WASHINGTON, DC – There’s a social media post saying – “the pandemic ended in the U.S. on February 21st”! That statement is incorrect. But how would you know? Joe Biden stated during his recent State Of The Union Address that “the pandemic is behind us”.
NEW HEADLINE – NEW DATE
Now, this headline from U.S. News on January 30, 2023 – “The Biden administration plans to end both the national emergency and public health emergency declarations related to COVID-19 on May 11”.
The declarations allowed the government to be nimble and fast in its response to the pandemic. But a new phase of COVID-19 has been ushered in by the desire from much of the public and the Biden administration to return to normalcy.
Come May, insured Americans could pay out-of-pocket for at-home coronavirus tests. Americans with private insurance and those covered by Medicaid have been able to access eight free rapid tests each month.
For the uninsured, there will no longer be an opportunity to gain free COVID-19 testing, vaccines or treatments through Medicaid, according to an analysis by Kaiser Family Foundation.
If the declarations suddenly ended, it would “sow confusion and chaos into this critical wind-down.”
“Due to this uncertainty, tens of millions of Americans could be at risk of abruptly losing their health insurance, and states could be at risk of losing billions of dollars in funding,” the Biden administration said in a statement about the bills. “Additionally, hospitals and nursing homes that have relied on flexibilities enabled by the emergency declarations will be plunged into chaos without adequate time to retrain staff and establish new billing processes, likely leading to disruptions in care and payment delays, and many facilities around the country will experience revenue losses.”
But the pair of bills has little chance of going anywhere in the Democrat-led Senate and would certainly be vetoed by President Joe Biden if they made it to his desk.
Additionally, the White House claims that the end of the public health emergency means an end to Title 42, a controversial immigration policy implemented by the Trump administration to allow for the expulsion of foreign nationals at the border for public health reasons.
“The Administration supports an orderly, predictable wind-down of Title 42, with sufficient time to put alternative policies in place,” it said. But an immediate end to the declarations would “effectively be requiring the Administration to allow thousands of migrants per day into the country immediately without the necessary policies in place.”
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Joe Biden informed Congress on Monday that he will end the twin national emergencies for addressing COVID-19 on May 11, as most of the world has returned closer to normalcy nearly three years after they were first declared.
The move to end the national emergency and public health emergency declarations would formally restructure the federal coronavirus response to treat the virus as an endemic threat to public health that can be managed through agencies’ normal authorities.
It comes as lawmakers have already ended elements of the emergencies that kept millions of Americans insured during the pandemic. Combined with the drawdown of most federal COVID-19 relief money, it would also shift the development of vaccines and treatments away from the direct management of the federal government.
CNN
Joe Biden intends to end the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies on May 11, the White House said. That means that many Americans could have to start paying for Covid-19 testing and treatment after the declarations cease.
The White House, in a statement of administration policy announcing opposition to two House Republican measures to end the emergencies, said the national emergency and public health emergency authorities declared in response to the pandemic would each be extended one final time to May 11.
“This wind down would align with the Administration’s previous commitments to give at least 60 days’ notice prior to termination of the (public health emergency),” the statement said.
THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
The pandemic remains a public health emergency of international concern, the World Health Organization said on Monday, citing increasing coronavirus deaths globally.
ON TV LAST FALL
In a 60 Minutes in September of 2022 – Joe Biden declared the end of the pandemic saying “The pandemic is over,” in an interview with CBS News’ Scott Pelley. “We still have a problem with it” he continued. “We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”
THE ATLANTIC LAST YEAR
In The Atlantic last August, quoting the CDC – Americans have been given the all clear to dispense with most of the pandemic-centric behaviors that have defined the past two-plus years—part and parcel of the narrative the Biden administration is building around the “triumphant return to normalcy,” says Joshua Salomon, a health-policy researcher at Stanford.
Where mitigation measures once moved in near lockstep with case numbers, hospitalizations, and deaths, they’re now on separate tracks; the focus with COVID is, more explicitly than ever before, on avoiding only severe illness and death. The country seems close to declaring the national public-health emergency done—and short of that proclamation, officials are already “effectively acting as though it’s over,” says Lakshmi Ganapathi, a pediatric-infectious-disease specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital. If there’s such a thing as a “soft closing” of the COVID crisis, this latest juncture might be it.
FOX NEWS
Now, as of two days ago, FOX NEWS declares: COVID-19 most likely spread as the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, according to a recent Department of Energy report aimed at deriving the pandemic’s origin. This theory was once marked as disinformation on popular social media sites; now, this assessment from the US Energy Department echoes the FBI’s 2021 conclusion that an unintentional leak from the Wuhan Virology Institute was the likely origin of the pandemic. Former World Health Organization advisory board member Jamie Metzl was one of the first to call for investigations into COVID origins and emphasize the merits of the lab leak theory. He joins the Rundown to break down all the evidence supporting the lab leak theory and why it faced scrutiny in the early days of the pandemic.
SO, IS IT OVER?
Based on which national report you read or hear, which government agency you believe, which politician has your ear – maybe it is … or, maybe it isn’t. What we can all agree on is that the Covid-19 Pandemic has been stressful. We have lived through personal stress, illness, and in some cases the loss of a loved one, neighbor or friend – all in an environment of government misinformation or lack of information. Shameful and unnecessary.
