You first.

That’s what we suspect a lot of right-thinking Americans will be saying to Joe Biden and his entire administration when they introduce a new vaccine in a few weeks and recommend that “everybody” gets it.

“Mr. President,” asked a reporter on Friday who’d clearly been selected for the task, “can you say anything about the uptick of COVID cases and the new variant?”

“Yes, I can,” replied Biden immediately, as if he’d been expecting precisely that question from precisely that shill at precisely that spot at precisely that moment on Friday. “Matter of fact, I signed off this morning on a proposal to have, to present to the Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is n-n-necessary, that works. And tentatively, not decided finally yet, tentatively it is recommended that, it will likely be recommended that everybody get it, no matter whether they got it before or not.” Take a look:

Biden says he just “signed off” on a funding request for “a new [COVID] vaccine that is necessary that works” pic.twitter.com/PNhyFlwFrt

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 25, 2023

If only real journalism were this easy. But at least the Big Guy took a few minutes away from his seemingly never-ending vacation in sunny, scenic, splendid Lake Tahoe to reintroduce the threat of COVID to the American people so that he and his administration can be properly positioned to rescue us with an updated stick.

Then, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dutifully filled in the blanks and strengthened the administration’s pitch about the XBB variants of COVID, which are the progeny of the Omicron variant. “So, we know that as you all know, vaccinations against COVID-19 remains the safest protection for avoiding hospitalization, long-term health outcomes, and death,” she said. “Which is why we are going to be encouraging Americans to stay up to date on their vaccines.”

Actually, “the safest protection for avoiding hospitalization, long-term health outcomes, and death” is to be a young and otherwise healthy human being. If you’re lucky enough to have those two attributes, you have virtually zero chance of contracting a life-threatening case of COVID. But at the same time, young people — especially young men — who were encouraged to take the two-shot mRNA vaccine from Pfizer or Moderna are now at increased risk of myocarditis. That, sadly, is The Science.

Will the administration require its employees to get the updated shot? Will they fire all the active-duty and reserve warriors who refuse to take it? KJP didn’t say. Nor did she say whether it’ll be every bit as effective as the last vaccine at keeping its recipients from getting COVID or passing it along to others — which is to say, not very effective at all.

But, as Fox News reports: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects updated COVID-19 vaccines from pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax by mid-September, but they will need to authorize the vaccines alongside the Food and Drug Administration. The process could take an additional few weeks, pushing the availability of the vaccines to the public to October.”

We can’t wait.

If we seem jaded, it’s because we are. So, we sense, is PJ Media’s Matt Margolis, who writes:

I suspect that Joe Biden still feels robbed of his moment to be a hero for “shutting down the virus” and ending the pandemic. He declared our “independence” from COVID-19 a mere six months into his term on July 4, 2021, only to watch it blow up in his face. Cases and deaths skyrocketed soon after his declaration of victory, and within a year Biden had accumulated a higher number of COVID deaths on his watch than there had been under Trump.

Elsewhere in upbeat COVID news, a new study by researchers at South Korea’s Jeonbuk National University found that the surgical N95 mask — the mask of choice for ostensible protection against COVID — has been found to expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals.

And for all this, we have Communist China to thank. Let’s never forget that.