Evidence from 2022 shows that major U.S. prestige outlets did pivot toward a “live with Covid” framing, even if their motivations and degree of revisionism are matters of interpretation.

1. Shift to a “live with the virus / new normal” narrative

   • In January 2022, The Washington Post ran a long news analysis explicitly describing a global and U.S. “strategic retreat” from trying to crush Covid, noting that the phrase “live with the virus” had become the new mantra and that “crushing the virus is no longer the strategy.”(washingtonpost.com)
   • A January 6, 2022 Washington Post op‑ed by Jackie Spinner (widely highlighted by the Post’s own podcast) argued “we have to learn to live with covid and the mitigations it requires,” and that canceling school is “not sustainable.”(washingtonpost.com)
   • A February 2022 Post opinion piece on the “next phase” of the pandemic urged moving past polarizing rhetoric toward “reasonable compromises that allow us to live with covid-19.”(washingtonpost.com)
   • A Fox News write‑up of a New York Times editorial board piece (December 2021, heading into 2022) reports the board telling Americans the virus is not going away soon and that those “paralyzed” by fear need to learn to live with the reality of the virus and return toward normal life—exactly the kind of rhetorical pivot Sacks predicted.(foxnews.com)
   • A 2022 media‑criticism piece from FAIR quotes a September 2022 New York Times article on China’s zero‑Covid policy describing China as an “anomalous” holdout while “the rest of the world learns to live with the coronavirus,” confirming that by late 2022 the Times was explicitly using “learn to live with it” language as a baseline.(fair.org)
   • CNN’s political coverage in February 2022 reported polling that framed the public choice as either prioritizing stopping the spread or accepting that “it’s time to learn to live with the virus,” normalizing that framing as a mainstream option rather than an outlier.(abc17news.com)

2. Framing Covid as endemic / flu‑like and non‑eradicable

   • On PBS’s Amanpour & Company (carried on many public‑TV outlets and covered online), Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel—introduced as a former Biden Covid adviser—argued in January 2022 that the U.S. must “change course” and “learn to live with this disease,” saying outright that “we’re not going to defeat the coronavirus,” that it will be “like flu… other respiratory viruses” and will reach an endemic, manageable level.(pbs.org)
   • A January 2022 Washington Post piece likewise stressed that zero‑Covid was no longer realistic, that SARS‑CoV‑2 would remain part of the world like other circulating viruses, and discussed it in the context of an eventual “stalemate” where the virus becomes more like other endemic respiratory illnesses.(washingtonpost.com)
     These are not full minimizations of risk, but they very clearly move away from “eradication” talk and toward the “cold/flu‑like endemic virus we live with” frame Sacks described.

3. Downplaying eradication / harsh lockdown strategies

   • The same January 2022 Washington Post analysis notes that “crushing the virus is no longer the strategy” in democratic countries and that essentially no nations outside China were still pursuing “zero Covid,” explicitly contrasting new “live with it” approaches to the earlier suppression/lockdown paradigm.(washingtonpost.com)
   • Follow‑on coverage emphasized that most political leaders in the U.S. lacked the capital to return to strict lockdowns, and that policy debates had shifted to how to keep schools and businesses open safely—again consistent with a media narrative that strict lockdowns were no longer on the table and not something to be revived.(washingtonpost.com)

4. “It’s over” vibes and political timing

   • President Biden’s own September 2022 “60 Minutes” interview—he said “the pandemic is over” while acknowledging Covid remained a problem—was widely reported and debated across major outlets.(foxnews.com) That high‑profile declaration, less than two months before the midterms, reinforced a sense in mainstream coverage that the acute emergency phase was finished, even as many pieces still noted ongoing deaths and long‑Covid.
   • More broadly, 2022 saw Democratic governors and federal officials push an “endemic management” line (e.g., Newsom’s California endemic plan in February 2022), with national outlets presenting “living with the virus” as the new consensus.(en.wikipedia.org)
     Whether this shift was intended specifically to benefit Democrats before the midterms is a matter of political interpretation, and no direct evidence (e.g., internal media directives) proves that motive. But the observable part of Sacks’s forecast—that prestige outlets would substantially pivot from emergency/eradication framing to a live‑with‑Covid, endemic framing ahead of the 2022 midterms—did occur.

5. Where the prediction overreaches

   • The coverage did not uniformly say “Covid is basically just a cold,” nor did it universally minimize the virus; high‑profile pieces warned about vulnerable groups, new variants, and the risks of surrendering too soon.(localnews8.com)
   • Claims that outlets “memory‑holed” their prior support for lockdowns or acted primarily as a coordinated political operation to help Democrats are speculative. Critics have made that argument, but it rests on inference rather than hard documentation.

Overall, however, taking the falsifiable core—that leading U.S. prestige media in 2022 would markedly pivot from a crisis/eradication frame to one emphasizing that Covid is here to stay and must be lived with, downplaying renewed lockdowns, and doing so in the run‑up to the midterms—the prediction aligns well with how coverage actually evolved. The strongest parts (the narrative pivot and “live with Covid” rhetoric) clearly came true; the more conspiratorial parts about motive can’t be definitively proven either way but don’t negate that the main forecasted shift did happen.