Sic Transit Gloria COVID
Will The HHS Finally End The Public Health Emergency?
With little fanfare, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra extended yet again the Public Health Emergency Declaration regarding COVID-19.
By now, the renewals are almost by rote—and appear to be driven at this point more by the commitment made by the Biden Regime to inform the healthcare industry at least 60 days in advance should the declaration not be renewed.
US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra renewed the declaration on its expiration date – an expected step because officials have said they will provide 60 days’ notice if they do not plan to renew the emergency, and had not done so.
However, while the HHS PHE declaration remains in effect, many of the Federal programs and policies implemented under its aegis are being scaled back or even discontinued altogether, with several of them getting the axe in the latest government spending bill.
The package is phasing out the requirement that prevents states from disenrolling Medicaid recipients as long as the public health emergency is in effect in exchange for an enhanced federal match. This continuous coverage measure was enacted as part of a Covid-19 relief package passed in March 2020 and has led to a record 90 million enrollees in Medicaid, many of whom may no longer meet the income requirements to qualify.
Also being phased out are the enhanced food stamp benefits.
There is also a rumor floating around corporate media that this PHE renewal may be the last.
Senior Biden officials are targeting an end to the emergency designation for Covid as soon as the spring, after debating doing so last summer and taking a pass, three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO. Should they do so, such a move would represent a major pivot point in the country’s battle with the pandemic.
After more than three years of official government hyperventilation over the COVID-19 non-pandemic, there is at least a possibility it may finally be about to end.
Of course, the corporate media is still striving to resurrect the Pandemic Panic Narrative, summoning up “experts” to remind everyone that there is still a “pandemic” disease of which we are to be horribly frightened.
“We in America need to remember that COVID isn’t over,” said Hassig. “We are still losing the equivalent of an airplane of people falling out of the sky every day from COVID.”
Corporate media wants everyone to be scared of the recombinant variant XBB.1.5, even though the CDC’s own data shows it to be of little concern outside of the Northeast.
The CDC’s own data also contradicts the corporate media narrative on hospitalizations, as the CDC shows COVID hospitalizations have begun to decline nationwide.
If we dispense with the corporate media and rely solely on the data—even data produced by the compromised and corrupt CDC—we are left with the immediate and obvious conclusion that the “pandemic” no longer exists, if indeed it ever existed.
It past time for acknowledging that there is no ongoing pandemic, and it is past time for the United States to move beyond the enabling Public Health Emergency imposed by the HHS.
While the data we have now lays to rest any notion of either a Public Health Emergency or a pandemic, we should remember that, when the first reports emerged from Wuhan of cases of a “pneumonia of unknown etiology”, what little data was at hand certainly seemed to justify the rhetoric of pandemic.
Given the grim reporting that emerged from Wuhan, China, in January of 2020, calling the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus a pandemic certainly appeared reasonable at the time.
However, we should also remember that the pandemic narrative quickly fell apart, as the accumulation of more data quickly undercut the narrative at several junctures. (One advantage of following the data: when a particular extrapolation fails to pan out, one need not contort, convolute, and confuse just to sustain an unsustainable narrative.)
Thus it was that even by spring of 2020—before the first PHE declaration had run its course—the data was showing that COVID was no pandemic, and arguably was not even a public health crisis.
If the PHE declaration should at last be allowed to expire come April 12, it will be long overdue, as the data never supported even the first renewal.
Moreover, the mortality and hospitalization data from the CDC and the HHS make it clear there is no public health crisis over COVID at this time.
The current wave of Influenza-Like Illness being reported by the CDC’s FluView Influenza Surveillance Report peaked some weeks back and has been trending down ever since.
While the current flu season jumped out to an early start, it has not been more severe than the 2017-2018 season, the most severe season in recent years.
Even ILI mortality has declined in recent weeks, according to the CDC.
