President Joe Biden jolted many people, including the administration’s health officials, in declaring the COVID-19 pandemic is over. The president’s surprising statement, during a 60 Minutes interview broadcast Sunday night, is technically incorrect — COVID continues to kill about 400 people a day — and raises troubling questions about future federal policies responding to the coronavirus.

To alleviate national confusion and anxiety, the president must clarify his remarks — now. 

Does the president believe the nation’s current death toll is what the end of the pandemic looks like? Is this the new normal?

Over time, advances in therapeutics and the adaptation of the human immune system may diminish the death toll. But if this is what the endemic stage of COVID looks like, then we have to accept the viral world is permanently more dangerous than it was only three years ago.

If so, what federal policy changes are in order? Presumably, the Department of Health and Human Services would refuse to extend the COVID public health emergency for 90 more days when it comes up for renewal on Oct. 12. 

Congress should also make permanent the Medicare reimbursements for telehealth that came with the emergency. The federal government should cancel all extraordinary regulations and mandates that stem from an ongoing pandemic, and shift its efforts from suppressing a pandemic to managing an endemic disease.

And what about student loan policies? Based on the ongoing pandemic, less than a month ago the administration extended a pause in repayments through Dec. 31. And the signature loan forgiveness package was based partly on the continuing viral emergency.

Then again, Mr. Biden might not have intended to raise any of these questions. He may have, carelessly, made a primarily political remark to project confidence before the midterm elections, without considering the consequences of his words. 

Either way, the administration has to get its story straight. The emergency must end some time. A perpetual emergency is no longer an emergency: It is a blank check for powers that the government was never meant to have permanently. But the end should not come casually, or recklessly, from an off-hand remark made on national television. 

First Published: September 19, 2022, 10:13 p.m.