“We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.” Many were surprised to hear Joe Biden claim this in a recent interview. On September 18th, Biden was on 60 Minutes, discussing world events such as current inflation, the Russia vs Ukraine crisis, and Taiwan’s independence. When asked if the pandemic was over, he responded that it was, mentioning that “no one is wearing masks” and “everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”
Although the president claims that the end is already here, many people, including his staff and other health officials, disagree with him.
So is the pandemic really over? When looking at the state of the US and policies that are still in place, the pandemic is not finished. We may be nearing the end, but we aren’t completely there.
This odyssey of the pandemic began in January 2020 for the US, although it didn’t start severely impacting the country until March 13, 2020, the day many students consider to be their last, normal, pre-covid day. All US citizens were then expected to wear a mask whenever leaving their house, something that was lifted on March 12, 2022, almost exactly 2 years later. It’s been over 30 months since the last normal day, but there are still various advisories in place.
The pandemic has eased up in the past months, with many statistics showing various covid decreases. The beginning of August 2022 started with about 120,000 daily average cases and has been cut in half to about 60,000 cases near the end of September. Considering that in January of this year new cases peaked at a little over 1,000,000, these new stats are a miracle. Despite the lowered number of cases, the US is still in a health emergency. In August 2022, the health emergency that has existed since January 2020 was extended to October 13. Some believed that the emergency would be eliminated after it expired because of fewer cases, but this isn’t true. In response to Biden’s claim, administration officials shared that his unofficial comments did not signal a policy change and that there are no plans to lift the current Covid-19 health emergency.
The Director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, agrees that the pandemic still exists, but has started to slow down. “We are not there yet. But the end (of the pandemic) is in sight.”
It’s progress to see the cases going down, but there are still many deaths occurring. At the current rate, about 400 Americans are dying from covid each day. Dr. Anthony Fauci responded to both this information and Biden’s comments by sharing that this death rate is still “unreasonably high.” The pandemic can’t be resolved until these numbers go down, though no one can predict when it will be back to normal.
A time of year when it won’t be easing up is this winter, when covid is at its worst. It’s not that the virus hates the snow, it travels quicker because more people are meeting inside instead of outside, where particles can float away and not be trapped by walls and a ceiling. It’s also expected that new covid variants will appear during this season. Luckily, because a vaccine has already been found, scientists can more quickly adapt the vaccine to counteract the variants. Even so, people should be on high alert until spring, when the warmer weather comes back and people can go outside more.
The pandemic has been drawn out for a long time, and the entire world is ready for it to be finished. Any day, week, or month could be the official end, and this stretched-out nightmare can finally disappear.
