President Biden declared the coronavirus pandemic “over” in an interview that aired Sunday, pointing to the return of large events and the lack of masking and other public health measures in place nationwide.
“The pandemic is over,” Biden told “60 Minutes” from the Detroit auto show last Wednesday, the first time the even has been held since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”
Oh? Okay. Yeah. I hope this is forwarded to the people I still see wearing masks as they drive solo, with the windows up, in their Kia Sorrentos.
Will the remaining mandates cease? Will health-care facilities stop requiring masks?
Will government directives given via emergency powers end now? Don’t forget that the student-loan-forgiveness scam was based, flimsily, on the idea that there is an ongoing pandemic.
For those following from home, don’t forget the pandemic order from the CDC that allowed Border Patrol to turn away illegal migrants on the basis of health risks. It’s a policy that the Biden administration has partly relied on to prevent a total border meltdown, because, well, it is more comfortable turning people away for health-policy reasons than it is acknowledging that the United States is a nation with borders that need enforcement.
One has to wonder just how enthusiastic his handlers — ADVISERS! — will be about a second run after this disaster of an interview. Biden just undercut their primary excuse for emergency governance and interventionist policies right out from underneath them. The appeal at the Eleventh Circuit on the transit mask mandates relies on an argument that the CDC has emergency authorities in pandemics, including the power to set terms for accessing public transit facilities. The president himself, however, just declared the emergency over along with the pandemic. The DOJ and CDC were likely to lose this case anyway, but now there’s no chance that the appellate panel will reverse that April ruling.
And while we’re at it, let’s point out that the world didn’t end when the transit mask mandate got thrown out, too. Biden’s team and progressives gnashed their teeth over the explosion of COVID transmissions that would follow when people flew without masking, an explosion that never occurred. Five months later, Biden’s busy remarking about how normal everything seems instead — no thanks to his own authoritarian, unconstitutional, and failed mandates. If Biden had had his way, no one at the Detroit Auto Show would have been admitted without a mask — and the Auto Show would likely have looked more like a ghost town.
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