Tangle - Biden will end Covid emergency.

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

The end of the Covid emergency. On Monday, the White House said it is planning to end its emergency declarations tied to the Covid-19 pandemic on May 11. Ending the emergency declaration will have some major, immediate impacts on government programs established during the pandemic.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. From the Blindspot Report, a story that the left missed here and one that the right missed here.Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (0:52), Today’s Story (2:46), Left’s Take (7:02), Right’s Take (11:55), Isaac’s Take (16:53), Your Questions Answered (19:25), Blindspot Report (21:59), Under the Radar (22:36), Numbers (23:21), Have A Nice Day (23:59)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The faster money and data move, the further your business can go to a seamless digital future for Canadians. Let's go faster forward, together. In life, interact. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza

cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul,

this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the COVID emergency and more specifically, the end of it. President Biden making some news on Monday. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with our quick hits. First up, Nikki Haley will announce her plans to run for president at an event on February 15th in South Carolina. Number two, the seven states that depend on the Colorado River for water missed a deadline for agreeing to a water use reduction plan, raising the possibility of

federal intervention. Number three, Representative George Santos, the Republican from New York, voluntarily stepped down from his House committee assignments. Number four, the FBI reportedly searched the former office of President Biden at the Penn Biden Center in November, a previously undisclosed search. This morning, the FBI also searched Biden's residence in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Number five, roughly half a million British workers are expected to start a coordinated walkout today in a call for public sector pay raises and a nationwide protest against anti-strike legislation. Number five, roughly half a million British workers are expected to start a coordinated walkout today

in a call for public sector pay raises and a nationwide protest against anti-strike legislation. Since the start of the pandemic, both former President Trump and President Biden have repeatedly renewed a special declaration of a national and public health emergency. But the government's approach toward COVID has dramatically changed. Not a new developments in the fight against the coronavirus. The White House is putting an end to the COVID public health emergency. That's right. The Biden administration's emergency declaration will end on May 11th.

The U.S. COVID-19 emergency declarations finally have an end date. The Biden administration says it will extend both the national and public health emergencies only until May 11th. Various agencies will now determine which federal programs can continue without the order in place. On Monday, the White House said it is planning to end its emergency declarations tied to the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11th. Ending the emergency declaration will have some major immediate impacts on government programs established during the pandemic. Chief among those changes will be rules related to health care. Many Americans will no longer be able to get free COVID-19 tests, vaccines, or treatments. Under COVID-19 emergency declarations, the federal

government also boosted funding for Medicaid and made it easier for people to sign up, which resulted in all-time low uninsured rates. The spending package passed by Congress was winding down those guidelines already, but the combination of that legislation and the end of the emergency declaration means that 5.3 million to 14.2 million people could lose their coverage within a year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Title 42, the public health emergency that allows for the quick deportation of migrants at the southern border, would also end. The Supreme Court was already expected to hear arguments about Title 42 this month, but the update renders the challenge far less consequential. Additionally, the Biden administration would no longer have legal rationale for pausing student

loan repayment programs, meaning those with college debt would have to start paying down that debt again once the emergency declarations end. The White House previously said the moratorium would expire on June 30th. Biden's executive order to freeze student loans has been tangled up in legal challenges, the most important being a forthcoming Supreme Court case. Of course, more than three years into the pandemic, the end of the emergency declarations will also carry weighty symbolism for an administration who wants to be able to say it helped end coronavirus. Former President Donald Trump declared the COVID-19 pandemic a public health emergency in January of 2020, and it has been renewed as such every 90 days since. At the same time, an average of

more than 500 people are still dying from or with COVID-19 in the United States, and an estimated 32,000 people are in hospitals and testing positive for COVID-19 right now. The estimated daily average of all confirmed cases is about 45,000, which is similar to July of 2020, but far below the roughly 815,000 cases we saw at the pandemic's peak in January of 2022. In late December, Morning Consult found a slim majority of Americans in favor of keeping the public health emergency in place. The White House has said it is giving more than three months notice to ensure an orderly transition. An abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the healthcare system,

for states, for hospitals and doctors' offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans, the White House said in a statement. Biden made the announcement just hours before a scheduled vote on a Republican-proposed bill in the House called the Pandemic is Over Act, which would have immediately ended the emergency declaration. Rather than waiting until May 11th, the Biden administration should join us now in immediately ending this declaration, Representative Steve Scalise, the Republican from Louisiana, said. The days of the Biden administration being able to hide behind COVID to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on their unrelated unrelated radical agenda are over. Today, we're going to take

