Remember last month when President Joe Biden declared the COVID pandemic “over”? Well, forget about that.
Fox News reports that Biden, this week, decided to extend the public health emergency status of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, many are left wondering how the Biden administration reconciles these two positions. How exactly can the COVID-19 pandemic still have public health emergency status if the pandemic is “over.”
That is, after all, exactly what Biden said in that 60 Minutes interview last month: Here’s the quote: “The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”
It continues, but should it?
Biden and his administration have now extended the emergency health status of the COVID-19 pandemic through Jan. 11, 2023.
This is despite the fact that COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths have fallen significantly – so significantly, in fact, that COVID restrictions, throughout the country, have either been relaxed or ended.
The country’s health experts, however, have already begun pushing another coronavirus narrative, warning that there could be another winter surge of the illness this year. And, apparently, this, in combination with the fact that there are still COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths occurring, was enough for the Biden administration to extend the pandemic’s emergency status.
Or, at least, this is the narrative that is being pushed by the Democrats and the mainstream media.
What’s really going on?
The New York Post puts forth a more plausible explanation for why Biden decided to extend COVID’s public health emergency status.
The explanation is that the midterm elections are in sight and the “Democrats need votes.”
The fact is that the emergency status of the COVID pandemic has allowed the government to do things it otherwise would not have the power to do, such as, according to the Post, “providing Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits for 15 million people who would not otherwise qualify.” And, the Democrats don’t have much to run on in the midterms, so they need to keep stuff like this going.
It really is that simple. The Democrats would have never gotten this far without the pandemic, and they are not ready to let go of it just yet.