WHO Declares Global COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Over
It's been over for most Americans for a long time already.
The global COVID-19 health emergency is now over, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Specifically, the WHO says that "COVID-19 is now an established and ongoing health issue which no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern."
This comes more than three years after the organization first declared that the outbreak of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 constituted a public health emergency of international concern. Since the outbreak was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, it is estimated that the virus has infected 765 million people and killed nearly 7 million of them. More than 13.3 billion doses of various COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, covering 89 percent of health workers and 82 percent of adults over 60 years of age.
This is old news in the United States. The national COVID-19 emergency was officially terminated by a joint resolution of Congress and signed by President Joe Biden on April 10. Since the first domestic case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Snohomish County, Washington, on January 20, 2020, nearly 105 million Americans have been diagnosed with the disease, of whom over 1,131,800 have died.
Physician and American Council on Science Health fellow Henry I. Miller argues that COVID-19 remains much worse than regular influenza. He points out that COVID-19 killed 350,000 Americans in 2020, whereas only 25,000 died of influenza during the 2019–2020 flu season. So far this year, about 43,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 and weekly deaths from COVID-19 have fallen from 4,109 in early January to 1,109 last week. COVID-19 dropped to the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S. last year.
Nevertheless, the fact is that the pandemic was effectively over for most Americans well before the declarations made by Congress and the WHO. Back in December 2021, I reported on an article in the journal BMJ by two researchers who noted that "the end of the pandemic will not be televised."
In their article, Princeton historian David Robertson and University of Maryland pharmacy professor Peter Doshi pointed out, "There is no universal definition of the epidemiological parameters of the end of a pandemic." Consequently, they asked, "By what metric, then, will we know that it is actually over?"
After reviewing the history of three 20th century influenza pandemics, including the Spanish flu pandemic that killed an estimated 675,000 Americans, Robertson and Doshi argued that there will be no dramatic "end." Instead, the pandemic will "gradually fade as society adjusts to living with the new disease agent and social life returns to normal." Basically, epidemics socially end when people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease.
As the vaccines rolled out and the risks associated with infection became clearer, most Americans felt increasingly comfortable returning to normal activities—shopping, dining out, and attending social gatherings—by the spring of 2021. It's taken our global and domestic public health authorities two years more to formally acknowledge that for most Americans, the COVID-19 emergency has been long over.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Who’s going to break the news to the maskholes I saw at the supermarket today?
My last month’s online earning was $17930 just by doing an easy job obout 3 months ago and in my first month i have made $12k+ easily without any special online experience. Easiest home based online job to earn extra dollars every month just by doing work for maximum 2 to 3 hrs a day. I have joined this job aEverybody on this earth can get this job today and start making cash online by just follow details on this website……..
OPEN—>>>trying the info… prodollar09
I am making a good salary from home $6580-$7065/week , which is amazing under a year ago I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank God every day I was blessed with these instructions and now it’s my duty to pay it forward and share it with Everyone,
🙂 AND GOOD LUCK.:)
Here is I started.…………>> http://WWW.RICHEPAY.COM
I still see the occasional lone driver in her car masked up. Just point and laugh.
Start now earning every week more than $5,000 by doing very simple and easyhome based job online. Last month i have made $19735 by doing this online jobjust in my part time for only 2 hrs a day using my laptop. This job is justawesome and easy to do in part time. Everybody can now get this and startearning more dollars online just by follow instructions here…………
.
.
Now Here ————————————->> https://Www.Coins71.Com
VIRTUE!!
Mike, great work. I appreciate your work since I presently make more than $36,000 a month from one straightforward internet business! I am aware that you are now making a good living online starting sb-05 with merely $29,000, and they are simple internet operational chores.
.
.
Just click the link——————>>> http://Www.smartjobs1.com
I don’t think any of us was never opposed to every last person wearing masks. There are still people out there with family members who have cancer and even if/though masks don’t work and it’s just a talisman, them wearing masks as a talisman is no more or less offensive than wearing a pink ribbon.
As long as they aren’t asking forgiveness for making everyone else wear them. It’s a bit sad that the couple people I do see still wearing them regularly are ~18 yr. olds bagging groceries but, AFAICT, nobody’s forcing them.
It’s a sad sign of stupidity.
I have made $18625 last month by w0rking 0nline from home in my part time only. Everybody can now get this j0b and start making dollars 0nline just by follow details here..
🙂 AND GOOD LUCK.:)
Here is I started.…………>> http://www.apprichs.com
“whereas only 25,000 died of influenza during the 2019–2020 flu season.”
Bullshit. Everyone who died 2019 – 2020 died with COVID.
What kind of a damn fool hospital administrator would label a death anything else when there was big bucks attached to The Communist Chinese Virus?
“Big bucks”, as in having your beds all full of Medicare patients; paying staff overtime; having to increase capacity, beef up oxygen systems, store extra bodies down in the morgue.