a look at some commentary from the left and the right, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left is divided on the issue, with some supporting an end to the emergency declaration and others worried about what it will mean. Some argue the emergency is over, and therefore the expanded federal powers should be too. Others say it's clear COVID is still a huge issue, and removing pandemic-era measures will hurt a lot of ordinary and vulnerable Americans. In December, Michael Bloomberg said it was time to end the COVID emergency powers. The emergency declarations were necessary to give the federal government wide powers to fight COVID-19, and they proved indispensable in vaccinating two-thirds of the U.S. population for free,

maintaining health coverage for millions of Americans, and increasing food assistance for low-income families, Bloomberg said. But nearly three years later, the expansive powers claimed by the executive branch are still, in effect, inviting policy discretion that tests the limits of what's legal and holds the possibility for abuse. Meanwhile, businesses are open, social distancing is gone, mass gatherings are back, mask wearing is optional and increasingly infrequent. This is not to say that we're in the clear, he wrote. COVID is still killing some 300 Americans every day, and the need to exercise caution has not gone away, especially for those with

underlying health conditions. But vaccines and treatment are widely available, most people have some level of immunity, and hospital capacity, while strained in some places, often because of flu and RSV spikes, is holding up. In short, the pandemic is not over, but the public health emergency that turned our lives upside down is, and that means expanded executive authority should be rolled back. In the Nation, Greg Gonzalez said you have to pay attention to what the most powerful people are actually doing to understand where COVID really is. Under President Trump, sophisticated upgrades to the White House's antiquated ventilation systems were put in place, including induct photohydroionization units in some settings. Over the past two years, these new HVAC upgrades have been ongoing at the

presidential guesthouse and other residencies nearby, he wrote. Anyone who wants to get anywhere close to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris or the inner circle has to take a rapid test just before the event, as did those who worked or attended the indoor and outdoor festivities surrounding the Elton John concert at the White House in late September 2022. Just this week, the House GOP boycotted a reception for new lawmakers at the White House because it required testing 24 hours in advance and proof of vaccination or masking up and social distancing at the event. Meanwhile, it is just getting harder and harder for the rest of us to protect ourselves. If you are a poor school district, COVID funding for ventilation isn't nearly adequate to get the job done, even in a rich state like mine. White House

COVID response coordinator Ashish Jha almost gleefully told us last August that vaccines, tests, and treatment for COVID are heading to the private sector, he wrote. Who really hopes that Americans are going to have to fend for themselves in the rapacious private health care market during a pandemic? If the White House declares the public health emergency over later this year, that will strip protections from millions of Americans, depriving them of emergency health care, covering and lifting key restraints on private insurers' ability to charge for vaccines, tests, and treatments for those lucky enough to have insurance. Jha, fond of saying we have the tools to manage this virus, wants you to believe that we will be fine, but it's not ordinary Americans he's talking about.

In the Washington Post, Leanna Wen said Biden is right to end the COVID emergency. Few would dispute that COVID today is a very different disease than it was in early 2020. At that time, the virus had a much higher fatality rate and young, previously healthy people were succumbing to a deadly pneumonia, Wen said. There were no vaccines and very limited treatments. Declaring a state of emergency then was necessary for three reasons. First, it highlighted the critical urgency of the situation and helped Americans understand the substantial threat that COVID posed. Second, it mobilized resources to develop and then deploy vaccines and therapeutics that have dramatically reduced the severity of the

coronavirus. Third, it gave flexibility to health departments, hospitals, and other entities to overcome bureaucratic hurdles and provide necessary care. These reasons either no longer apply or have changed so substantially that they no longer justify a state of emergency, she wrote. Americans have largely moved on from thinking about the coronavirus as a daily threat, and rightfully so, given that a vast majority have some immunity because of vaccination, prior infection, or both. Continuing to call a COVID national emergency is out of step with public opinion, which has a major cost. When there's a true public health emergency in the future, many people might not believe health officials and could defy their guidance. All right, that is it for the leftist saying, which brings us to what the right is saying.

The right is supportive of ending the emergency and argue that it is long overdue. Some say Congress should end it now rather than wait another three months. Others argue Biden is still trying to keep bureaucrats and the left happy despite the need to end the emergency powers now. In December, National Review's editor said it was well past time to end the COVID emergency. We no longer live in a pandemic, they wrote. Americans know this. The signs are all around them. Businesses are open, crowds gather again, social distancing has vanished, and masks are becoming a rarer sight. Vaccines and treatments have dramatically lowered the rates of death and serious illness. False dawns have come before in the COVID-19 pandemic, but this time there is

every reason to believe that we have transitioned from a pandemic disease to a merely endemic one, which will be with us in its current form for the rest of our lives. This reality is so obvious that even the president has noticed it. The pandemic is over, Joe Biden told 60 Minutes in September. If you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everyone seems to be in pretty good shape. That was nearly three months ago. The problem for Biden is that he needs the pandemic to be an ongoing national emergency in order for him to exercise emergency authorities that otherwise would be universally recognized as

extra-legal powers, the board said. Even after the Supreme Court struck down his efforts to act as the natural arbiter of vaccination and apartment leases, he claimed the power to spend hundreds of billions of dollars without congressional appropriations on forgiving student loans. Even as that remains in litigation, he continues to extend payment holidays. Few claims of presidential authority would have more alarmed the framers of the Constitution, familiar as they were with the English reaction to Charles II trying to rule without revenue raised by Parliament, than an executive asserting the authority to spend vast sums without legislative consent. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis

Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. In the New York Post, John Potteritz wrote about why Biden won't end the COVID-19 emergency for months. To recap, the president declared the crisis moment had passed September 18, 2022, when he appeared on 60 Minutes and said the pandemic is over. On January 30th, 2023, the White House announced the official COVID emergency would come to an end in May of 2023. That's eight months after Biden's 60 Minutes claim. Why May, he asked? Well, according to the New York Times, the Biden White House wants an orderly transition out of the public health emergency. Welcome to Orwellville. An orderly transition out of

emergency is to end all emergency measures the second the emergency is over. A state of emergency is, by definition, a condition of existential disorder. People are forced to live and act and work in a manner other than what would be normal. So what gives here? What's with the three months, he asked? Said the White House, an abrupt end to the emergency declarations could create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system, for states, for hospitals and doctor's offices, and most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans. Here's the thing. People don't need COVID tests and treatments in the way they did before. Know why? Because there's way less COVID, and what does persist is vastly less dangerous. This is all disingenuous hogwash

anyway. What the Biden people are doing here is trying to provide a soft landing for their government worker constituents, so many of them toiling from home, who have been the true beneficiaries of the changes in workplace rules since 2020, not the people for whom they work, namely us. In Fox News, Dr. Pierre Corey called on Biden's former coronavirus response coordinator and new chief of staff, Jeff Zients, to acknowledge five mistakes. First, admit promises about the experimental mRNA vaccines fell short. Second, acknowledge that repurposed generic drugs should play a role in the ongoing fight against COVID. Third, scrap plans for annual COVID-19 vaccinations. Fourth, immediately remove all pandemic mandates.

Healthcare workers who were fired for exercising medical freedom should be rehired, and military service members who lost recruitment bonuses and salaries should be made whole, he said. Finally, concede that vaccine injuries are real and call off the emergence of doubt. It's bad enough the administration has foregone regulatory safeguards to push an experimental vaccine on hundreds of millions of doubt. It's bad enough the administration has foregone regulatory safeguards to push an experimental vaccine on hundreds of millions of Americans. Now its allies are mocking those suffering from debilitating side effects with a coordinated smear campaign, despite the fact the CDC's own v-safe database found that 8% of patients were injured badly enough to require medical care, Corey said. Despite this, some of these despicable attacks even come with a derisive

hashtag thanks Pfizer. I care for many people battling vaccine injuries. No one should be forced to endure the suffering so many others have gone through only to become targets of media derision. It is unlikely that Jeff Zients will pay attention to these offerings, but there's also a new sheriff in town. If the executive branch is unwilling to admit past mistakes, Congress should force its hand. All right, that is it for The Left and The Right Are Saying, which brings us to my take. So I think it's time.

In September, when Biden said the pandemic was over on CBS, I wrote this. What I do think we know is that Biden's comment is both an accurate representation of the American psyche and creates a whole host of potential problems for his administration. Given how many people have had COVID-19, the effectiveness of one-way masking, the treatments available, and the numerous vaccines on the market, I think it is rational for us to start thinking about ourselves as post-pandemic. I don't think this means we have to pretend we don't care or that people aren't still dying. Cancer isn't a pandemic. The opioid epidemic isn't a pandemic. The flu isn't a pandemic. We still fund research, take vaccines, institute public measures, and spend a lot of money

and time and thought fighting these things, as we should. So none of that has changed now. If anything, after living through a winter where we didn't see a major spike in cases or deaths, remember all the twindemic warnings, I think we can be more confident about the new phase that we are entering. It is a crappy phase, a reality where this virus is a persistent threat to immunocompromised and elderly people, and another health issue we have to take precautions against, like the flu or cancer or addiction. But it's not an emergency in any traditional or governmental sense of the word, and it is clearly not the kind of emergency it was when we had no treatments, vaccines, or understanding of the virus. In my ideal world,

