News: Governors confront a bipartisan pandemic

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Governors confront a bipartisan pandemic

Nov 23, 2021

Nurses and volunteers from the Oakland County Health Department wait for patients to receive their coronavirus vaccine at the Southfield Pavilion in Southfield, Mich.

Nurses and volunteers from the Oakland County Health Department wait for patients to receive their coronavirus vaccine at the Southfield Pavilion in Southfield, Mich. | Emily Elconin/Getty Images

KNOW WHEN TO HOLD 'EM — There has remained, nearly two years in, a temptation on both the right and the left to declare political pandemic winners based on Covid case counts and deaths.

It's a debate that has been reignited as Michigan's cases surged 67 percent in the last two weeks. Republicans blasted Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's early pandemic restrictions, even as her actions won White House praise. Hospitals there are now again full, and deaths are expected to follow.

Resist the temptation, said Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health.

"I think that narratives that Democrats have gotten this all right or that Republicans have gotten this all wrong or vice versa is neither helpful nor true," he said. "It's been very frustrating to see how much Covid gets politicized."

Much like poker strategy as explained by Annie Duke, Covid outcomes are the result of both luck and decision making. Understanding how much random chance is involved is important.

We still don't know what sparks a particular Covid surge or what precipitates a case drop, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. For example, Whitmer is no more responsible for the virus slamming Michigan at this particular moment than Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was for the Delta surge hitting Florida this summer.

"We may ascribe success to a certain state, but it's luck of the virus draw," Osterholm said.

That doesn't mean policy is irrelevant. We may not totally understand virus patterns, but we know that Covid spreads more easily and quickly in indoor places, especially among unmasked and unvaccinated people.

What's crucial, said Jha, is to "hold politicians accountable for policies but not outcomes." Over the long term, policies can change behavior and affect pandemic outcomes, but policies are also subject to short-term fluctuations and random chance, he said.

On that score, policies that encourage masking, vaccinations and distancing are ones that governors should be pursuing, Jha said. About 95 percent of federal workers, for example, have been vaccinated after the Biden administration's mandate.

At the very least, states shouldn't stop local governments and businesses from imposing measures to mitigate the virus spread. A governor might still get very unlucky with virus trends and they also can't totally control their residents' behavior, even if they played the right hand. Whitmer, for example, has been more encouraging of vaccines than DeSantis, but Florida still has a higher vaccination rate than Michigan.

That still doesn't mean that Democrats are always playing their cards well. Cheap or free, and ubiquitous, rapid testing, for example, could help curb transmission. But neither Democratic nor Republican states are considering the idea.

Jha has been tracking both Vermont and South Dakota, which have similar demographics and seasonal patterns, over the course of the pandemic. Both states have Republican governors, but they have taken drastically different approaches to managing the pandemic. Vermont, which has closed businesses and pushed masks and vaccinations, has had 65 deaths per 100,000 people, while South Dakota, which imposed no Covid related measures, has four times as many deaths: 261 per 100,000 people.

Right now, neither party is showing much political appetite to reimpose harsh restrictions that might make a dent in the virus trajectory, but come with other deeper societal costs. Austria has imposed a lockdown and vaccine mandate. That is not happening here, even as the U.S. continues to see a thousand Covid deaths a day.

"We have another major wave to work through, but we're doing very little to thwart it," said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a medical research institute.

Whitmer recommended Michganders wear masks indoors, but she didn't require them.

One of the biggest recent federal policy blunders, Topol said, was the refusal to authorize vaccine boosters well before the holidays, and then not really urging those under 50 to get boosted.

The best thing governors could do now is get more and more people vaccinated and boosted, Jha and Topol said. That may not help them prevent a future Covid case surge, but it would prevent their hospitals from filling and their residents from dying.

Immunity for both vaccine- and infection-acquired immunity wanes at about the six-month mark, according to a CDC report . But immunity from a vaccine is more consistent — and unlike getting Covid, it comes with basically no risk of death or long-term symptoms. Even with waning immunity, vaccines do a better job of protecting people against serious illness and death.

Topol said the Republican states banning vaccine mandates amounted to "idiocy."

"It will come back to haunt them," he warned."There are still a lot of people at risk all over the country."

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. A programming note: We'll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday, but we'll be back and better than ever on Monday, Nov. 29. Reach out with news, tips and Black Friday strategies at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.

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Nightly asks you: Is there something you really want or need to buy, whether for the holiday season or just an everyday item, that you've noticed is far more expensive or seemingly impossible to get? Send us your responses using our form, and we'll share some answers Wednesday.

What'd I Miss?