$1800 extra per Covid case.
No nearly $12k – $15k per case. Some were less in lower afflicted areas, some more in higher afflicted areas. If you came into an emergency room, it was classified as C19 regardless of symptoms or initial triage. If someone died in a hospital from a heart attack, stroke, or something else and there was C19 present in that hospital, it was classified as a C19 case. It was all driven by money.
I was on a hunting trip in rural Colorado, and my brother and I ended up having to evacuate a guy off the side of the mountain with respiratory issues. He was admitted to the hospital to treat what we later determined to be an allergic reaction. But he “tested positive” for Covid there.
Those of us who spent 3 hours in a Jeep with him, driving out of the back country had to isolate for 2 weeks (based on the guidance at the time), and none of us ever tested positive. We were also tested at the hospital and were negative.
It is pretty clear that the only reason this guy tested positive was that he had no insurance and was going into a rural hospital emergency room where they had to treat him. That hospital was a ghost town because, in November of 2020, they weren’t accepting anything but emergency patients. And if they had to pay for treatment of some rando without insurance, they were surely going to get their covid-bucks for the trouble.
It is yet again time to remind everyone that the only question to ask any candidate for any elective office is “Do you support restricting ’emergency’ executive orders to a single 14 day duration, and requiring legislative ratification to extend it any further?”.
Sure, who cares about their position on spending and inflation.
Which is more dangerous?
Hey guys, it’s Mike who normally is here to tell us that there is no difference between the candidates on spending. But if he can troll people, well he’ll bring it up anyways.
Impending Doom; speaking of Walemsky just resigned bravely saving America from herself.
the history books should mock us for complacency in the face of oppression
I’m kind of torn. Could I have done more? Or do we just need to wait for more normal people to realize how badly they’ve been fucked over?
My last month’s online earning was $17930 just by doing an easy job obout 3 months ago and in my first month i have made $12k+ easily without any special online experience. Easiest home based online job to earn extra dollars every month just by doing work for maximum 2 to 3 hrs a day. I have joined this job aEverybody on this earth can get this job today and start making cash online by just follow details on this website……..
OPEN—>>>trying the info… prodollar09
on a personal level I defied everything every time. on a borg level I wish the hive had been more pissed off it would have been a fun fight
Many of us did try. Numerous times I pointed out the order to “wear a mask” is worthless. It didn’t matter if you wore a properly fitted N95 or a cute rag Aunt Sue made on her sewing machine out of scraps. Wear as mask or you’re killing babies! Everyone must do something!!!
Honestly, I didn’t think the madness could possibly last past June ’20. I really underestimated the power of the modern religions.
One place I regularly went in the before times, a classical music festival, STILL has “we STRONGLY recommend masking at all times” on their website. They’re still members of this weird cult and won’t let it go.
They were such pricks about their “recommended” masking during 21 and at shows well after the Delta surge had abated that I’ve cancelled my membership and didn’t buy the season last year or this. They somehow ruined what used to be the highlight of my summer and when I pointed out why I no longer give them money it was, somehow, my fault.
I was too complacent in 21. Even in 20. I didn’t want to cause fights, but I should have. We all should have.
105 million Americans have been diagnosed with the disease, of whom over 1,131,800 have died.
Diagnosed with the disease or tested positive for the virus? Those aren’t the same thing.
I’m fairly convinced that at least the original strains of the virus were worse than most flus in terms of overall deaths. But I strongly suspect that if it had been treated like we typically do flu, and hadn’t gone mad for PCR testing, it wouldn’t look all that much worse than a normal-bad flu season.
The way the data was collected it’s doubtful we will ever know how many people died from, as opposed to with, the virus.
The real cost of COVID is that many Americans believe a million dead was always just like the flu.
The stupid is very powerful
That whooshing noise was his point going over your head.
The way the data was collected, if a corpse tested positive it was counted as a COVID death. Period. Doesn’t matter if they died of cancer, if their parachute didn’t deploy, or they actually did die from the virus.
As a result nobody will ever know how many people died from the virus. We only know how many dead bodies tested positive.
The whooshing noise is coming from you not me.
An argument about prepositions (of, from, with) was always irrelevant since determining a cause of death requires a medical autopsy not a dictionary. Course that’s obvious when you think for even a nanosecond. Can you do that?
With the next question in a rational society being – how fucking pointless is an argument about prepositions during a pandemic? Apparently that has STILL not entered your awareness.
The question NOW being – what was the excess mortality during 2020 and 2021.
But hey keep playing with prepositions.
“…An argument about prepositions (of, from, with) was always irrelevant since determining a cause of death requires a medical autopsy not a dictionary…”
Still lying, asshole. Fuck off and die.
“…The stupid is very powerful…”
The asshole JFree seems to be using this in an ironic manner; not surprising. The lying pile of panicked lefty shit is still claiming huge numbers died FROM the wuflu.
