CoVID government funding for vaccines and booster assistance
is drying up and that’s a bad sign – report here from The Daily Beast with this headline:
“How a Major COVID
Relapse Could Soon Hit America — and the World”
Short Introduction
and Highlights:
Federal COVID funding is beginning to run out in the
U.S. As the once-extensive government investment in vaccines, therapies, and
testing vanishes, epidemiologists are bracing for a major shakeup in — some
would say “collapse of — critical efforts to contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Vaccine initiatives could suffer the biggest blow.
With the impending end of government funding, Americans would have to start
paying for their own COVID shots — a disincentive that could further suppress
the country’s middling vaccination uptake, which currently is plateaued at
67% who are “fully vaccinated,” usually with two doses of a messenger-RNA
vaccine.
Background:
In the first year of the pandemic, there was broad political consensus in
Washington, D.C. that the federal government should foot most of the bill for
the country’s response to the pandemic:
In 2020, a Republican Senate and a Democratic House of
Representatives agreed to that, and then President signed off on it into law
with more than $2.5 trillion of spending to develop and produce vaccines, therapies,
ramp up testing, and prop up businesses to keep them solvent as the economy
temporarily shut down.
In early 2021, President Biden with two house narrow DEM majorities
used a budgetary gimmick called “reconciliation” to quickly pass another $2 trillion
for CoVID funding and public assistance therein.
But Republican support continued to wane – and it’s not hard to see why. “Public health” and “vaccines” are dirty words in the conspiratorial, anti-government mostly Republican conservative base that seems to keep growing along with their raw hatred for President Biden and probably most democrats.
After that initial reconciliation bill, the hardening of the Republican Party made it all but impossible for Biden to pass a big spending bill without relying on the once-a-year reconciliation.
Most bills require 60 votes in the Senate, after all, and the Democrats have just 50 Senators plus VP Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker.
When Biden finally did get his second
reconciliation bill through Congress in August — the $750-billion Inflation
Reduction Act — it mostly paid for health-insurance subsidies and efforts to
address climate change.
Biden and his allies in Congress spent the spring wheedling
with Republicans for a modest, $10-billion boost for vaccines, therapies, and
testing, as the White House said in April: “COVID-19 isn’t waiting on Congress to
negotiate. Other countries will not wait. Time is of the essence. Congress must
act urgently to help save more American lives and ensure we remain prepared.”
But Republicans said no, and the bill died.
The Biden administration hasn’t yet tried to revive the funding initiative — and, indeed, seems to have given up on ever doing so.
My 2 Cents: The DEMS always look out the public’s health, education, and welfare and usually have good ideas and plans for good positive results.
The
GOP does not generally speaking … but they are good at name-calling, insulting,
and refusing to help despite their speeches and rhetoric otherwise.
The DEMS are doers and the GOPers are not – they are undoers and road blockers.
It’s just that simple and the whole CoVID pandemic history proves my point.
Thanks for stopping by.
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