WASHINGTON — With 400 to 500 Americans still dying every day of Covid-19, President Biden has declared that “the pandemic is over.”
But don’t tell that to people like Debra McCoskey-Reisert, whose mother died in early August. Or Ben HsuBorger, who has chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition often brought on by viruses, including the coronavirus. Or Peter W. Goodman, whose wife died on Aug. 17.
“It’s not over for me,” said a tearful Mr. Goodman, 76, who is retired after working as a journalism professor at Hofstra University on Long Island. Both he and his wife, Debbie, 70, became sick with Covid-19 last month. He recovered. She did not.
The president made the remarks while speaking in an interview that aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night. By Monday morning, the backlash was in full swing — as patients said the president was being insensitive at best, and some public health experts said his words were at odds with the science.
“We’ve had two million cases reported over the last 28 days, and we know underreporting is substantial,” said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Minnesota. Covid-19, he said, “continues to be the No. 4 cause of death in the country.”
In the “60 Minutes” interview, which was taped during the Detroit Auto Show last week, Mr. Biden did allow that “we still have a problem with Covid.” But he also gave a nod to the unmasked crowds at the show.
“The pandemic is over,” he said. “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”
The word from the White House on Monday was that the president was simply expressing what many Americans were already feeling and seeing and what Mr. Biden had been saying all along — that the nation has vaccines and treatments to fight the coronavirus and that for most people, it is not a death sentence.
Xavier Becerra, Mr. Biden’s health secretary, echoed the sentiment while getting his booster shot at a community health clinic in New York.
Read More on the Coronavirus Pandemic
- Updated Boosters: As masks have fallen away and quarantines have diminished, the new vaccines are one of the last remaining weapons in America’s arsenal against the coronavirus. So far, the rollout is methodical, but muted.
- Educational Declines: Test results show the pandemic’s effect on U.S. students: The math and reading scores of 9-year-olds dropped steeply, erasing two decades of progress.
- Heavy Toll: The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021. The decline, largely driven by the pandemic, was particularly pronounced among Indigenous communities.
- Paxlovid Study: The Covid-19 medication Paxlovid reduced hospitalizations and deaths in older patients, but made no difference for patients under 65, new research from Israel found.
“I think the president was reflecting what so many Americans are feeling and thinking,” Mr. Becerra said, “that Covid has disrupted our lives for so long, but we’re also finding that with these effective vaccines, with masking, with the efforts to protect our children, seniors, we are learning how to cope with this virus. But make no mistake. People are still dying.”
But it’s one thing for ordinary Americans to think and feel that the pandemic is over; it is another thing for the president to say it. Presidential pronouncements carry policy implications, and the Biden administration had to answer questions on Monday about whether the president’s words would change anything.
The short answer: No, they will not.
Mr. Becerra’s agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, said the Covid-19 public health emergency, which gives the government flexibility to waive or modify requirements for health-related programs like Medicare and Medicaid, remained in effect.
Much of Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda is entangled with the coronavirus pandemic as well. Late last month, his administration announced it was canceling $10,000 in federal student loan debt for certain borrowers to ensure that they were “not placed in a worse position financially because of the pandemic.”
The White House is also pressing Congress to appropriate an additional $22 billion to fight the pandemic. The president’s comments could complicate that effort — as well as the administration’s campaign to persuade Americans to take the newly authorized “bivalent” booster shots, just as a possible fall surge is coming, said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Center for Pandemic Preparedness and Response at the Brown University School of Public Health.
“An unfortunate sound bite,” she said of Mr. Biden’s remarks.
Other experts said Mr. Biden was just plain wrong.
To begin with, the president does not have the authority to announce an end to the pandemic. The World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, designated the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic in 2020. If anyone is responsible for declaring an end, experts say, it would be the organization and its director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“We are not there yet,” Dr. Tedros said last week. “But the end is in sight.”
In the United States, data show that the pandemic is in what Dr. Osterholm calls a “high plains plateau.”
Gone are the peaks and valleys that came and went with the Omicron surge in late 2021 and early 2022. Hospitalizations are now declining, though roughly 32,000 Americans are still hospitalized with coronavirus infection each day, according to a New York Times database. The number of deaths today is far lower than it was a year ago, when the Delta variant was causing nearly 2,000 deaths per day.
“We still have 400 to 500 people dying daily in this country,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University in Atlanta. “If that’s over, it’s a little too high to me.”
And for many Americans who are still experiencing the fallout from the worst public health crisis in a century, Mr. Biden’s remarks — and the suggestion that the nation is moving on — were painful. Many of those who are now dying of Covid-19 are either older (Ms. McCoskey-Reisert’s mother, Roberta, was 81) or have underlying illnesses (Mr. Goodman’s wife had lupus, which made her vulnerable).
“Let’s not make premature declarations,” said Ms. McCoskey-Reisert, a retired business professor from Citrus Springs, Fla., whose mother died on Aug. 6. “People are still dying.”
The pandemic, she said in an interview, feels like “a hell that I am never going to get out of.” Her husband has a compromised immune system, she said, and she is still wearing masks.
“President Biden said, ‘No one’s wearing masks,’ and perhaps that is true,” she said. “But is it wise?”
Mr. Goodman, who worked as a music and arts reporter for Newsday before he turned to teaching, got sick shortly after he and his wife, Debbie, had returned from a cruise along the Rhine. He said he had no idea how they contracted Covid-19 — it could have been on the plane, where few people were wearing masks, or in the airport, or on the ship, where someone they ate with had a cough.
He said he does not regret the trip; his wife, who also had a lung disorder, consulted with her pulmonologist, who said it was fine for her to go. He is glad, he said, that they had that time together. He said he was trying not to pay attention to statistics.
“How many people are still dying a day — is it 400 people a day?” he asked. “It’s not over. It may feel over. Probably if it weren’t for my situation, I might feel that it was over, too, but I’m in a situation where it doesn’t matter whether other people think it’s over. It’s not over for me.”
Others say their lives are forever changed.
“For us, there is no normal that we can go back to,” said Mr. HsuBorger, seated in a wheelchair. He had just led a group of patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis, a complex disorder also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, in a protest outside the White House. Many have long Covid. Their T-shirts declared: “Still Sick. Still Fighting.”
Sharon Otterman and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.
