On the menu today: The Centers for Disease Control very belatedly relaxes its guidance for preventing the spread of Covid-19, and Democrats continue to tell themselves that a successful “victory lap” from the Biden administration will save them in November.
The CDC Finally Updates Its Covid-19 Guidance
Late last week, the CDC revised its guidance for responding to Covid-19, taking a much-belated step to officially recognize the enormous change in how the disease spreads and the tremendous reduction in how deadly it is to those who contract it. Among the major alterations:
- The CDC no longer insists that it’s necessary to stand six feet away from others in order to avoid getting Covid; instead, the guidance suggests that avoiding crowds and maintaining distance might be a good means of minimizing exposure, especially for those at high risk.
- The CDC now states that individuals who have been exposed to Covid no longer need to take a Covid test if they don’t show any symptoms.
- Relatedly, the CDC is finally ready to abandon unworkable “test to stay” policies, which required kids who knew they had been exposed to Covid to obtain a negative test in order to return to school.
- The CDC is finally prepared to recognize that policies distinguishing between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals are unhelpful, both “because breakthrough infections occur” and because individuals who’ve had Covid without being vaccinated “have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection.”
Unfortunately, the new guidance continues to insist on the importance of wearing masks, even though there hasn’t been a single control-group study showing that mask mandates prevented the spread of Covid. Karol Markowicz makes this point, among others, in a column today for the New York Post:
When COVID first hit our shores, we naturally looked to the CDC for direction. The agency may have previously offered its thoughts on how we should cook our burgers (well-done) and whether we should eat sushi (no), yet it was primarily in the background wagging its fingers at us while we ordered our steak medium-rare (another no-no).
But with COVID, its word became policy. In what should go down as one of the most disgusting moments in public health, the CDC allowed, with direction from the Biden White House, Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers chief, to craft school-opening policies that forced classrooms across the country to remain closed in winter 2021.
No one has been fired for this dereliction of duty. No one has even been openly chastised for allowing a special-interest group to control our health-care policy. This alone is why the CDC must go.
And then there are the errors. “Well, it was a pandemic, and obviously mistakes would be made” only makes sense if those mistakes are quickly acknowledged and corrected. That hasn’t happened with the CDC.
It took until May 2021 for the agency to recognize that COVID-19 spreads through the air. It continues to push masking despite the fact there is not a single study with a control group showing that masking mandates prevent COVID spread. And not a single real-world example of a country that has managed to control spread through masking. We masked toddlers because the CDC said to. It was egregious. It was damaging.
In a statement announcing the new changes, the CDC’s Greta Massetti said that, “This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives.”
That’s all well and good, and I suppose there’s some wisdom in the stock phrase, “Better late than never.” I’d much rather that the CDC catch up to and acknowledge reality very belatedly than that it remain intransigent forever in order to save face. But I’m also not interested in pretending that this new guidance was anything other than very belated, and the CDC has yet to reckon with the fact that its recommended policies were nearly always behind the available data, unnecessarily draconian, and, for the most part, highly ineffective. Why should we ever trust the organization again, let alone allow its officials to dictate policy for the entire country?
The Biden Administration Attempts a ‘Vibe Shift’ ahead of the Midterms
In a long piece at CNN, political reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere explores what he has termed a “vibe shift” in the Biden administration’s strategy for pitching its first two years of supposed accomplishments to voters ahead of the midterms. According to Dovere, the Democrats’ absurdly titled “Inflation Reduction Act” has “brought the President’s agenda back to life”:
With that deal, which included deficit reductions and the biggest investments in combating climate change the US has ever made, now through Congress and headed to the President’s desk, Biden and his team are rushing to reset the image they allowed to settle in of a doddering president wiling away his days in the Oval Office as time passed him by.
Three dozen White House aides, members of Congress and top staff as well as top political operatives spoke to CNN about Biden’s race against time to change perceptions of his presidency. It’s a sprint aimed at defying history by salvaging the Democratic majorities in Congress in the November midterms and — just as critically for the President — staving off any more defections from within his own party as he looks toward the reelection campaign that he is indeed planning to launch early next year.
While some even within the administration see the West Wing trying to put a rosy spin on a President who wasn’t doing much, aides who were most deeply involved point to calibrated, multi-dimension, simultaneous strategies often overlooked by those focused only on Biden jawboning his way through Oval Office meetings. . . .
What came together “was not an overnight thing,” [a top Biden] adviser said. Biden “plays the long game and really does have the ability to look ahead and know you’re going to go through the rocky periods to get there.”
Biden’s caution not to make huge demands on any of the bills — not calling for universal background checks in the gun reform, or for his full Build Back Better agenda to make it through reconciliation, was also key. “This President, by not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, helped make so many of these things happen,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide.
Leave aside how silly it is to call major tax increases and major spending in the midst of major inflation “deficit reductions” and “bigger investments.” The notion that Biden and his staff can simply recast this presidency as a success by pointing to a few pieces of legislation is far-fetched, at best.
According to Politico‘s Playbook, the administration is about to attempt a travel-packed few months, billed as a “victory lap,” greeting voters across the country “with a simple message: We did what we said we would do.” The only trouble is that doing what you said you would do isn’t much of a victory if your initial promises either weren’t what people wanted or didn’t actually end up fixing the problems you set out to fix.
Meanwhile, in the Washington Post, Jen Rubin’s latest column offers the most recent example of progressives’ attempting to convince themselves that the overruling of Roe v. Wade will somehow save Democrats at the ballot box by stoking outrage over “abortion access.” I’ve written quite a bit about why I don’t think this will be the case at all. First and foremost, most Americans aren’t motivated primarily by abortion when they vote, and among those who are, the decision in Dobbs didn’t do anything to move voters from one camp to the other. I think this post of mine from last November, reacting to Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia, is most helpful in understanding how abortion plays out in elections. I expect something similar to happen in swing races this November.
ADDENDUM: In keeping with my thoughts above about the failures of hewing to the CDC line on Covid-19 public-health policy, check out this article by Nat Malkus in the new issue of NR magazine, counting the costs that children had to pay for our overly zealous public-health policies.