Biden would have done what he's doing now in September when he made the statement that the pandemic was over. He would have announced a date in the future when the emergency powers would expire. So I think the approach he is taking is right. This isn't a band-aid you rip off. Whether I like it or not, government entities, healthcare providers, and ordinary Americans need time to prepare for the changes coming to their care. Giving a three or four month runway is a logical way to handle that. That's not to say there won't be any pain points. The list of changes for Americans is real, the most difficult of which is going to be far fewer free tests and treatments. Work requirements for food assistance programs will also resume in about two dozen Republican

states, and the end of Title 42 is going to put increased pressure on the border. But Biden, and this iteration of Congress, needs to figure out how to navigate those challenges without the extreme expansion of executive powers. It won't be easy, but the last few years the federal government has been basically bowling with bumpers. It's long past time they got back to regular operations. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from an anonymous reader in Denver, Colorado. They said, up front, I agree with prosecuting the Memphis officers who crossed the line, period. My question is, why do we not recognize that each of these occurrences seems to start with disobeying the police and or resisting arrest? And no, I'm not

racist. I've had discussions with my white son to the effect of, if you ever get stopped, don't resist or argue. Any resistance will be met with force and you won't win. We will sort it all out afterwards. Just don't run, resist, argue, or fight with the police. Okay, so first of all, I want to be clear again that my view here is just my view. I've said before that my perspective on policing and prisons is probably one of my most extreme and partisan views. Very libertarian, small government, and in line with many leftist perspectives, which is an interesting cohort of people. So first, let me just say that I think your advice to your son is smart. I don't think there is anything racist about noticing that many

of these encounters include people resisting arrest. Your advice is the same thing I would teach my kids. I think it is the same thing most Americans, especially Black Americans, teach their kids too. Everyone knows that when a cop turns his lights on behind you, you pull over. Most of us know that if a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. The vast majority of us are taught these things our whole life. But my simple answer is that complying doesn't always work. Again, the video of Tyree Nichols to me is evidence of this. I also think the posture of some officers makes complying impossible or close to it. When an officer engages with force, guns drawn, twisting arms, threatening loudly to blow your head off, it isn't easy to make your body limp, drop your defenses, and resist your fight-or-flight instincts.

This is part of my issue with some of these encounters. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes, the way police approach these situations triggers a fight-or-flight response, an emotional reaction that creates some kind of resistance that ultimately becomes justification for the use of force, which is part of the inherent problem in policing today. Of course, there is also the way these kinds of encounters compound the problem. When any American watches a video like the Tyree Nichols one, it reinforces the idea that police can be violent or unethical, which creates more fear of police, which makes those encountering police more likely to have their fight or flight responses triggered, all of which just makes the issue worse. That's why

quote-unquote bad cops are such a persistent problem, and part of why I think we are still struggling to reduce the number of negative outcome encounters like this one. of outcome encounters like this one. All right, next up is our Blind Spot Report, a reminder that once a week we present the Blind Spot Report from our partners at Ground News, an app that tells you the bias of news coverage and what stories people on each side are missing. This week, the left missed a story about a University of Georgia poll showing that 0% of 364 Black voters surveyed in Georgia said they had a poor experience voting. The right missed a story about Elon Musk caving to pressure from India to remove a BBC documentary critical of Narendra Modi. All right, next up is our under the radar section.

The United States has accused Russia of violating a key nuclear treaty. The State Department informed Congress that Russia is no longer meeting obligations set by the only nuclear arms treaty the two powers still have. The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, also known as New START, allows on-site inspections, data exchanges, and other monitoring issues. The treaty's aim is to limit the number of deployed nuclear warheads. Both sides agreed to suspend on-site inspections during the pandemic, but Russia has continued to shut off access after the U.S. tried to resume the practice in the summer of 2022. ABC News has the story, and there is a link to it in today's episode description.

All right, next up is our numbers section. The share of adults who say the public health emergency should still be in effect is 51%, according to a late December poll from Morning Consult. The share who said they had no opinion or didn't know was 10%. The share who say it should not still be in effect was 39%. The share who say it should not still be in effect was 39%. The share of Democrats who want the public health emergency to stay in effect is 72%. And the share of Republicans who want that public health emergency to stay in effect is 34%. The estimated number of people currently hospitalized with or from COVID-19 is 31,955. or from COVID-19 is 31,955. All right, last but not least,

our have a nice day section. A missing radioactive capsule has been found in rural Australia after a nearly week-long search. Australian officials said the capsule, which was about a quarter of an inch long, fell off the back of a truck and landed on the side of the road. The capsule was part of a gauge used to measure the density of iron ore in a mine and emits radiation the equivalent of 10 x-rays per

hour. People were told to stay at least 16 and a half feet from the capsule if they spotted it. Officials were combing the outback for more than six days before they found it. When you consider the scope of the research area, locating this object was a monumental challenge. The search groups have quite literally found the needle in the haystack, emergency services minister Stephen Dawson said. Reuters has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com and become a member. You can also subscribe to this podcast so you get updates when the podcast comes out.

Give us a five-star rating anywhere you rate podcasts. And of course, please spread the word to friends and family. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly,

and our social media manager, Magdalena Vekova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tucasco.com Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been

reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.