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'You’re counting votes.' We are 'counting bodies': Experts outraged at Biden deeming pandemic over [1]

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Date: 2022-09-19

Epidemiologist and health economist Eric Feigl-Ding tweeted: "Heck no. With all due respect, @JoeBiden — you’re wrong. Pandemic is not over. Almost 3,000 Americans are dying from #COVID19 every single week. A weekly 9/11 is a very big deal. Don’t even get me started on #LongCOVID—wreaking havoc on millions more."

Madhu Pai, the Canada research chair in translational epidemiology and global health at McGill University, tweeted: "’I've stopped caring about the pandemic’ is not the same as ‘pandemic is over.’"

x POTUS: "The pandemic is over"



The data: pic.twitter.com/w1XajfNZ4G — Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) September 19, 2022

Journalist Mehdi Hasan tweeted: “One of the (many) reasons they’re not wearing masks is because people like Biden keep (falsely) telling them the pandemic is over.”

Gregg Gonsalves, an activist and associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Heath, said in a Twitter thread that he volunteered for the president’s transition team and is a lifelong Democrat, but nothing has made him “more disgusted” about the party than Biden’s words on 60 Minutes.

Gonsalves tweeted:

”500 people are dying per day in the US. COVID, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation was the 2nd leading cause of death in the week of September 9th. ... We lead in overall COVID mortality and excess deaths among the G7. Life expectancy in the US is down and has not rebounded. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are likely to suffer from long COVID. And we’re grossly under-vaccinated and under-boosted as a country. 7/ These are the facts. 8/ You choose to ignore them out of political expediency, seeing no “win” for the mid-terms or 2024 in any real response from the White House on this disease. You’re counting votes. Many of us are just counting bodies. 9/”

The medical expert continued: “Saying the pandemic is over gets no one vaccinated, no one boosted. Saying the pandemic is over, gets no one access to care and treatment if they have no insurance.”

Saying the pandemic is over also gives Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis more ammunition in their arsenal to use against public health recommendations supporting vaccinations.

DeSantis tweeted: “Biden declared the pandemic is over. So, when will he let those discharged from the military due to vax mandates return to protecting our country?”

The question that should be keeping any thoughtful politician awake at night is: How do we continue to protect every American, including those who have committed to protecting our country?

RELATED STORY: Army 'will immediately begin' discharging soldiers for refusing COVID-19 vaccination

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/19/2123866/--You-re-counting-votes-We-are-counting-bodies-Experts-outraged-at-Biden-deeming-pandemic-over

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