The NPR Politics Podcast - On COVID, Democrats Struggle With The Tension Between Public Health And Politics

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

The White House continues to insist the country has the tools to return to life-as-usual, even as COVID spreads through establishment Washington. Low booster uptake among seniors and the lack of vaccines for children under five continues to cause public health experts concern.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and health policy correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin.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, I just hiked three and a half glorious and exhausting hours through the Bernese Alps with my dad. And we are now sitting down for Switzerland's tastiest and most remote plate of roasty at the Rokstadhutte. This podcast was recorded at 2.04 p.m. on Tuesday, April 12th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but no matter how many more hours we hike... We'll still be digesting the best Swiss mountain foods. Potatoes, cheese, and beer. Okay, here's the show! Sign me up for that.

Mm-hmm. I know. That sounds like a great trip. All these people out there, like, living their life. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Do it. That sounds like a great trip. All these people out there like living their life. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Do it. Drink that beer. Hey, there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And today we've got Selena Simmons-Duffin from NPR's health team here with us. Hey, Selena. Hi, Sue and Asma. How are you? We're good. We're so happy to have you on.

I'm happy to be here. COVID. Front of mind in Washington, D.C. again. The Speaker of the House, the Attorney General, even the Vice President's husband, Doug Emhoff, have all recently tested positive. It feels like it's all over the place in the city right now. Cases are also on the rise in certain pockets of the country, specifically the Northeast, is seeing numbers go up. Just yesterday, Philadelphia became the first major city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate. But as we've talked about a lot, the country has largely moved on. Day-to-day life is back to normal in America. So, Selena, put some perspective on this. What is the state of the pandemic in the country right now? Well, things are looking a lot better than they were recently in the, you know, at the height of the Omicron wave. Cases were just like

skyrocketing, hospitalizations, deaths, everything was looking pretty bad. Now things are looking a little better. So across the country, there's been a little bit of an uptick in cases that seems to be pretty isolated. It's not blanketing the country the way that it was during the big Omicron surge. So the reason why it seems like the virus is all over D.C. right now is because D.C. is kind of a hotspot. Our cases have been going up. And, you know, those of us who live here, my personal metric, the number of cases at my kid's school has also been going up quite a bit. So there's virus around here, but it doesn't mean that we can extrapolate and say that

there's a hotspot and virus all over the country. In some places, it really has cooled off and, you know, it makes sense for people to relax a little bit and, you know, hike the Swiss Alps. I mean, Asma, the posture from the White House has been very different in recent weeks and months. I think it kind of started back around the State of the Union because it was right around that time mask mandates were being lifted all over the country, including in Capitol Hill, where he gave his State of the Union address. The president does unmasked events now. He's in Iowa today at an ethanol plant. The White House seems very much to be telegraphing that this is all okay. Go about your lives. You don't need to

worry about this. That's right. Because we have the tools, I think I should clarify. You know, the White House is trying to signal that the country has the tools to fight this pandemic, even if it isn't over entirely. But look, I will say that every time I have been at the White House for a press briefing in the last couple of weeks, the state of COVID comes up. Questions about this come up to the White House press secretary. While COVID isn't over, Americans now have more tools than ever before to protect themselves. And this country is moving forward safely, back to many of our more normal routines. And I think really what the White House is trying to do is navigate this space that we are in, where obviously there are no doubt still concerns over

the pandemic for people, especially who have pre-existing health conditions, who may be elderly, but also there are political constraints that they have to think about. One thing I think about all the time, and I would be the first person to admit that I think I live in a bit of a COVID bubble. You know, I'm here in Washington. The pandemic is still very much a part of daily life here, I think, because so many people are connected to the government. So many people are involved in lot of people listening right now, have been going about their normal lives for a really long time at this point. They're traveling again, they're socializing, they're having birthday parties. Asma, I know you were just out in Michigan doing some reporting. I wonder how visible was COVID in your experience there? And did it come up at all in conversations with the people you talked to? Gosh, yeah. I mean, in terms of how visible it was, I will say, you know, I went in to grab a cup of coffee before an interview and the coffee shop was jam-packed. Nobody was wearing masks.

I mean, just masking is not something I saw at all. You know, I was in Michigan's 7th congressional district, which is a pretty competitive place, meaning it is full of Republicans and Democrats. I spent some time on the campus of Michigan State University. That was probably one of the few places I saw people wearing masks. But, you know, in general, you didn't hear people talk about COVID. You didn't see people wearing a lot of masks. I think the only clear conversation I remember having with somebody about this was in the context of rising prices.

I spoke with a nurse who blamed a lot of the situation we are in with the economy around inflation on the situation with COVID. Oh, that's really interesting. I mean, that's a really good point because I think a lot of people are focused on other things right now. Just today, there's new numbers out on inflation. They're not good. I think politically, a lot of people have other concerns right now than the pandemic. That's right. I mean, when you look at survey after survey, inflation, rising prices has been the top economic concern. I would say it is even weighing out other concerns, you know, things like the war in Ukraine or COVID, you see inflation at the top of that list. And just today, to your point, I mean, we saw inflation that is 8.5% higher than it was a

year ago. I mean, these are numbers, again, maybe I'm dating myself here, but numbers never seen in my lifetime that you'd have to go back to 1981. And so, look, there are no doubt metrics in the economy right now that are actually doing well, things like low unemployment. But I just feel like inflation is something when you talk to economists, they'll say it's something that feels very tangible. It's very pervasive. And people have very strong emotions about it. Nobody likes to be paying more for their food, their coffee, their gas, anything. Food in particular, prices are up really high.

