a lot of Covid credit.