The days are longer, the snow is melting and many of us are looking forward to a spring and summer where COVID doesn’t dictate who we can see and what we can do.
Sound familiar?
That sounds a lot like what we heard last year, when vaccines were going into arms at a rate of a million a day and July 4 was going to be our “Independence from COVID Day.”
It didn’t work out then, and we shouldn’t bet that the virus will just magically disappear this time.
Unfortunately, too many people are acting as if the pandemic is already behind us – and a lot of them are in Congress. Lawmakers stripped $15.6 billion in COVID funds from the emergency budget and Ukrainian aid package that passed last week. As a result, the Biden administration says that it may have to curtail testing programs and cancel orders for antiviral medications as soon as next week because they won’t be able to pay for them.
This is terrible news that is not supported by what we know about the pandemic. Yes, cases, hospitalizations and deaths are down dramatically from the heights they hit in January. In Maine, 10 counties are considered to be at low risk of transmission, while five counties are a medium risk and only one, Aroostook, still has high levels.
Schools and businesses are taking advantage of the reprieve, which allows them to lift mask requirements and other restrictive measures.
But the pandemic is far from over. China is in the midst of its worst COVID outbreak, forcing strict lockdowns and travel bans in manufacturing centers and ports. Analysts attribute it to a combination of less-effective Chinese vaccines and vaccine hesitancy, especially among older adults who are also most at risk for serious illness.
As we should know by now, no distance is safe. The more that people are infected, the greater the likelihood that a new variant will emerge. There is some reporting that suggests a new omicron subvariant is circulating in the United Kingdom, leading to a surge in cases and hospitalizations. This strain appears to be infecting people who had already recovered from the original omicron.
We in the United States may be enjoying a reprieve, but there’s no reason to believe that it’s permanent.
What’s happening in Washington is a result of the ridiculous politics of COVID. In order to get necessary Republican votes in the Senate, the COVID funds in the budget bill had to come from clawing back money that had already been distributed to states.
House Democrats from the states most affected pulled their support. In order to get the bill to pass the House, the COVID money was removed from the bill.
But there is no apparent plan to pass a COVID bill in time to prevent the administration from backing off on testing and treatment. And the programs will have to shut down completely if Congress doesn’t figure out how to get this done by mid-April.
As we close in on 1 million dead Americans, we need to accept that this pandemic is nothing to play political games with. Over-spending on public health is much less dangerous than shutting down programs too soon.
Everyone wishes that the pandemic was over. But it’s not, and until it is, Congress should make sure that we have what we need to keep it under control.
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