Fuck him with a running rusty chainsaw.
In 2021 my dad had his fourth, and fatal heart attack. He tested positive for C-19 but he had no symptoms.
C-19 was 1st on the death certificate. Heart failure was listed 2nd.
That statement earned the hospital $1800.
No it didn’t you lying sack of pus.
Money was paid to report cases of covid. The purpose being to track the disease as it spread – in as close to real time as reasonable.
Had NOTHING to do with a statement on a death certificate which was passed on to a separate part of CDC (Vital Statistics) – always a couple weeks after the death itself (which may or may not have been contemporaneous with the reporting of a case of covid).
Do you actually understand the above sentences? Are you capable of distinguishing the difference? Do you give a shit?
You people are a complete fucking waste
If you think for one minute there wasn’t any fudging of numbers with all that money to be had, you are delusional.
“If you think for one minute there wasn’t any fudging of numbers with all that money to be had, you are delusional.”
If you think for a minute that JFree isn’t a lying pile of panicked lefty shit, you haven’t been watching.
Untrue, reported cases and death cases were being paid out for C19 regardless if symptoms were present or not in that particular patient. Here is the fact sheet for healthcare providers: https://www.fda.gov/media/136047/download.
“negative result does not exclude the possibility of COVID-19. When diagnostic testing is negative, the possibility of a false negative result should be considered in the context of a patient’s recent exposures and the presence of clinical signs and symptoms consistent with COVID-19. The possibility of a false negative result should especially be considered if the patient’s recent exposures or clinical presentation indicate that COVID-19 is likely, and diagnostic tests for other causes of illness (e.g., other respiratory illness) are negative.”
That essentially gave providers carte blanche to classify all cases as C19 because of the money payouts involved. You need to calm down.
JFree is just still trying to push three-year old lied he has never walked back.
He is a lying pile of panicked lefty shit.
Anyone remember that time JFear eyeballed a climate graph and misinterpreted it by ~50%, and proceeded to arrogantly insist shit that wasn’t true? I do.
https://reason.com/2022/08/19/incompetent-people-are-often-too-incompetent-to-realize-just-how-incompetent-they-are-says-new-study/?comments=true#comment-9661934
And what about that time he pretended to be an expert in gold mining and crypto currency. Anyone remember that?
https://reason.com/video/2022/08/08/gold-vs-bitcoin-a-soho-forum-debate/?comments=true#comment-9638491
“Money was paid to report cases of covid. ”
Now…I don’t know if what JFear is saying is true. But since it is JFear, I would check receipts. JFear is full of “obvious” facts that are in fact bullshit. There are people who I feel have drawn the wrong conclusions from facts or use irrelevant facts as a diversion. But JFear transcends all that, and just makes shit up. He’s like a Cliff Claven without the curmudgeonly charm.
Just this week he was insisting that no libertarians were interested in Sweden’s approach to COVID, and assuring us that COVID skeptics were the only ones in 4/2020 who didn’t know COVID was harmless to kids.
https://reason.com/2023/05/04/dont-be-fooled-by-randi-weingartens-rehabilitation-tour/?comments=true#comment-10048220
Oh and then a few days earlier, he was insisting (without evidence, and against ample evidence to the contrary) that masking works in Asia.
https://reason.com/2023/05/03/surgeon-general-vivek-murthy-refuses-to-acknowledge-the-governments-misrepresentation-of-mask-research/?comments=true#comment-10048358
Oh and who can forget that time JFree proclaimed himself the Nurse Whisperer, who knew for a fact that “many dozens” of nurses quit the healthcare field because of meanie-paneenie anti-vaxxers.
https://reason.com/2022/01/06/omicron-vs-the-unvaccinated-and-the-vaccinated/?comments=true#comment-9292054
Here is my point: JFear may be right here. I don’t know- even a broken clock is right twice a day. But JFear has a track record of being comically wrong. When he provides links to “proof” it is usually links of him bloviating previously.
All I am saying is to take JFear’s proclamations with a pound of salt, is all.
or tested positive for the virus?
Twice. Consecutively. Via antigen flow *and* PCR or via two other completely independent methods.
I would probably still test positive now for chickenpox, fifty year later.
Did they sing “My Generation”?
Covid ended two years ago for everyone who isn’t a bleating sheep.
The mentally ill sheep are still masking, most are under 40.
we still have another 6 days of covid vaccine mandate for air travel
WHO Declares Global COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Over And Nobody Notices!
“WHO Declares Global COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Over”
It’s whom, not who. Come on guys.
YOU DON’T DECIDE THEIR PRONOUNS FOR THEM!
WHO declares the earth is round.
Good. So now that it’s over, it’s time to go after all of the players that were involved in this giant wealth transfer. They need to suffer and pay for what they did and frankly, I don’t care how either.