July 25, 2022 10:53 AM UTC

Doctor Ken Buck The Gynopandemiologist Strikes Again

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• by: Colorado Pols

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest wave of a highly infectious subvariant of the Omicron flavor of the virus is surging across the planet–though due to the vaccines and better treatment options available in 2022 compared to two years ago, the rate of hospitalization and death is far below previous waves of the pandemic.

As CBS4 Denver reports, this reductive in the relative lethality of COVID today compared to two years ago has given politicians who have downplayed the severity of the pandemic from the beginning like Colorado’s Rep. Ken Buck a chance to make some pitifully ignorant statements–and as readers know, Buck never misses that chance:

Colorado Congressman Ken Buck tweeted that the COVID pandemic was “grossly overstated.” The Republican representing Colorado’s 4th Congressional District tweeted the comment on Saturday morning.

The tweet was part of a retweet from the White House with a picture of President Joe Biden wearing a face mask and making phone calls just days after he tested positive for COVID-19.

Buck tweeted, “If a 79-year-old man can get Covid and return to work days after, the dangers of the pandemic were grossly overstated. Our public health establishment was either systematically deceptive or systematically wrong.”

President Joe Biden is another example of the latest Omicron variant’s ability to partially evade the immunity provided by vaccines and boosters, having tested positive last week. Biden’s relatively mild case of the disease is attributed to Biden being fully vaccinated and twice boosted, as well as being treated since testing positive last week with the new anti-viral drug Paxlovid approved for emergency use in December of last year.

To get to this point where “a 79-year-old man can get COVID and return to work days after,” a “moonshot” effort to develop vaccines and effective treatments was necessary. The development of COVID vaccines with help from Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed was a huge missed political opportunity for Republicans, who were prevented from capitalizing on the success due to their base’s unfounded fears.

But the truth is, we don’t need to explain any of this. What we have here is a sitting member of Congress calling a pandemic that killed over one million Americans “grossly overstated.” In 2020, when the death toll from COVID-19 was still mostly hypothetical, maybe you could get away with this.

But how can anybody say that now over the bodies of a million dead Americans?

It’s not the first time Ken Buck has left us with our jaws agape. The only question is how low can Buck go in the moral freefall of today’s Republican Party, and Buck keeps breaking his own personal records.