The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden's COVID Response Lags Behind The Crisis, Experts Say

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

As the president and his team promise more tests are coming, the omicron variant continues to drive cases to new records. While the latest wave is putting a smaller share of people into the hospital, the sheer number of infections is straining the healthcare system.This episode: demographics and culture correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and health correspondent Allison Aubrey.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Katarina in Taipei, Taiwan, where I'm about to step outside of my hotel room for the first time after quarantine. This podcast was recorded at 2.05 p.m. on January 5th, 2022. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show. Our listeners staying safe. Good job, Katarina. Yes, good job. Good job. All right. Hey there. It is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. And today on our podcast, we have our very own in-house COVID expert.

Allison Aubrey of NPR's health team is here again. Hey, Allison. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course. All right. Listeners, you may have heard the U.S. is dealing with a staggering rise in COVID cases. We have a widespread shortage of tests and there's a fair amount of mixed messaging as the highly transmissible Omicron variant surges. So we're going to start with the basics here. Allison, let's talk numbers. Let's talk cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Where exactly are we? Give us a sense of the scope here. Sure.

I mean, cases are just way up, 200% or so. The virus is everywhere, obviously very contagious. Hospitalizations are up, but not nearly as much, somewhere in like the 25% to 30% range increase of this week compared to last week. Now, there are areas that are much harder hit, New Jersey, Ohio, but basically people being hospitalized are much more likely to be unvaccinated or immunocompromised. People who are fully vaccinated and boosted are protected against serious illness. And deaths are kind of flat. If you look at the most recent CDC data, U.S. is averaging about 1,100 deaths a day. Last year, at the height of the January peak, the U.S. was averaging 3,300 deaths a day.

So that's quite a decline. I see. So the long story short here seems to be that cases are way up. And while a smaller percentage of people are going to the hospital and dying from Omicron, it's just that because there are so many numbers, we are still seeing a rise in hospitalization and deaths. Is that pretty much it? That is exactly it. Even if each individual person's risk is lower, it only takes a small fraction of the 400,000 or so people testing positive every day to become seriously ill and need hospitalization to really put stress on the hospital system. Franco, let's talk about the politics here.

I know that President Biden spoke briefly about the pandemic yesterday. What did he have to say? You know, he said that there are some challenging weeks ahead, but he also argued that the administration is ready for them. You know, he says vaccines and booster shots have lessened the danger that people who are vaccinated are less likely to have serious illness or need to go to the hospital or even die. But he's also kind of pleading with the 35 million unvaccinated Americans to get their shots. I've been really interested in kind of hearing over the past months how he's gone from, you know, recommending to urging the unvaccinated to get their shots to really just pleading, almost begging those folks to get their shots.

But for God's sake, please take advantage of what's available. Please. You're going to save lives, yours maybe your child please take advantage of what we already have okay you know he also talked about schools and how they should remain open he argues that they can stay open that was a a big part of the discussion today as well among his covid team as you know as more school districts announced they're going to not open for in-person learning or at least delay in-person learning amid the rising Omicron cases. Well, let's talk more about messaging and guidance about how people are supposed to deal with COVID. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got pushback from public health experts last week when the CDC revised its

recommended isolation time for COVID-19 patients from 10 days to five days, also without a testing requirement. Now, Allison, how could that new guidance change the trajectory of the disease in the U.S.? Well, I mean, I think that the five-day isolation period is considered to be reasonable by most infectious disease folks. And I think the lack of a testing requirement was a disappointment to some. Some said, look, you know, they're not recommending it because there's a shortage of tests. You know, Dr. Walensky, head of the CDC, has pushed back. She said, no, the reason we're not recommending it is because the tests aren't a very good indicator of whether you're still shedding virus. So there's been a big push there.

I would say that, look, from a practical point of view, like it makes sense if you want to go back out into the world and you have access to a rapid antigen test, do it. It's another data point. That was sort of the promise of these tests, right, that they would give us real time information. And so even though there's not this official policy from the CDC of do a test before you leave isolation, I think it still makes sense. And the CDC has been saying, hey, if you've got access and you want to do a test, go for it. You know, Franco, what Allison is talking about there about pushback, changing guidance and so on, there is so much uncertainty out there about how to handle this virus. And I know a lot of people are frustrated in not knowing definitively what to do and what not to do. How is the White House trying to create some certainty? And really, can they?

I mean, it's really, really been difficult. I mean, the White House is basically having to defend itself and defend, you know, the Biden administration from questions that it's basically lost control of the virus, as as you say, you know, can they there's, it's such a rapidly moving virus. But, you know, just yesterday, you know, President Biden is talking about how the United States is in a much different place than it was back in 2020 when this started. ventilators, really pushing back on that feeling of deja vu that so many Americans have as they're, you know, racing around trying to find tests, trying to figure out whether they, you know, it's okay to go visit family, you know, hospitals are being stretched, flights are being canceled, because staff is getting sick. You know, as we noted before, schools are going virtual.

