OPINION:
President Biden just issued a notice that expands the national emergency declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why?
It’s all political theater. Political theater, political deception, political hucksters imposing political hoaxes on the American people. The data doesn’t justify keeping Americans on pins and needles about the coronavirus.
The New York Times, citing the most recent Our World in Data, reports that America has seen 78.4 million cases of the coronavirus, fewer than 934,000 of which resulted in deaths. That means 1.19 percent of those who reportedly catch COVID-19 die from COVID-19.
Of those deaths — of the hospitalizations themselves, in fact — a large percentage were tied to the obesity of the patient.
“Multiple studies have concluded that people who are obese who come down with COVID-19 are more likely than others to become severely ill, to require hospitalization or to even end up on mechanical ventilators,” The Journal Record wrote in January. “In fact, health care professionals believe obesity can triple the risk of hospitalization. At least one study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that half of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 categorized as obese.”
America doesn’t have a COVID-19 “emergency.”
America has a fat “emergency.”
America has too many people who are obese and unhealthy — and who are afflicted with many of the other health issues that are tied to the types of COVID-19 cases that — as the all face masking, all the time zealots like to angrily and self-righteously say — clog the hospitals and result in death.
In other words: We know who’s at risk.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic we have always known obesity was a risk factor for severe disease and hospitalization,” said David Chansolme, a doctor and the medical director for infection prevention at Integris Health, in the Journal Record. “Along with obesity come other comorbidities which impart an increased risk of severe COVID, including diabetes, hypertension and chronic heart and lung disease.”
Yet Biden and his band of bureaucratic medical advisers are keeping the “national emergency” of the pandemic in place.
Biden, in a letter to congressional heads, said: “There remains a need to continue this national emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause significant risk to the public health and safety of the nation. More than 900,000 in this nation have perished from the disease, and it is essential to continue to combat and respond to COVID-19 with the full capacity and capability of the federal government.”
A better way to cite the numbers is to say that nearly 99 percent of those who’ve tested positive for COVID-19 have fully recovered.
But that wouldn’t be an emergency.
And there’s too much politically and financially at stake to let this “emergency” coronavirus go just yet.
In October, Pro Publica wrote that the “Education Department’s limited tracking of $190 billion in pandemic support funds sent to schools has left officials in the dark about how effective the aid has been in helping students.”
In January, KFF.org wrote of the “variety of strategies” the feds have used to “provide enhanced financial support for hospitals and other health care providers to compensate for revenue loss and higher costs” tied to the pandemic — including a $178 billion Provider Relief Fund through Health and Human Services; an $8.5 billion of American Rescue Plan fund for rural hospitals; a 20% increase of Medicare payments to health care facilities for patients admitted with COVID-19 and a 3% increase in Medicare payments to doctors treating COVID-19; and a dedicated $100 billion in Paycheck Protection Program loans to health care providers to offset coronavirus-tied treatments.
Not all of that money has been spent.
There are still millions and millions and millions of dollars in play.
Then there are the political opportunities presented to Democrats with a population living in constant fear, on constant edge, in constant states of anxiety and uncertainty. Easier to herd, dontcha know. Easier to manipulate, cantcha see. This is the party of “never let a crisis go to waste” mindset.
And if there’s no real crisis?
Invent one.
That’s what Democrats are doing with this coronavirus right now — they’re inventing a crisis, fabricating an “emergency,” in order to achieve certain political goals.
The real national emergency is America’s love affair with fattening food.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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