I also have to note, though, that for millions of us with kids under five, and that includes all three of us moms on this podcast, the pandemic is still a factor in our lives because our kids don't even have an option to get a vaccine yet. So every time we have someone on from the health desk, I ask them this. So, Selena, it's your turn. What is the latest on when vaccines might be available to the five and under crew? Oh, man. We are waiting for data from Moderna and Pfizer on their trials of their vaccines. They both came up with a smaller dose vaccine for kids. It looks like both of them are going to be three vaccine courses. And, you know, last I heard, Pfizer said that that data was going to come out

this month, and we're almost halfway through this month. There's a lot of baited breath. But honestly, there just hasn't been a lot of transparency so far in terms of the data, in terms of how effective these vaccines are going to be. So not soon, I think, is the short answer. I think that's why so many of us are having to kind of figure out how to live our lives with all of the uncertainty that we already have and adding into that the uncertainty of having young kids who are unvaccinated and this virus just circulating around. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this in a second. And we're back. So Selena, one of the questions I have now is what are the metrics people should

be paying attention to now when it comes to assessing their risk? Is it number of cases, community spread, what the hospitalization rates are. I'm thinking of a place like Philadelphia that just brought a mask mandate back in effect next week. Okay. I think that what happened in Philadelphia is really honestly quite promising because the hope here, especially as hotspots tend to be a little bit more localized, we don't have the virus going crazy all over the country all at once, is local leaders are supposed to be able to look and see what is the situation here and how do we respond. You know, this is how it's supposed to work. We're supposed to be able to be locally responsive to what's happening with the virus. In terms of on a personal level, like what are you supposed to be watching in terms of making

decisions about how you should go about and live your life? I would say that hospitalizations are not super, super useful unless you are really concerned about being hospitalized because of certain conditions that you have and you want to make sure that there's capacity. I think that looking at case rates, so not just like the number of cases, the rate of cases per 100,000 people is a useful number. You want to see that low, low, low. You don't want to see that looking in the 50, 100, 200 level. So, Selena, you know, I hear what you're saying about cases going up and keeping an eye on that in your local community. But I do think there's a sense,

even among some Democrats, that cases mean something different now than they did, say, at the very beginning of Joe Biden's presidency. And I was speaking with Lynnae Erickson over at the centrist think tank Third Way the other day. And, you know, she says that the Democratic edge that existed on COVID at the outset seems to be dissipating. And I think for them, the Virginia gubernatorial race was kind of this wake up call where Democrats began to reassess how they were talking about COVID publicly. We have vaccines in arms, we have treatments, we have good masks, we have, you know, all these things to be able to protect ourselves. So we need to stop focusing on the people that refuse to do those things and allow the people that are responsible in how they've been treating the pandemic to decide

how to proceed from here. The point that she was making is that there's a political calculation to take into account of all of this, and that even Democrats are growing frustrated with the sense that they feel like they did the right thing, they got vaccinated, So why are they sort of putting their lives on hold to some degree? Yes, I do think that this is where the politicos and the public health people really diverge. should have special privileges and people who didn't should not. That really goes against the ethos of public health. And that is a very kind of slippery slope if you start talking about people who deserve to be cared for and whose lives are worthy of saving versus others. But also, this is a respiratory virus. Our fates are connected to each other. And it's exhausting. We're all on edge and we're all

tired of being on guard all the time. And we would all love to just reopen and go back to normal, blah, blah, blah. But the fact that people who are in prisons, are in nursing homes, are in group homes, in group settings, the fact that they are all still at risk means that we're all going to continue to be at risk to a certain degree. And public health messaging is not going to necessarily always be politically popular. That is for sure. Yeah. One of the questions I have for you, though, Selena, is like we know that these vaccines have forced down severe sickness and death rates. But there's also a reality that people

are not getting their boosters. And we do know that the vaccine has waning immunity over time. And I wonder from a public health perspective, is this a red flag if we do see other variants or have another wave? Yes, I think this is one of several red flags. So the fact that only two in three seniors over age 65 have gotten their cases are actually out there right now because everybody's testing at home or they're not testing. You know, testing official numbers are capturing a fraction of what the real case numbers are. And another red flag is that we don't seem to have really good kind of triggers who are most likely to get hit really hard from this virus, then we're not in a great spot. Which is, I think, why there is this sense from public health people that the sense of exhaustion among the electorate, especially the powerful voting electorate, who feel well protected at this point, and the strategists who don't want to be talking about a losing issue. That is all premature if you look clear-eyed at how well prepared we are to face this virus in even the months to come. All right, Selena, as always, thanks for coming on.

Thank you for having me. That's it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.