Let’s all hope the nation can get a grip on the new world of COVID, with President Joe Biden on Tuesday finally prioritizing practical measures that match the new environment we face.
One good sign: Top White House aides are pushing to stop treating cases as the main measure of the coronavirus threat — as we have been advocating for months — since a positive test no longer equals that significant a mortal risk.
Vaccinated people — which is now most American adults and an even higher share of most-at-risk seniors — who get a breakthrough case are unlikely to have severe symptoms. Indeed, at least 40 percent of Omicron cases are proving entirely asymptomatic, and the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines that dominate in this country are highly effective against it causing severe illness.
Yet even South Africa, where a smaller proportion of the public is vaccinated, is seeing Omicron as far lower-risk: Its first-hit capital region is already past the peak, while doctors there report hospitalizations from Omicron are less than a tenth the rate for Delta.
Washington, and the world, needs to stop pretending we’ll ever get to zero new infections: This bug, like the flu a century ago, will remain endemic — but not a major concern.
Yet public-health “experts” continue to push measures that might have made sense early in this pandemic, when so little hard info was known, but clearly don’t hold up now.
We’re thinking of Dr. Tony Fauci’s insistence that everyone still needs to mask up while flying, even though airplanes have excellent air-ventilation and -filtration systems — which is by far the best “indoors” measure against transmission.
And also the continued CDC advice that kids mask up in school, when — as The Atlantic’s David Zweig has thoroughly detailed, the science behind the cruel step suggests no real benefit.
Here in the city, the even-crazier rules have little kids (who basically don’t get COVID) eating outside when temperatures are below freezing, which is actually a far greater health threat.
Meanwhile, employers are going nuts trying to figure out the various vaccine mandates: Biden’s national one is tied up in the courts, off again-on again, until the Supremes settle the issue. Now Omicron and soaring “breakthrough infections” of the vaxxed make a mockery of these rules — ensuring that your colleagues in the office or fellow restaurant diners have had a shot is no longer protection against infection. So what happens now? Close offices? Close restaurants and bars? Stay-at-home orders? The COVID-fatigued populace won’t stand for it.
Meanwhile, the nation’s testing resources — which were never as sophisticated as other major countries’ — are crumbling under the Omicron pressure.
Sadly, Biden’s current efforts — as outlined in his speech right after the Afghanistan debacle — were designed mainly to make it look like he was “doing something” in a bid to restore his poll ratings. They failed on that count, as well as at meaningfully countering COVID.
With his Build Back Better bill now dead in the water, we hope the president and his aides will at last focus on practical leadership to deal with the lessening COVID threat and get the nation back to normal. Officially downplaying the case count, unpicking the confusing, counterproductive mess of regulations on the majority and focusing instead on protecting the truly vulnerable — and finally sidelining Fauci — would make for a good start.
