Should Congress Pass More COVID Funding?

In recent weeks, mask mandates across the country have been dropped as covid case rates and hospitalizations have fallen with the waning of the omicron wave. Everyone hopes that even if the virus never completely disappears, it could become merely endemic and not the dominant reality of everyday life that it has been for two years.

Yet there are signs a new wave could be on its way, now that one is already hitting Europe. Should that happen, Democrats ought to know that they’ll get the blame.

All epidemics trigger the same dispiriting cycle. First, panic: As new pathogens emerge, governments throw money, resources, and attention at the threat. Then, neglect: Once the danger dwindles, budgets shrink and memories fade. The world ends up where it started, forced to confront each new disease unprepared and therefore primed for panic. This Sisphyean sequence occurred in the United States after HIV, anthrax, SARS, Ebola, and Zika. It occurred in Republican administrations and Democratic ones. It occurs despite decades of warnings from public-health experts.

In the interest of providing much-needed aid to Ukraine, avoiding a government shutdown, and sending as much pork home to their home districts as possible, members of Congress acted on a bipartisan basis this month and passed an omnibus spending bill six months into the fiscal year.

As badly as they behaved in doing this, they at least had the good sense to purge from this 2,700-page monstrosity President Joe Biden's request for $22.5 billion (later $15.6 billion) in additional funds for COVID relief.