The End Of The Covid Health Emergency?

On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about President Biden’s plans to end the three-year COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11. House Republicans would like to see the emergency end as soon as February 1.

The article reports:

The newly constituted GOP-controlled House Rules Committee cleared four pandemic-related bills during four hours of hearings on Jan. 30, sending the proposals directly to House floor where they will be debated without committee review.

In a theme that would recur in deliberations on all four bills, Democrats—outnumbered 9-4 on the panel—argued that abruptly pulling the plug on a raft of COVID-19 emergency measure would cause massive disruptions across a range of health services, from telehealth to Medicaid to programs provided by the Veterans Administration.

“This decision is very, very disappointing,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the ranking minority member who chaired the committee for four years until this month, claiming that Republicans were hustling the bills to the House floor “for a soundbite” instead of allowing them to be vetted in committee review.

“To rush this to the floor, do a press release, and that’s it,” McGovern said, is irresponsible, noting there are plenty of other issues the new GOP leadership could rocket-docket. “Everybody needs to take a deep breath. I regret very much not taking that (committee) process.”

But Republicans insisted there is no need for the emergency measures to continue since even Biden himself admitted in September that the COVID-19 pandemic “is over.”

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said “it is long past time” for the administration to end an emergency “that no longer exists.”

It is time that America returned to normal. There is no need for vaccine mandates (in fact, the vaccine may have done considerable harm to some of the people who received it), and the current versions of the Covid virus seem more like the common cold. It’s time to get back to being America.