Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Is the Pandemic Over?

“In an interview on ‘60 Minutes’ Sunday night, President Biden said the
COVID-19 pandemic is ‘over’ in the United States. ‘The pandemic is
over. We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lotta work
on it. ... But the pandemic is over,’ Mr. Biden said.” CBS News

From the Right

The right agrees that the pandemic is over, and criticizes Biden
for not ending emergency Covid policies.

“For most Americans, Covid is no worse than a bad flu. ‘If you are up-to-
date on your vaccines today, and you avail yourself of the treatments, your
chances of dying [from] COVID are vanishingly rare and certainly much
lower than your risk of getting into trouble with the flu,’ White House Covid
response coordinator Ashish Jha told National Public Radio…

“But if that’s right, why hasn’t the President also declared an end to the
public-health and national emergencies? If the pandemic is over, then so is
the emergency. Yet the Administration continues to extend the public-
health emergency that was first declared in January 2020…

“Mr. Biden seems to want it both ways. He wants to reassure Americans

tired of restrictions on their way of life that the pandemic is over and they
can get on with their lives. But he wants to retain the official emergency so
he can continue to expand the welfare state and force states to comply.
Covid can’t be an emergency only when it’s politically useful.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal

“In May, the Biden administration (correctly) reported that it was obliged to
end the use of Title 42 of the 1944 Public Health Services Act at the border
because the Covid-19 emergency had passed… To put it more simply:
Three months before Biden’s move on student loans, the CDC concluded
that the pandemic was no longer enough of an emergency to justify
extraordinary measures at the border…

“That, a quarter of a year later, the same administration asked us all to

believe that the same pandemic was bad enough to justify giving hundreds
of billions of dollars to college students was always utterly preposterous.
Tonight, on 60 Minutes, President Biden confirmed as much in public. The
courts — and the voters — must take note.”
Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review
“‘If you notice,’ Biden remarks, ‘no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems
to be in pretty good shape.’ That’s no thanks to Biden’s own administration,
which has imposed mask mandates and then fought in court to keep them
imposed…

“His HHS started off the school year by imposing a ridiculous mask
mandate on toddlers in Head Start programs, even though no one believes
toddlers can be effectively masked for more than a few minutes — and
every bit of science on COVID-19 we have shows that they’re not at risk for
seriously acute cases…

“Biden’s Department of Justice is still currently appealing a federal court

ruling in Florida that struck down the transit mandate promulgated by the
CDC… The pandemic has been over for half of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Unfortunately, the authoritarianism lives on.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air