WASHINGTON, D.C. - Officials at the CDC said today that the surprising virulence and persistence of Afghanistan news may require a whole new COVID variant to distract the country from it.

"We're concerned that the only way to cure the administration of all this bad publicity may be a prolonged, shrieking freak-out over a new COVID variant," said Dr. Ed Whittle, Director of the CDC's Department for the Cultivation of Existential Dread. "So, we're working night and day to come up with something really scary that would make the collapse of Afghanistan seem like a Martha's Vineyard birthday party."

Some of the possible variants that officials are considering include the Gamma variant, which gives victims an extreme desire to turn green and smash; the Bro variant, which causes victims to break out in armband tattoos; and the Kung Fu Movie variant, in which victims' can no longer make their words match up with their mouth movements.

Dr. Whittle said, "Right now the leading candidate is the Germany variant, because lots of really scary things come from Germany, like Nazis and Rammstein. And if we're going to wipe the Afghanistan debacle off the front pages, we're definitely going to need something as scary as heavy metal Germans."