One can only hope that President Biden’s more realistic, non-interventionist approach continues.
One can only hope that President Biden’s more realistic, non-interventionist approach continues.
P resident Joe Biden’s recent address on the Omicron variant was full of holiday miracles. After nearly a year in office, Biden finally conceded the obvious by acknowledging that President Trump deserves credit for developing Covid-19 vaccines in record time. Biden also offered a half-hearted compliment to Trump for announcing that he had gotten a booster shot.
Rounding out the seasonal marvels was the fact that Biden resisted the temptation — to which he and most other officials have routinely succumbed during the pandemic — to impose additional lockdowns. He acknowledged that the Omicron variant is highly transmissible and is leading to a surge in cases, but cautioned that we should not panic. And in welcome news to parents and children around the country, Biden even conceded that “we don’t have to shut down schools because of a case of Covid-19.”
Biden’s newfound more conservative approach appears to recognize that while the Omicron variant is more transmissible than earlier variants, vaccine and natural immunity continue to provide protection against severe disease. New studies out of South Africa and Scotland indicate that the risk of hospitalization with Omicron is between 68 and 80 percent lower than with earlier variants, including Delta. And among patients admitted to the hospital, those infected with Omicron were far less likely to progress to ICU care or death compared with other variants.
Despite the Omicron surge, the country is in a much better position than before. Two-thirds of Americans ages five and older — the people eligible for vaccination — have been fully vaccinated. Another 10 percent have received at least one dose. Thirty-two percent of the fully vaccinated have received boosters. Over 150 million have had Covid infections with resulting natural immunity.
Biden has, perhaps, finally realized that lockdowns are of limited utility and that their economic, social, and educational side effects far outweigh the direct damage from Covid-19.
Nevertheless, Biden reverted to his usual practice of denying responsibility when confronted with evidence of a policy failure by his administration. After a reporter pointed out that, “public health officials have been saying, for months, you need to surge rapid test [sic] for just this moment” and asked if it is “a failure” that we don’t have an adequate number of tests, Biden responded that nobody could have anticipated the rapidly spreading Omicron variant. The moment was reminiscent of Biden’s insistence that no one could have foreseen the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and ensuing chaos that resulted from his administration’s botched withdrawal.
In fact, every public-health expert has been warning for the past year that new, more transmissible variants could arise. The highly transmissible Delta variant that has been surging around the world for months is one example.
The need for cheap, rapid, at-home tests has been foreseeable since the beginning of the pandemic. It was predictable that readily available at-home tests would be particularly valuable to families around the country pondering the safety of get-togethers with vulnerable loved ones for the holidays.
The problem is that the FDA — citing unrealistic and counterproductive concerns about possible false-negative results — has slow-walked the approval process for home tests. Unlike the vaccine-approval process that proceeded at “Warp Speed,” the FDA reverted to its usual horse-and-buggy approval pace, ignoring the fact that a pandemic was raging. And until recently, the Biden administration has done little to speed up the agency or increase test production.
The result is that rapid at-home tests are far more expensive and hard to find here than they are in Europe, which has about four times as many over-the-counter, at-home tests available as in the U.S.
One can only hope that Mr. Biden’s more realistic, non-interventionist approach continues. I am not optimistic. Biden and his advisers firmly believe that every problem has and requires a government solution. And his inability to admit or learn from mistakes remains concerning. Hopefully, Biden will resolve to do better in the New Year.