President Biden has notched a lot of wins lately – an historic climate change law, a rare gun safety law, new benefits for veterans, a Black woman on the high court, lower prescription drug prices for Medicare seniors, and much more – but at heart Joe is still Joe, which means that sometimes he’ll riff off key and off the cuff. Granted, he’s not nearly as nuts as his predecessor – he hasn’t said that windmill power “causes cancer,” or declared that Putin’s Ukraine invasion was “genius” – but it’s noteworthy that Wikipedia compiles Bidenisms.
We heard a doozy the other night on 60 Minutes, when he referenced Covid-19: “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”
That’s malarkey.
Each week, the American death toll from Covid is roughly equivalent to the death toll on 9/11. Over the past month, the worldwide tally of new reported cases was 19.4 million – and that’s an important stat, because Biden’s remark about a vanished pandemic doesn’t jibe with the definition of a pandemic. Here’s how the the National Institutes of Health defines the term: “An epidemic of disease, or other health condition, that occurs over a widespread area – multiple countries or continents – and usually affects a sizable part of the population.”
We expect this rational administration to follow the science, not dispute it. If Donald Trump was still in office (heaven forbid) and had decreed that “the pandemic is over,” imagine the outcry. We can’t let Biden slide just because he’s not Trump.
Health experts aren’t giving him a pass. Just last week, the World Health Organization’s leader said the pandemic is not over. And Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves writes on Twitter: “Nothing, nothing has made me more disgusted by our party than what the President said on 60 Minutes about the Covid-19 pandemic being over. We lead in overall COVID mortality and excess deaths among the G7 (nations). Life expectancy in the U.S. is down and has not rebounded. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are likely to suffer from long Covid. And we’re grossly under-vaccinated and under-boosted as a country.”
I get why Biden, probably on impulse, said what he said. The midterm elections are only seven weeks away and he wants to buoy the voters who have Covid fatigue. And he probably figures he’s on safe political turf, because, according to the polls, 49 percent of Americans rate him favorably on handling Covid – with only 42 percent in dissent.
But by saying what he said, he’s gumming up his own federal machinery. On the one hand, he and his health subordinates have launched an autumn campaign to persuade people to get the new improved booster shots that protect against Omicron and known variants. On the other hand, by announcing that “the pandemic is over,” millions of people may be persuaded to skip the new shot in the arm. That’s how Wall Street sees it. On Monday, there was a huge sell-off; collectively, four major vaccine manufacturers lost $9 billion in value.
And congressional Republicans, who are always poised to pounce on any Biden misstep, are now doing so with characteristic relish. If “the pandemic is over,” why should they agree with the administration’s urgent request for another $22 billion to fight Covid? If “the pandemic is over,” Republicans can put their usual rhetoric into overdrive, as Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall did yesterday when said that Americans are “yearning to operate outside of the confines of supersized government.”
And here’s a puzzler: If “the pandemic is over,” how does that square with the administration’s official declaration that Covid is a “public health emergency“? Indeed, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said yesterday that the emergency “remains in effect” for, at absolute minimum, the next 60 days. Republicans are now arguing that, if the pandemic is behind us, surely there’s no need to declare an official emergency. But if the emergency designation is lifted, 16 million Americans will lose their Medicaid coverage for Covid vaccines and treatments. (And Biden would lose his authority to end student debt forgiveness, because he hinged his executive order on a law that allows presidents to act in times of national emergency.)
So, if I’m reading Biden correctly, we’re somewhere on the spectrum between a pandemic and an emergency. Or, as Republican Sen. Richard Burr said yesterday (and I agree!), “the American people continue to be confused by mixed messages.” Which essentially means that we’re on our own. Do better, Joe.