Biden on Covid: “There is No Federal Solution” – GOP Calls Him “Incompetent”

Edited by: TJVNews.com

The Covid-19 pandemic will end when the states sort out how to end it, according to President Joe Biden.

On Monday, during a virtual conversation that he conducted with a group of governors, Biden said of measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 and the recent Omicron variant, “Look, there is no federal solution. This gets solved at a state level.”

Biden added: “And then it ultimately gets down to where the rubber meets the road, and that’s where the patient is in need of help or preventing the need for help.”

According to a report in the New York Post, Republicans seized on President Biden’s comment and demanded an end to government mandates while labeling him a “hypocrite” and “incompetent.” Biden had pledged to “shut down the virus” during the 2020 presidential campaign.

The Republican National Committee referenced Biden’s campaign promise in a post on Twitter, according to the Post report.

“Joe Biden claimed he would shut down the virus. Now a year later when he failed to do so, he says there is no federal solution to COVID,” the RNC said. “Joe Biden is a hypocrite,” it concluded.

According to a Johns Hopkins University database, Covid cases have increased 66 percent in the US over the past seven days, but hospitalizations have risen only 4 percent in that same period.

The Post reported that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) alleged on Twitter that Biden was “trying to avoid blame for his incompetence” and called on the president to “rescind his unconstitutional federal mandates.”

“There’s no federal solution, but the fed government can help by securing the border, approving safe treatments & tests, and appointing competent leaders at the FDA & CDC,” Cotton added.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has repeatedly criticized Biden over his administration’s border policies, echoed Cotton’s sentiments, according to the Post report.

“Biden says there’s no federal solution to COVID and that this gets solved at a state level. He should immediately end his unconstitutional federal mandates,” Abbott said on Twitter. “The Texas solution is no mandates and personal responsibility,” the governor added.

South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem on Tuesday called on President Biden to rescind all federal Covid-19 mandates after his comment on Monday that “there is no federal solution” to the pandemic.

The AP reported that U.S. health officials’ decision to shorten the recommended COVID-19 isolation and quarantine period from 10 days to five is drawing criticism from some medical experts and could create more confusion and fear among Americans.

To the dismay of some authorities, the new guidelines allow people to leave isolation without getting tested to see if they are still infectious.

The guidance has raised questions about how it was crafted and why it was changed now, in the middle of another wintertime spike in cases, this one driven largely by the highly contagious omicron variant.

Monday’s action by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut in half the recommended isolation time for Americans who are infected with the coronavirus but have no symptoms, as was reported by the AP. The CDC similarly shortened the amount of time people who have come into close contact with an infected person need to quarantine.

The QAP also reported that the CDC has been under pressure from the public and the private sector, including Delta Air Lines, to explore ways to shorten the isolation time and reduce the risk of severe staffing shortages amid the omicron surge. The AP reported that thousands of airline flights have been canceled over the past few days in a mess blamed on omicron.

“Not all of those cases are going to be severe. In fact, many are going to be asymptomatic,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday. “We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science.”

CDC officials said the guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the virus are most infectious in the first few days, as was reported by the AP.

Louis Mansky, director of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota, agreed that there is a scientific basis to the CDC’s recommendations.

“When somebody gets infected, when are they most likely to transmit the virus to another person?” he told the AP. “It’s usually in the earlier course of the illness, which is typically a day or two before they actually develop symptoms and then a couple of days to three days after that.”

Research, including a study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine in August, backs that up, though medical experts cautioned that nearly all of the data predates omicron, as was reported by the AP.

But other experts questioned why the CDC guidelines allow people to leave isolation without testing.

“It’s frankly reckless to proceed like this,” Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute told the AP. “Using a rapid test or some type of test to validate that the person isn’t infectious is vital.”

“There’s no evidence, no data to support this,” he added.

Mansky said the CDC probably didn’t include exit testing in its guidelines for logistical reasons: There is a run on COVID-19 rapid tests amid the spike in cases and the busy holiday travel season. In many places, at-home tests are difficult or impossible to find.

The CDC is “driven by the science, but they also have to be cognizant of the fact of, you know, what are they going to tell the public that they’ll do,” Mansky told the AP. “That would undermine CDC if they had guidance that everybody was ignoring.”

Qamara Edwards, director of business and events for Sojourn Philly which owns four restaurants in Philadelphia said about 15% of its employees are out sick with COVID-19 and staffing is tight, as was reported by the AP.

The CDC changes are “great for businesses, they do allow people to return to work sooner than they’ve expected,” Edwards said, though she understands why workers might be resistant and worried about their safety.

In Los Angeles, King Holder, who runs the StretchLab Beverly fitness business, likewise said omicron has “caused ample” to his company, and he welcomed the more relaxed guidelines.

“The possibility of five days compared to 10-14 days is huge for our business and allows us to stay afloat,” he said.

But Dana Martin, a 38-year-old Philadelphia teacher and educational consultant, told the AP: “The looser COVID guidelines make me nervous. I’m more hesitant to participate in holiday activities because of the omicron variant and the seemingly more lax protocols.”

