“The pandemic is over,” President Joe Biden said in a businesslike… 60 minutes interview that aired Sunday night. The impromptu comment immediately made headlines, as did: criticism from health experts. It also likely raised anxiety levels among government officials, who have been pushing this fall to promote booster uptake. Some officials described the president’s comment as surprising.
“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still working on it a lot,” Biden noted immediately in the interview. “But the pandemic is over. When you notice that no one is wearing masks,” he said, referring to the crowd at the Detroit auto show where he made the comments. “Everyone seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing and I think this is a perfect example of that.”
While many in the public health community will argue that the pandemic is objectively not over, the president’s comments reflect the country’s relationship status with the pandemic, which is a resounding, “It’s complicated.”
Not over
According to the data, we are still in a pandemic. That’s not to say there’s no cause for optimism — cases are declining, deaths and hospitalizations are down, vaccines are widely available in the US, latest booster doses match the currently circulating strain of SARS-CoV-2 (for the time being ). But reported cases are still high, with an average of more than 61,000 new cases per day. And those are just the cases that are reported. Since most people rely on home testing, the actual number of cases will likely be several multiples of that figure. Even based on reported cases alone, transmission rates are calculated to be high in 94 percent of U.S. counties, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although the number of hospitalizations and deaths is much lower than before, 31,000 Americans are still hospitalized every day. And the current average of daily deaths is 464. Although some people may argue that some of those deaths are: of COVID-19, instead of from COVID-19, the distinction may not make as much sense as they think, as COVID-19 is and has always been the most dangerous for people with underlying health conditions. As top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci recently noted in an interview with NPR:
“What’s the difference with someone who has mild congestive heart failure, goes to the hospital and gets COVID and then dies of severe congestive heart failure?” he asked. “Is that with COVID or because of COVID? COVID certainly contributed to that.”
“The worst time to stop”
While the current plateau of about 400 deaths a day feels relatively low — it’s dwarfed by a February spike amid the omicron wave, which hit more than 2,600 a day — it’s still a huge disease burden. If we continue to see this relatively low rate of 400 per day, that would add up to 146,000 deaths per year on an annual basis. Such a figure would likely keep COVID-19 in the top five causes of death in the US, possibly beating Alzheimer’s disease, which killed 134,000 people in 2020. In reality, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in 2020, killing more than 350,000. And for anyone making the argument that COVID-19 is now as dangerous as the flu, even in the worst flu season in recent years, the 2017-2018 season, flu deaths peaked at around 52,000. And the flu is not associated with long-term illnesses like COVID-19.
Of course, this is just what’s going on in the US with the pandemic, which by definition is global. But current trends in the US mirror those seen globally, with cases, hospitalizations and deaths relatively lower but still high. Worldwide, more than 1,600 die every day on average.
In a press conference last week, World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus commented on the positive trends but directly contradicted Biden’s suggestion that the global health emergency is over.
“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. We are not there yet, but the end is in sight,” Tedros said. “A marathon runner doesn’t stop when the finish line comes into view. She runs faster, with all the energy she has left. So should we… Now is the worst time to stop running. Now is the time to run faster and sure we cross the line and reap the rewards of all our hard work.”