It's kind of hard to feel like that the government has control of the virus. But, you know, there are questions of whether it really can. But it's certainly not the normal that I think most Americans wanted it to be, nor that the president, you know, came into office saying that he could help bring. All right. Well, there's a lot more to talk about. We'll be back in a second. And we're back. And let's zoom in on testing. It is hard to come by for a lot of people. A lot of store shelves of tests are empty and have been for a bit. Is it fair to say that this is a preparation failure by the White House? I

mean, it's not like the pandemic appeared under control before Omicron hit. Allison, what do you think? You know, I think if you go back one year and you look at the national strategy that then President-elect Biden had put forward, pretty much at the top of the list was this idea of expand testing. And the administration did get off to a really good start. You know, last spring, testing capacity was up, turnaround times were down, more rapid tests were being approved by the FDA. Then what happened? The administration started to claim victory. Testing sites ramped down. Abbott, the manufacturer of BinaxNOW, the rapid antigen test, closed down a production facility,

not anticipating the need. And then boom, we're hit with Delta in the summer, now Omicron. You know, several infectious disease experts I've talked to say this is a failure of the Biden administration. You know, where was the kind of wargaming, strategic planning to anticipate this? Most of the world was still unvaccinated. It was clear there was a risk of these new variants. So the administration is facing a lot of criticism. I mean, we're in the middle of this huge surge. And Jeff Zients, the White House COVID advisor, said today when he was asked about these 500 million rapid tests the federal government has purchased, he said what he's been saying for weeks, which is, oh, we're making progress. He said Americans will start receiving tests over the, quote, coming weeks. Well, you know, the surge is now. People are tired of hearing that

more tests will come soon. I mean, look at what's happening in the UK. Tests are being handed out for free or for a few bucks. So people are looking at this and saying, the situation here just isn't acceptable. The administration is really just being more reactive and seems to be always kind of chasing the next COVID crisis. You know, these all the things that they're announcing over the last few days, the 500 million tests, the new antiviral pills, all of those are, you know, down the road type issues. And as Allison says, I mean, these are things that are needed right now. And it's hard to see that their preparation is being, you know, being done properly. It really is kind of just react, react, react. And that's a hard place for, you know, administration to be going into its second year. This is not something that you can

continue to blame the previous administration for. Also, I know that they are investing more in some of those viral treatments from Pfizer, right? Yeah, the viral treatments from Pfizer was the big announcement yesterday. The administration said they're going to double the number of pills that they purchased, up to 20 million antiviral pills. The original allocation was for 65,000, but those got used pretty quickly. And President Biden did say that they expect more in January or later this month. But he was also very cautious in noting that it will take months to develop these pills because of the complex chemistry involved. And Allison, we've talked about the treatments here. What about the virus? I mean, there's no reason to think that Omicron is the last wave. We don't know how mild or not future

waves will be. What can you tell us, if anything? You know, eventually, this virus is going to become endemic. It's not going away. What endemic means is that it's there in a more predictable way, similar to the way the flu is. And one of the reasons the flu is manageable is that infectious disease experts know, come January, come February, a certain percentage of the population will have the flu. That's why in October we're encouraged to get a flu shot. Nobody gets it all at once. The country doesn't suddenly come down with the flu the way we're seeing with the Omicron variant.

And so this doesn't overwhelm hospital systems, even though it could be bad individually for people who do get it. That's eventually where we're headed with COVID. I think the question is, how long does it take to get there? And one more question on that note. Does the fact that so many people are getting Omicron right now, does that potentially help blunt future waves? Are we as a population getting some immunity? You know, getting the infection does give people more immunity. So the combination of an infection and getting vaccinated could make for a more robust immune response. Eventually, you know,

infectious disease experts say, in order to kind of snuff this out, move from the pandemic phase to the endemic phase, we need to have, you know, sort of universal protection. And that's why in the coming weeks, we're likely to hear a lot more about this continued push for vaccine and even vaccine mandates. All right, can we just end on something human here, please? Because we've been talking about, you know, the White House and numbers, but really, on a personal level, this is hard. This is really hard. Our lives are kind of on pause in various ways and have been for nearly two years. You guys must feel the same and see this manifest in your reporting, right? You know, for me, I think I have a lot of sort of it ebbs and it flows, right? I'm like constantly digging into the new science and, you know, constantly staying busy reporting on this. But every once in a while, I have this

moment where I'm like, oh, can I take it anymore? I mean, just earlier this week, I was thinking about the role that disinformation has played in this pandemic. And Dr. Peter Hotez put it to me recently, he said, it just pains me to think that, you know, if you look at the number of people who died, who were unvaccinated after sort of May of last year, when everybody who wanted to get vaccinated could have, you know, this is like more than 100,000 people. by evidence-based reporting. The idea that people, that disinformation has taken hold to the extent that more than 100,000 people have died because they were vulnerable to disinformation or misinformation, it really upsets me so much that I'll literally have moments

where I feel nauseous. Like I have a wave of nausea, anxiety, thinking about it, because for me, it's really sad. Allison, thank you so much for all of your reporting on this, though. We do appreciate you braving all of those awful feelings. Thank you. All right, listeners, please stay safe, stay healthy and sane out there. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.