Marshall Hatch, senior pastor of New Mount Pilgrim Church on Chicago’s West Side, said he is bracing for some confusion in his congregation. The church has been a strong advocate for testing, vaccinations and booster shots, according to the AP story.

Hatch said the CDC’s latest guidance is confusing and “a little incongruous.”

“Either we’re in a surge that we need to take very seriously or are we winding down the pandemic and that’s why we’re shortening the isolation and quarantine times,” he said Tuesday. “They might want to give us a little more information to go with.”

The AP reported that Hatch said some members of the largely Black congregation, particularly senior citizens, are skeptical of information from government.

The CDC move follows global efforts to adjust isolation rules, with policies differing from country to country.

The U.S. airline industry applauded the CDC move.

“The decision is the right one based upon science,” the lobbying group Airlines for America told the AP.

But the head of a flight attendants union criticized the change, saying it could lead businesses to pressure sick employees to come back before they are well.

If that happens, “we will make clear it is an unsafe work environment, which will cause a much greater disruption than any ‘staffing shortages,’” warned Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA International.

The AP also reported that last week England trimmed its self-isolation period for vaccinated people who have tested positive for COVID-19 to seven days in many cases, provided two negative lateral flow tests are taken a day apart.

The French government said Monday that it will soon relax its isolation rules, although by exactly how much isn’t yet clear, as was reported by the AP.

Health Minister Olivier Veran said the rule changes will be aimed at warding off “paralysis” of public and private services. By some estimates, France could be registering more than 250,000 new infections per day by January.

Italy, meanwhile, is considering doing away with a quarantine altogether for those who have had close contact with an infected person as long they have had a booster shot, according to the AP report. Projections indicate as many as 2 million Italians could be put in quarantine over the next two weeks as the virus spreads.

Also on Tuesday, the AP reported that in Germany, Lutheran pastors are offering COVID-19 shots inside churches.

In Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, trusted rabbis are trying to change minds about the vaccine.

In Israel there are hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who have yet to receive their COVID-19 shots. The group has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country despite being hit hard by the pandemic, as was reported by the AP.

Facing the new coronavirus variant omicron, officials are now scrambling to ramp up vaccination rates in a population that has so far been slow to roll up their sleeves.

“We are going on the offensive with the issue of vaccinations,” said Avraham Rubinstein, the mayor of Bnei Brak, the country’s largest ultra-Orthodox city, as was reported by the AP.

The AP reported that Blumenthal, who himself is ultra-Orthodox, said the Health Ministry recently held a conference at the country’s largest hospital, inviting prominent rabbis to converse with doctors about the importance of the vaccine. The head of the government’s coronavirus advisory panel has repeatedly met with important religious figures, urging them to spread the word on vaccines.

It has been one year since COVID-19 vaccines became available, yet vaccine reluctance persists even as deaths mount and the highly contagious omicron variant spreads around the globe, according to the AP report. An unconventional cadre of people has stepped up to promote vaccination with efforts that traditionally have been the realm of public health officials.

Israeli officials have appealed to the community’s prominent rabbis, who serve as arbiters on all matters, to promote vaccination, according to the AP report. They are deploying mobile clinics. And they are beating back a wave of lies about the vaccine that has washed over parts of the community.

The vaccination rate is low in part because half of the ultra-Orthodox population is under 16 and only recently made eligible for vaccination. Also, many ultra-Orthodox were already infected or believe they were and don’t think they need the vaccine, as was reported by the AP.

The outreach effort has had mixed success. AP reported that officials hope to raise the vaccination rate with a new mobile-clinic campaign at religious schools and a media blitz stepping up pressure on parents to vaccinate children.

Israel was one of the first countries to vaccinate its population late last year and the first to give booster shots, according to the AP report. But the campaign has lagged in recent weeks and hundreds of thousands of people remain unvaccinated or without a booster as the specter of an omicron surge looms.

While vaccination rates for the second dose among the general population hover around 63% and the booster at 45%, in the ultra-Orthodox community the number is around half of that, as was reported by the AP. The community’s immunity shoots up somewhat when the 300,000 or so of those who are known to have recovered are included, but Israel’s Health Ministry recommends those who were infected to get at least one shot if six months have elapsed since the infection.

In other countries, there was a setback for the Belgian government. An advisory body on Tuesday suspended a Cabinet-ordered closure of part of the cultural sector — saying that new coronavirus restrictions imposed on theaters are unreasonable.

Under new restrictions that took effect Sunday, movie houses, concert halls and art centers were ordered to shut their doors. Some stayed open in protest. The order came despite the assessment of the scientific committee advising the government that going to such places poses no extra risk to public health.

In an emergency procedure, the Council of State ruled that measures concerning theaters were “not proportionate,” and didn’t provide enough motives to “understand why going to cultural sector performance venues was particularly dangerous for public health.”

The Council of State is an advisory body that has legal powers to overturn government decisions it considers unlawful.

(Sources: NYP, AP)