‘much rougher than I anticipated’

Meghan McCain is opening up about her COVID-19 battle, describing the “sad and pessimistic” thoughts she had after getting far sicker than she expected. 

The former co-host of The View in a column for the Daily Mail on Wednesday said she and her husband both tested positive for COVID-19 several weeks ago. But McCain writes that her case “wasn’t mild” and was “much rougher than I anticipated” given that both she and her husband are vaccinated. Their 15-month-old daughter didn’t get sick, she said. 

“My husband and I got very sick — more sick than the ‘mild Omicron’ headlines and Twitter streams suggested,” McCain wrote. “I am still now, a few weeks out from testing positive, waking up feeling the aftereffects of a cold in my throat, getting fatigued easily, and unable to taste food or smell anything normally. I have been lighting candles all over the house waiting for this to change.”‘

McCain writes that she is “still fearful of the unknown long-term side effects that I may experience,” and she reflects on experiencing the “most sad and pessimistic moments that I have ever felt” while sick with COVID-19. She also criticizes the Biden administration for its response to the pandemic and the fact that at-home COVID-19 tests were not more readily available during the Omicron surge. 

“Why is it so hard to get an at-home Covid test?” McCain writes. “In isolation, I started ruminating as to whether the last days of American greatness were finally upon us, like so many pundits have been circulating over the past few years. For a pandemic that is in its third year, shouldn’t we have more readily available treatment and testing?”

McCain goes on to argue that the president’s “feckless, moronic, isolated Titanic of an administration gets the blame” for this, calling for an “intense and immediate shift away from whatever depression this administration is continuing to let the country experience.”