COVID-19 IS STILL HERE

The Russians may be occupying our attention by shooting missiles into Lviv this morning, but you also ought to take notice of the fact that some 1,300 of your fellow Americans died a death that didn’t need to happen yesterday. And 1,300 others will do so today. That’s more people than died in Ukraine yesterday. Or will die there today.

COVID-19 is still killing Americans at approximately the rate they were being killed by it a year ago. It still infects thousands a day. Including Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton this week. Here in Los Angeles County, the death rate is slightly lower than it was a year ago.

And yet when I walked into my local Vons supermarket this morning, wearing my N95 mask, a good third of the other shoppers were unmasked, and when I got to the checkout, the large plexiglass barriers that had separated the cashiers and kept them safe from the customers over the past two years were all gone.

Yeah, COVID-19 is over. I guess the fact it’s only as bad as it was when we were all so happy to have the vaccines finally arrive is some sort of progress.

Except there’s this little problem that BA.2, the second version of Omicron is now 24% of reported cases in the U.S. and about 40% in Europe. Omicron BA.1 sent the hospitalizations to the point of overload and failure only months ago, and all reports are that BA.2 is not only more contagious, but almost as deadly as the version that was killing so many of us this time a year ago, at least for the unvaccinated.Experts say that the virus is transitioning from “pandemic” to “endemic.” That’s what it might look like now, but is that what it’s going to look like this summer? With only a 45% third-booster rate among the vaccinated population and one-third of Americans still refusing to take their first shot?

My nephew got the BA.1 variant back last month, gratis his youngest son who brought it back from the school where the kids aren’t masking and there’s no vaccination requirement for them to be allowed to be there. As he reported, “If this is the mild one, I don’t want to meet the bad one.”

And that unvaccinated/under-vaccinated population is where the virus mutates, and changes into something different - something perhaps more contagious and more deadly.

Joe Biden may be doing well with his handling of the Ukraine Crisis, but what’s going to happen if BA.2 is sending emergency rooms back to the brink come the fall - when the mid-term elections happen?

This week, the White House announced it was “simply out” of money for testing, treatment, and vaccines. There is money to pay for vaccinating children under 5 and to offer a second booster (a fourth shot) to the immunocompromised. But that’s it. The $1.9 trillion that was in the American Rescue Plan passed a year ago to deal with the pandemic is basically gone. There’s $300 billion left but that has been reserved for cities and states, with $60 billion for emergency use by FEMA and other agencies.

As usual, the Article II part of our government is demonstrating their now-standard inability to walk and chew gum at the same time, reminding me once again how right Mark Twain was back in 1873 when he declared: “Consider a congressman. Then consider an idiot. Ah, but I repeat myself.”

The House tried to insert $15.6 billion in new pandemic funds into a recent spending bill that included $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine. But the money had to be stripped out to get the bill through Congress because Senate Republicans insisted on using the money previously allocated for the states to offset this expenditure as a condition of avoiding their filibuster, and House Democrats from the states whose governments are incapable of dealing with this because they are run by Republicans protested. It ended up with Nancy Pelosi being upset with some of her own colleagues. A second effort to approve these funds separately could likely be thwarted by assorted demands from Republican senators looking to play to their moron “base” and expressing that opposition in the Senate with a filibuster that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinemo continue to support.

“Consider a congressman. Then consider an idiot. Ah, but I repeat myself.”

The Administration has warned that without these funds, the U.S. would be screwed if the virus comes back and takes a turn for the worse in the near future. One administration official said, “Our scientific and medical experts have been clear that in the next couple of months, we could see Covid cases increase here in the US just as we're seeing cases rising abroad right now. We are well less prepared without additional funding than we would be otherwise, and further inaction will leave us vastly unprepared and cost us more life.”

Further. Inaction. Will. Leave. Us. Vastly. Unprepared. And. Cost. Us. More. Life.

Here’s how it will play out:

If public health experts determine it’s necessary for the general population to get that fourth shot, the vaccines might not be readily available and might not be free.

Without more funds, the administration cannot buy doses in advance.

And if the United States doesn’t start placing orders now, it could lose its place in line and have trouble obtaining the vaccines if they are needed.

Maybe all will be fine. No new potent variant compelling another booster. No major spikes that once again overwhelm hospitals and require new mandates and a return to lockdowns.

But come November, if BA.2 or something even newer is again kicking our ass, the potential political disasters are obvious. Biden will be seen as the guy in charge. It won’t matter that his administration did a superb job distributing the vaccines originally and tamping down the pandemic. He will be judged for the problems of the moment. The average texting-while-driving-his-SUV American moron H.L. Menken had in mind when he observed that no one had ever underestimated the intelligence of the American public will vote Republican, despite the fact it’s the Republicans who have caused the problem.

We may be fixated on Ukraine now, but it is imperative for Biden - as a matter of both politics and public health - to push hard for the new funding and to make it perfectly clear that if these funds are blocked by Republicans, everyone knows who did it. This cannot be swallowed up by the moron ignorance of Congress or overshadowed by Ukraine.

Unfortunately, this White House seems even more inept in its messaging than the usual Democratic administration. How else does a president who has presided over an economic recovery that all the experts predicted couldn’t happen - before it did - be sitting with public approval ratings that match those of his predecessor at his worst? How does the president who personally brought back NATO has an effective alliance end up being called “weak”?

The administration promised universal pre-K, child care assistance, expanded Medicare coverage, climate change action, lower prescription drug prices, and other popular programs in the Build Back Better initiative. Why don’t we have those things?

Yes, the answer includes the fact that Democrats couldn’t navigate their own disagreements, while Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema monkey wrenched the bill and then killed it with their support of the filibuster.

But the main answer is that the Republicans said no and remained united in their use of the filibuster to kill the bill. Biden and the Democrats need to say it plainly: You want these things? They’re not there because of the Republicans.

And in the event the pandemic isn’t over and it intensifies in the months ahead and the government is not fully prepared, they need to be able to say they did all they could to be ready but were blocked by the GOP.

And they need to say it all in a way that breaks through the incorrect narrative from the over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployables of the Washington Press Corpse.

The Republicans are particularly good at deploying hypocritical spin and casting fault on Democrats for a problem they created or prevented from being solved.

The prospect of a GOP-controlled House mounting a gazillion investigations of how COVID-19 escaped from a lab in Wuhan that was funded by Dr. Fauci, along with 37 probes of Hunter Biden profiting from that, smothering any Biden programs, and even electing Donald Trump as Speaker ought to concentrate the collective mind of Democrats.

Creating a clear fight over pandemic funding is not only good and essential politics for the White House and the House Democrats.

It might also save lives.

In the meantime, I will continue to wear one of my N95 masks when I am out among the idiots, er, I mean my fellow Americans who can’t be bothered to use the brain they were born with and get properly vaccinated . I’ll keep doing that so long as I am caregiver for a bedridden partner who is now in late-stage Parkinson’s.

You should, too.

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