Note that the CDC is engaging in a subtle bit of gaslighting with the red line showing that the percentage of deaths in this country due to Pneumonia, Influenza, and COVID (PIC) is steadily rising. That percentage is rising only because the recent decline in PIC deaths is proportionally smaller than the recent decline in all deaths logged by the CDC.
Moreover, what gets obscured by the CDC is the fact that, after the first few weeks of 2022, COVID deaths have been less than pneumonia deaths—a clear change from prior years.
The CDC is reporting unambiguously that COVID after 2021 represents a greatly reduced health concern.
The HHS hospitalization data also supports the notion of a greatly reduced public health issue regarding COVID.
Note that the total number of staffed hospital beds in this country has been declining since before last August.
Regardless of whether there was a sound basis for the CDC to declare a Public Health Emergency over COVID-19 back in 2020, the data from multiple government agencies makes it quite clear there is no basis for the repeated CDC renewals.
While Congress has already begun scaling back and eliminating COVID-related funding, the expiration of the HHS PHE declaration itself has significant impacts to the country’s healthcare regulatory infrastructure.
As stated in the Emergency Use Authorization Declaration published in the Federal Register on March 27, 2020, the PHE declaration is the foundation for the use of the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization protocols for approving the use of various drugs and medical devices for the treatment of COVID-19. Without a current PHE declaration, all COVID-related Emergency Use Authorizations lapse.
While the mRNA inoculations produced by Pfizer and Moderna have full FDA approval, both Paxlovid and Lageviro (molnupiravir) currently only have EUA status, as do the monoclonal antibody therapies Bebtelovimab and Evusheld. Allowing the PHE Declaration to expire would terminate FDA authorization for their use.
Given the current authorization state of COVID-related drugs, allowing the PHE Declaration to expire would reduce the list of permissible drugs to just the mRNA inoculations produced by Pfizer and Moderna.
Yes, the two inoculations found to be the most dangerous and toxic by the CDC could by April be the only drugs approved for use in dealing with COVID.
Irony abounds.
Fortunately, the treatments for COVID that actually do work—specifically, Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, and Vitamins C/D plus Zinc—are not limited to Emergency Use Authorization.
Allowing the PHE Declaration to expire could prove doubly ironic by forcing Paxlovid off the pharmacy shelf while leaving Ivermectin and vitamin supplementation in place!
At present, the rumors of the PHE Declaration’s imminent demise are just that—rumors. No official from the Biden Regime has gone on record as of yet to confirm Politico’s reporting. It is certain as well that Big Pharma has considerable incentive to desire (and thus to lobby) for a continuation of the PHE in perpetuity.
Still, the facts and evidence about the healthcare burden on this country from COVID-19 are an immediate argument in favor of ending the state of emergency over COVID. For better or worse, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is endemic—it will not go away, but has instead joined the pantheon of infectious respiratory pathogens that give us cold and flu season each year. It is conceptually and empirically absurd to sustain a state of emergency over a pathogen that has become part of a “new normal”.
It is time for the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Declaration to be allowed to expire. Hopefully, come April 12, Xavier Becerra will finally do the right thing and let the PHE go gently into that good night.
It's a shame. We've been visiting the U.S. several times a year since the; late 70s. We haven't visited since this hyperbolic-hysterical reaction began in 2020. We've never gone this long without visiting. Even for a sojourn into Plattsburgh or Burlington for a day. At least once a year my wife joins her close friends and colleagues at conferences for education (they're teachers) in the U.S. She had plans for March but can't. She can't get any vaccine for medical reasons. So people like her - who are neither anti-vaxx or anti-anything - are simply frozen out of society. Worse, they're dehumanized by despicable misinformation spreaders like Justin Trudeau and 'experts' who should know better - and DO know better. Which makes this situation unbeteibale.
That's the whole damn point of informed consent and medical autonomy. People with tricky medical conditions - and there are MILLIONS like that - make decisions with their doctors. The sacredness of the medical-patient privilege was obliterated.
It's jarring as it is appalling as it is astonishing as it is unethical as it is outrageous.
Vaxxed = Petri dishes for new variants.