Since the very beginning of the pandemic there’s been a massive effort from the entire ownership class to get back to business as normal. Since the democrats stopped having a use for it to beat Trump in the election, the entire political class has been united in the same interest. It’s not that the new variants are less problematic or not distinguished enough from the previous variants to get an easily repeatable name (instead of shit like EX.420). It’s that the pandemic needed to be over so (for example) the price of oil would go back up above zero. To that end we’ve had a massive program of manufacturing consent from pretty much all sides in the media.