— Biden administration asks court to lift stay of vaccine-or-test rule: The Biden administration is asking a federal court to lift an order halting its vaccine-or-test mandate for private employers , arguing that delaying the standard could have "significant" impacts outside the workplace. "Simply put, delaying the Standard would likely cost many lives per day, in addition to large numbers of hospitalizations, other serious health effects, and tremendous expenses. That is a confluence of harms of the highest order," the government argued in a filing with the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals today.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration building behind FDA logos at a bus stop on the agency's campus in Silver Spring, Md.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration building behind FDA logos at a bus stop on the agency's campus in Silver Spring, Md. | AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

— FDA nomination slips after Biden admin fails to send papers to Congress: A plan to speed Robert Califf's nomination for FDA commissioner through the Senate next month is on hold after the Biden administration failed to submit the necessary paperwork to Congress in time , three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO. The delay means that Califf is now unlikely to get a confirmation hearing until mid-December at the earliest, effectively ruling out the possibility of a full Senate floor vote on his appointment before the end of the year.

— Joint Committee on Taxation issues correction on Democratic social spending bill: The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation issued a major revision to its estimates of the Democrats' multi-trillion climate and families plan, finding that actually millionaires will pay more in taxes. Under the legislation, those making more than $1 million would pay 3.2 percentage points in 2022 more in taxes — and even more in subsequent years.

— Jan. 6 investigators subpoena Proud Boys, Oath Keepers as probe turns to domestic extremism: The Jan. 6 select committee today subpoenaed the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers , extremist groups that responded to Donald Trump's call to descend on Washington and played central roles in the attack on the Capitol. The House committee issued subpoenas today to Proud Boys Chair Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, as well as both of the organizations they lead. It also subpoenaed a lower-profile far-right group, 1st Amendment Praetorian, along with its leader, Robert Patrick Lewis.

— Christian groups furious at Blinken for removing Nigeria from religious violence list: Christian groups, a U.S. government panel and former senior U.S. diplomats are furious over Secretary of State Antony Blinken's decision to take Nigeria off a list of countries accused of engaging in or tolerating religious persecution . Blinken's decision was revealed last week just before he visited Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and one where Muslim-Christian tensions have long flared.

STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.

AROUND THE WORLD

SURGE CONCERN STAYS GLOBAL — As the world heads into the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. and international health representatives are increasingly worried that the virus will outpace the global effort to vaccinate large portions of the world in the first part of 2022, Erin Banco, Adam Cancryn and Carmen Paun write.

Although COVAX, the global vaccine equity effort, has secured hundreds of millions of doses for the beginning of next year, officials fear the virus will spread uncontrollably, infecting vulnerable populations, before more countries can receive and administer first doses. To date, only 43 percent of the world is fully vaccinated, with many countries in Africa still waiting for first doses. Despite initial commitments from COVAX to ship 2 billion doses by the end of 2021, the vaccination effort has fallen short, with only about 1.45 billion doses expected by January.

The delays are attributable to multiple factors, from failure to obtain regulatory authorizations for companies such as Novavax, to India's vaccines export ban, and protracted negotiations with firms such as Moderna and Pfizer, whose substantial pledges came too late to reach low- and moderate-income countries.

Now, as case numbers and hospitalizations have begun to surge again in Europe, top Biden administration officials and international health groups are scrambling to find ways to deliver and help facilitate vaccinations in low- and middle-income countries in the next several months.

Nightly Number

More than $25 million:

The amount in damages a jury awarded in a mixed verdict today against white nationalist leaders for violence that erupted during the 2017 Unite the Right rally . After a nearly monthlong civil trial, a jury in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville deadlocked on two key claims but found the white nationalists liable on four other counts in the lawsuit filed by nine people who suffered physical or emotional injuries during two days of demonstrations.

Parting Words

Biden speaks on the economy during an event at the South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Biden speaks on the economy during an event at the South Court Auditorium at Eisenhower Executive Office Building. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

STRATEGERY AT THE PUMP — Republicans were quick to slam Biden's decision today to open the taps on the nation's oil reserves, accusing him of misusing a national security stockpile for the politically expedient goal of lowering gasoline prices just before Thanksgiving. But Biden has the GOP to thank for helping him to do it, Ben Lefebvre writes.

Legislation enacted under the Republican-controlled House during the Trump administration ordered the government to sell more than 100 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves by 2027 to raise money for the Treasury. Biden's Energy Department specifically cited one of those mandates when it announced today that it was selling 50 million barrels, the biggest ever release.

Releasing crude oil from the reserves is the one easy tool at Biden's disposal to try to tamp down rising fuel prices, which have fed inflation and helped chip away at the president's approval ratings. Weeks of anticipation about today's move have already started to have a calming effect at the pump, said the administration, which had also coordinated with countries like China, Japan, India and South Korea to make their reserved crude available.

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