The State of the Union Address was Tuesday, Feb 7, 2023. Where Are We Today in Relation to the Promises made in 2022? Was Ending the Public Health Emergency in May, Grounded in Science?

A review of 2022, State of the Union address and the promises regarding COVID. Did it make sense to end the public health emergency or was this done for the wrong reasons?

January 23, 2024 update below. Does this look like we are in control of this situation?

According to Walgreens data, the national positivity rate baseline continues to trend higher and is at an incredibly high level. It would suggest more transmission is occurring between schools and homes this year.

XBB.1.5, and many of the XBB descendant variants, could evade antibodies from prior infections or vaccines, making everyone vulnerable to infection. "BQ.1.1, BM.1.1.1, and especially XBB, are the most antibody-evasive strains tested, far exceeding BA.5 and approaching SARS-CoV-1 level."(1) SARS-COV-1 had a 10% mortality rate. MERS-COV had a 32% mortality rate. SARS-COV-2 is headed towards more disability and death, not less.

January 2023 Update: JN.1 and its sub-variants continue to evolve towards greater immune suppression, increasing the odds of viral persistence, and all the associated risks that come with it. Research indicates that JN.1 has an increased reproductive number and that JN.1 has been shown to have an ability to escape vaccine-mediated immunity and enhance transmission rates.

https://www.idsociety.org/covid-19-real-time-learning-network/diagnostics/covid-19-variant-update/#/+/0/publishedDate_na_dt/desc/

Infections are increasing in pace, and the evolution of SARS-COV-2 is moving in a very dangerous direction.

"Evolution of enhanced innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants" (Jan 16, 2024)

According to this study, COVID-19 is undergoing "an inevitable ongoing trajectory of adaptation towards escape from the innate immune mechanisms."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01588-4?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_content=null&utm_campaign=CONR_JRNLS_AWA1_GL_PCOM_SMEDA_NATUREPORTFOLIO

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The rest of this will be dedicated to the White House's response to the House bill that Republicans passed to end the public health emergency and digging into the promises of last year’s State of the Union address to see where we are in relation to those promises. We'll see if the White House’s plan to end the public health emergency on May 11, 2023, was based on science and data or if it was political theater to win votes instead of protecting people's health and safety.

The WhiteHouse responded to the Republican-passed House bill to end the COVID Public Health Emergency (PHE) by saying “that an abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system—for states, hospitals, and doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans. During the PHE, the Medicaid program has operated under special rules to provide extra funding to states to ensure that tens of millions of vulnerable Americans kept their Medicaid coverage during a global pandemic.” 

“In December, Congress enacted an orderly wind-down of these rules to ensure that patients did not lose access to care unpredictably and that state budgets don’t face a radical cliff." "If the PHE were suddenly terminated, it would sow confusion and chaos during this critical wind-down." "Due to this uncertainty, tens of millions of Americans could be at risk of abruptly losing their health insurance, and states could be at risk of losing billions of dollars in funding." "Additionally, hospitals and nursing homes that have relied on flexibilities enabled by the emergency declarations will be plunged into chaos without adequate time to retrain staff and establish new billing processes, likely leading to disruptions in care and payment delays, and many facilities around the country will experience revenue losses.” 

“Finally, millions of patients, including many of our nation’s veterans, who rely on telehealth would suddenly be unable to access critical clinical services and medications." "The most acutely impacted would be individuals with behavioral health needs and rural patients.” 

“Second, the end of the public health emergency will end the Title 42 policy at the border." "While the Administration has attempted to terminate the Title 42 policy and continues to support an orderly lifting of those restrictions, Title 42 remains in place because of orders issued by the Supreme Court and a district court in Louisiana. Enactment of H.R. 382 would lift Title 42 immediately and result in a substantial additional inflow of migrants at the Southwest border.” 

The White House made a solid case but left a lot of important points out. Despite pointing out all the harm that would come to millions of people by ending it, by some unknown metric, President Biden decided they would end the Public Health Emergency on May 11, 2023.

The verbal contract to remove a lot of government responsibility and put the responsibility on the individual was spelled out in 2022, during the State of the Union Address.

President Biden said, “Here are four common-sense steps as we move forward safely.” Each quote highlighted will be followed by T.A.C.T.’s update.

”First, stay protected with vaccines and treatments. We know how incredibly effective vaccines are. If you’re vaccinated and boosted you have the highest degree of protection.” 

This is not true anymore. The vaccines helped limit transmission for 2 to 3 months and helped to prevent severe disease and death for about 10 months. Once the virus evolved to evade antibodies, then anyone can get infected and re-infected with COVID, an immune suppressive, organ-infecting, and persisting virus, that can cause vascular, musculoskeletal, immunological, neurological, and cognitive dysfunction. That means more and more people suffering long-term consequences of these repeated infections. This is not “incredibly effective.”

”We will never give up on vaccinating more Americans. Now, I know parents with kids under 5 are eager to see a vaccine authorized for their children.” ”The scientists are working hard to get that done and we’ll be ready with plenty of vaccines when they do.” 

The vaccines helped limit transmission for short periods of time and kept untold numbers out of the hospital but today we are hit with more inflation, a massive level of disability, and thousands of people dying every week from an ongoing and worsening crisis. This virus isn’t killing most people quickly, it is a slow degradation of health that will be dragged out for years and decades. The people that are dying quickly, mostly younger and middle age adults, are dying from heart attacks and strokes that aren’t being recorded as caused by COVID. Would acknowledging this increase the liability for the government and pundits that dismissed the risks and advocated for infecting everyone over and over again? That might be why its so slow to be explained by anyone with responsibility in the government and avoided by the media. The lack of an explanation has led to an understandable level of confusion about what is causing the excess deaths. It is really quite clear so it is hard to understand why this hasn’t been all over the major news networks.