In 2021, a day shy from his first 100 days in office, President Biden told a scaled-down joint session of Congress that though his administration had given over 220 million shots of coronavirus vaccine, it wasn’t the time to let their guard down.
At Tuesday’s State of the Union address, Biden’s tone had shifted. Though the virus is not gone, the president said, “covid no longer controls our lives.”
The panorama looks much different from when the virus first arrived in the United States nearly three years ago. Most Americans are now fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, and for the most part, life has returned to normal.
Still, an average of more than 500 Americans are dying every day from the virus, and despite how far the country has come in its fight, experts say this is not the time for the White House to lower its guard.
“What I’m most worried about is that we will have a surge of another variant and that we will not be at all prepared to recognize that there is a surge and prevent the same thing happening again with delta and omicron — hundreds of thousands of deaths,” Julia Raifman, an assistant professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, told The Washington Post.
The White House declined to comment and deferred questions to the House speaker’s office.
Last month, Biden announced that on May 11 he will end the national emergencies to combat the coronavirus outbreak, marking a new phase of the pandemic response. Also last month, the Food and Drug Administration proposed switching to an annual coronavirus vaccine, mimicking the flu vaccine.
The change in tone can also be seen in the approach to covid precautions at Biden’s most prominent speeches. In 2021, Biden spoke to a smaller audience in the House chamber — with all attendees asked to wear masks. Roughly 200 officials were invited to the address, which typically has an audience closer to 1,500.
Few people wore masks during Biden’s State of the Union address in 2022. Most lawmakers, however, were not allowed to bring guests, and each had to take a coronavirus test before attending. On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among the handful of attendees who wore a mask at the State of the Union address. The White House declined to answer questions from The Post about this year’s covid protocols during the speech.
Jessica Justman, an associate professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said she was struck by how few attendees wore masks at Tuesday’s event.
“I hope that everybody coming in had tested negative before,” Justman told The Post.
William Hanage, an associate professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said he wasn’t surprised that so many attendees chose not to wear masks Tuesday, though not doing so these days still says something.
“The message they are sending is: ‘It’s over. We don’t need to wear masks.’” Hanage told The Post. “I understand why everyday folks feel like it’s over. I don’t blame them because we’re in such a different place from last winter or the winter before.”
Inside the chamber Tuesday, a maskless Biden asked Congress for more funding to continue monitoring dozens of new variants and supporting new vaccines and treatments.
“We remain vigilant,” Biden said.
“So Congress needs to fund these efforts and keep America safe,” he said.
Some praised Biden for mentioning the more than 1 million American lives lost to covid and the fact that the coronavirus hasn’t vanished.
“I was very pleased to hear him acknowledge that covid is not gone,” Justman said. “I felt that it was important for him to say that.”
But an average of 500 people dying from covid in the United States every day is a number Justman cannot grapple with.
“I agree with many of the things that President Biden said in the State of the Union, but I don’t think we are where we need to be when it comes to covid-related deaths,” Justman said. “Five hundred deaths per day — it’s an unacceptably high number.”
Like Justman, Hanage worries about whether Congress will approve more funds for combating the pandemic. Not everyone has the means to protect against covid were Congress not to act, Hanage said. Those are the people he worries about the most.
“I would have preferred to see a more robust sense that people are prepared going forward,” Hanage said. “We are going to lose more Americans this year than we usually lose from a virus. I know that it’s difficult [to manage this], but it’s depressing that we are so accepting of a burden of illness and death, which is huge in historical terms.”
Raifman agrees. No one wants to return to business and school closures, but the only way that can be avoided is if the administration implements mask policies and improves vaccination and equity policies, she said.
“The public health emergency is ending, but we need more people vaccinated, boosted and accessing testing,” Raifman said. “That’s a policy choice.”
