The Covid test
A spike in Covid cases in Europe has professional Covid worriers worrying. Is America ready, asked the New York Times this week, quoting an epidemiologist lamenting that the country has chosen to “forget” rather than “do the hard work” since the last peak. Another accuses policymakers of “wearing rose-colored glasses instead of correcting our vision.”
If a new wave does arrive on these shores, professional pandemic-watchers will complain about our complacency and accuse policymakers of once again falling short. The real question though, is what the rest of us will do. Thankfully, the signs point to the hypochondriacs being ignored. A new Pew poll finds that voters see Covid as just the fifteenth most important issue. And while concern over Covid has ebbed and flowed with case rates, this time feels different. More than two years since the start of the pandemic, even the deepest blue parts of the country are memory-holing all things Covid.
The politics of Covid have, correspondingly, long been a no-brainer. There are very few votes in Covid hawkishness these days. Not that the penny has dropped for all Democrats. In many ways the Biden White House has pivoted to the living-with-the-virus message since the State of the Union, but it remains more Covid-cautious than many Democratic lawmakers would like it to be. Just look at a recent scuffle over mask rules on public transportation.
Last week, eight Democratic senators voted with Republicans in favor of a repeal of a public health order mandating masks on airplanes and other forms of public transportation. The vote came as the Biden administration announced a month-long extension to the rule and the president pledged to veto the Senate resolution. There’s no indication when the House will get to vote on the measure (or on the anti-vaccine mandate resolution that passed the Senate late last year), but, as Axios reports, House Democrats in tight re-election fights aren’t wild about siding with the president. “I’m completely over mask mandates,” said DCCC chair Patrick Maloney. “I don’t think they make any sense anymore. I’m for whatever gets rid of mask mandates as quickly as possible.”
Another New York Democrat, Mayor Eric Adams, offered an example of why anything other than the abolition of Covid rules and restrictions comes with downside risks yesterday when he announced a carve-out from the city’s vaccine mandate for multimillionaire sports stars. New Yorkers may be happy that the move improves the Mets and the Yankees’ hopes of glory this summer, and Nets fans can finally see Kyrie Irving play in home games. But the double standard of a city government that applies one set of rules to rich celebrities and another to municipal workers will surely (and rightly) come in for criticism.
If back to normal is to mean anything, it must mean back to normal for everyone, including unvaccinated New Yorkers not fortunate enough to possess freakish basketball talent. And if Democrats want to be taken seriously when they talk about living with the virus, they cannot backslide into costly Covid overcautiousness the next time case rates pick up.
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The cost of lockdowns
A new study by the National Institute of Health offered grim evidence of the cost of the isolation brought about by the pandemic and our policy response. According to the research, more adults aged under sixty-five died of alcohol-related causes in 2020 than of Covid. Liver disease rates jumped by 22.4 percent. Deaths with “an underlying cause of alcohol-related mental and behavioral disorders” increased by more than a third. And opioid overdose deaths “involving alcohol as a contributing cause” increased by 40.8 percent.
Biden’s chemical weapon warning
Yesterday in Brussels, Joe Biden offered perhaps the clearest warning yet to Vladimir Putin of a major escalation in the Ukraine-Russia war. Asked by a reporter whether the US or NATO would respond with military action were Russia to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, the president said: “We would respond. We would respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use.”
Responding to a follow up question, he said that chemical weapons would trigger “a response in kind. You’re asking whether NATO would cross… we’d make that decision at the time.”
What you should be reading today
Matt McDonald: Down with the Senate theater kids
Harry J. Kazianis: How bad could a Russian cyberattack be?
Chadwick Moore: Anthony Weiner rises again
Giselle Donnelly, the Dispatch: What Ukraine needs now
John F. Harris, Politico: Why Trump is losing his grip on the GOP
Ross Douthat, New York Times: We’re watching the end of the movies
Poll watch
President Biden Job Approval
Approve: 41.0 percent
Disapprove: 53.2 percent
Net approval: -12.2 (RCP Average)
2024 Democratic primary without Biden
Michelle Obama: 55 percent
Kamala Harris: 38 percent
Pete Buttigieg: 7 percent
Hillary Clinton: 7 percent (McLaughlin)
