{"id":16328,"date":"2023-02-01T16:07:41","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T15:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/?p=16328"},"modified":"2023-02-01T16:07:41","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T15:07:41","slug":"how-the-biden-administrations-covid-preparedness-policies-could-narrow-americas-political-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/how-the-biden-administrations-covid-preparedness-policies-could-narrow-americas-political-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Biden administration\u2019s Covid preparedness policies could narrow America\u2019s political divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

ARTICLE –\u00a0T<\/span><\/span>he White House\u2019s\u00a0Covid Winter Preparedness Plan\u00a0is a missed opportunity to narrow the divide between Americans. The plan contains important elements to mitigate the anticipated seasonal surge of Covid-19. But it sidesteps the emerging\u00a0evidence base\u00a0and President Biden\u2019s\u00a0pledge\u00a0to \u201cfollow the science.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current \u201clater Omicron\u201d endemic phase, which began with the rise of the more communicable and less virulent\u00a0BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants\u00a0in May 2022, strongly supports a new unifying reality that combines sound science and good politics. Instead of going to great lengths to avoid exposure, most Americans should adapt to inescapable exposure and infection as they learn to live with the virus. This paradigm shift confronts the central public health \u201cavoid exposure\u201d dogma of the pandemic, which was once necessary but has now served its purpose. A new \u201caccept exposure, live with the virus\u201d paradigm should form the foundation of the administration\u2019s Covid strategy. This will also resonate with a majority of Americans of all political persuasions and bring us closer together \u2014 or at least not further widen the breach.<\/p>\n

The Covid Winter Preparedness Plan advises contradictory goals: that Americans can return to normal and at the same time stay safe by avoiding exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. It recommends that all Americans develop a\u00a0personal Covid plan\u00a0based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a laundry list of when and how to avoid the virus through testing, isolation, informing contacts, and other measures. Americans are also advised to keep track of their\u00a0Covid-19 Community Level\u00a0to guide their vigilance and precautions.<\/p>\n

This obsolete \u201cavoid exposure for all\u201d mantra is also the basis for the CDC\u2019s requirement that air passengers from China entering the U.S. have a\u00a0negative test for SARS-CoV-2. It reflects the fortress mentality that fostered the origin of the recent massive outbreak in China. The order\u2019s rationale, to \u201cdecrease the chance of [importation] of a new viral variant,\u201d is not a sound policy guidepost in the current global setting of unmitigable high transmission, high mutation rate, and unknown population susceptibility. These factors\u00a0overwhelm the model\u00a0that calculates the probability that a novel variant will emerge. Proactive caution and vigilance \u2014 which translates to avoiding exposure \u2014 will do little to affect the probability of emergence of new escape variants of concern. With SARS-CoV-2, the virus-host interaction is a force of nature that cannot be contained \u2014 though the risk can be managed through robust\u00a0genomic surveillance\u00a0of SARS-CoV-2, intensified development of antiviral drugs, and a rapid-response capability centered around accelerated\u00a0mRNA vaccine development\u00a0with scaled production and access.<\/p>\n

For three long years, the U.S.\u2019s pandemic response has been caught in the\u00a0culture war crosshairs. This is reflected in\u00a0recent polling, in which nearly half Americans said they have returned to their pre-Covid lives, while one-third believe doing that is more than a year away \u2014 or never. These two different pandemic views are largely defined by party affiliation. More than three times as many Republicans (59%) as Democrats (17%) believe the pandemic is over.<\/p>\n

With the mid-2022 emergence of the later-Omicron endemic stage, a new virus-imposed reality can bridge this divide for most Americans who are not at high risk for serious disease: You\u00a0can\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0will be<\/em>\u00a0exposed to SARS-CoV-2, and it\u2019s a risk comparable to other familiar health hazards \u2014 vaccine-preventable ones (influenza, measles, mumps, and the like) or not (RSV and the common cold) \u2014 that people have already integrated into their daily lives. Sooner or later, individuals espousing the \u201cavoid exposure\u201d approach and public health policy will need to accommodate this shift if the country is to fully get back to its robust and dynamic pre-pandemic footing.<\/p>\n

To be clear, this kind of new normal excludes high-risk people: individuals age 65 and older and those who are immunocompromised or living with one or more chronic conditions. They should be protected from exposure through both personal action and public policy.<\/p>\n

In the current stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, we see four seismic changes in both the virus and its human hosts that argue for a reset of the old dogma.<\/p>\n

First, Omicron is about\u00a0one-tenth the severity\u00a0of the prior Delta variant: infection fatality rates for Covid are now\u00a0lower than for seasonal influenza\u00a0for people who are not at high risk.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Read the entire article written by Christian Br\u00e9chot on Statnews<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ARTICLE –\u00a0The White House\u2019s\u00a0Covid Winter Preparedness Plan\u00a0is a missed opportunity to narrow the divide between Americans. The plan contains important elements to mitigate the anticipated seasonal surge of Covid-19. But<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-16328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-room","tag-154"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}