POLITICO NIGHTLY: The Covid lull is coming

BY MYAH WARD Presented by AT&T People walk through Grand Central Terminal in New York City. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images ‘WE’RE NOT SURE JUST WHAT THAT MEANS YET’ — After weeks of skyrocketing Omicron cases and feeling like everyone you know, and their brother, has Covid — a surge that has led deaths to surpass 2,100 a day, the highest since early 2021 — experts are saying that a period of reprieve is in sight. Even Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota who is known for never celebrating victory against Covid too early and correctly projecting Omicron’s destructive path as a “viral blizzard,” says we may have a moment to breathe in a few weeks once the new variant completes its rapid burn through the country. Nightly talked with Osterholm about what we know about the approaching lull in the pandemic and how it should inform our behavior and public policy. This conversation has been edited. Describe the lull that you and other experts say is in sight. When we talk about a lull, we’re not sure just what that means yet. Maybe case numbers will come back down to baseline and what they were before Omicron showed up, but maybe they’re not going to be. But nonetheless, they’ll still be substantially lower in incidence than we saw in December, early January. We’re following closely what’s happening in countries that experienced Omicron before we did, and it’s notable. If you look at South Africa right now, the number of cases increased dramatically from a baseline, hit the peak and then came down sharply. But if you look today, they still have almost 12 times as many cases a day as they did before Omicron occurred. But what’s even more concerning is what we’ve seen in the United Kingdom. If you look there, and it appears to be tied to school kids and their parents — we saw cases come down 10 days ago, we saw them level off, and go back up again. Over the last two days, they’re going back up, not dropping. And so that could also signal that this tail is going to be more volatile than you might imagine. I think that we could very easily see another variant emerge. I don’t know that to be the case, but I don’t know any scientific evidence would support it wouldn’t. I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but how long do you expect this lull to last before we see another variant?  I actually do have a crystal ball! It’s just coated in 5 inches of mud. But we don’t know. This is where humility has to be the main point we keep reinforcing. I saw some of the talking heads six weeks ago who said, “Well, don’t worry, this surge won’t be that bad because we have vaccines. It’s not going to be like 2020.” Some of them now are the very people saying how bad this is. Anybody who does any model that predicts more than four weeks out, be careful. Because their models are based totally on pixie dust. If in the first week of November, just as Omicron was emerging, someone said, “I’m going to model it for the next 30 days,” you would have never picked up any of this. Is that what we should expect at this point in the pandemic — a period of reprieve and then a new variant? I see people wanting to immediately say we’re heading to the endemic stage. I’m a card-carrying epidemiologist of 46 years. I’ve written a lot about epidemics, and pandemics and endemics, and I can’t tell you for the life of me what the hell endemic means right now. If we go into a four-month period of relatively limited transmission, is that endemic? Well, then what happens if in September, we see a new variant emerge that suddenly causes an Omicron-like situation? We have to be careful about the choice of terms. Is this virus going to go away? The answer is no. Will it cause future challenges? The answer is likely yes. We will not likely see the kind of immunity that will come from either vaccination or from previous infection that will be sustainable. You saw the Israeli data today; they’re recommending a fourth dose for everybody 18 years of age and older. Only a third of people who have had two doses of vaccines — so they’re vaccine friendly — have gotten a booster, which we know has been important in reducing the risk of serious Omicron infection. So do you think we’re going to do better with a fourth dose? We’re going to have to learn to live with this virus. But at the same time, I’m optimistic that if we can really put in place very aggressive and well-described systems for testing and drug deployment, we can surely do a lot to reduce serious illness. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. We had a couple more questions for Osterholm, including on Omicron-specific vaccines and what life will look like in The Lull. Read on, and reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at mward@politico.com, or on Twitter at @MyahWard.   A message from AT&T: Accessible, affordable broadband helps communities reach their American Dream. That’s why we’re making a $2 billion, 3-year commitment toward helping close the digital divide, so more low-income families have the ability to succeed. Learn more.   Speaking of vaccines — Pfizer announced today it’s starting clinical trials for an Omicron-specific vaccine. Shouldn’t we be more worried about the next variant?  That’s exactly it. First of all, companies should not be deciding what the next vaccine should be. They should be manufacturing the vaccines that the public health and regulatory world determine are important. So I think this is putting the cart before the horse to have companies out there pursuing, and even in a sense promoting, vaccines for specific variants. When the lull comes, what should our behavior look like? Should this period affect vaccine and mask mandates and other public health measures?  I think most mandates are going to go out the window. I think society is going to demand it. I think most of the behaviors — it won’t matter what we say — they will be, in a sense, an attempt to be as normal as they were before Omicron hit, or for that matter, before Covid hit. We might not like the wind, but it’s going to blow. We can’t stop it. And so I think the challenge is going to be: Will we at that time continue to do everything we can to get more people vaccinated, particularly kids, to get people who are at high risk to get their additional booster dose? We’re going to have to continue that. The second thing is we need to do everything we can to continue to expand testing capacity. What I don’t want to see happen is: We may not be using all the tests, so we throw them away. No, at this point, we’ve got to have a surge capacity and be prepared for what happens if we do see an Omicron-like surge in the fall. What will we be doing for the health care workers? Will we have more? I think salaries, and we’re looking at benefits, for health care workers to stay on the job. What kind of support can we provide health care workers, many of them who are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome? Then if another surge doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. You can say it was wasted. I would rather always be sorry for something I did rather than something I didn’t do.   JOIN NEXT FRIDAY TO HEAR FROM GOVERNORS ACROSS AMERICA : As we head into the third year of the pandemic, state governors are taking varying approaches to public health measures including vaccine and mask mandates. "The Fifty: America's Governors" is a series of live conversations featuring various governors on the unique challenges they face as they take the lead and command the national spotlight in historic ways. Learn what is working and what is not from the governors on the front lines, REGISTER HERE.     WHAT'D I MISS? — Hoyer: Voting rights bill, BBB ‘very much alive’: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer remains optimistic that Democrats will pass the voting rights legislation and the Build Back Better bill despite roadblocks but offered few details about how that could happen. “I do not buy your characterization of the Voting Rights Act being ‘dead’ in the Senate,” Hoyer told POLITICO Playbook co-author Rachael Bade. “It certainly is not in the shape I’d like it to be in, but we’re not going to forget about that.” — Rep. Jim Cooper retires after Tennessee district dismantled: Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper, a 32-year veteran of Congress, will retire at the end of this year, after Tennessee Republicans shredded his Nashville-based district into three pieces in redistricting. He is the 29th House Democrat to leave the chamber to retire or seek higher office during this Congress. — Judge presses ahead with April trial for several Oath Keepers: A federal judge insisted today that the first criminal trial for Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 open in Washington this April, a timeline he said he was committed to despite vocal objections from some defense attorneys who worry they wouldn’t have enough time to wade through a massive — and growing — trove of digital evidence. Judge Amit Mehta set the April 19 date for a subset of the 22 Oath Keepers charged with a sweeping conspiracy to obstruct the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. — Cuellar on FBI raid: I intend to win reelection; the investigation will clear me: A defiant Rep. Henry Cuellar declared that he would seek — and win — reelection, six days after an FBI raid of his home and campaign offices. In a video statement recorded outside of his childhood home, the senior Texas Democrat vowed that his name would be cleared in the probe and thanked supporters. But he offered no explanation for why the FBI searched his property less than six weeks before he faces a tough primary against progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros.   A message from AT&T:     AROUND THE WORLD U.S. Embassy Charge d'Affaires Kristina Kvien and Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Rostyslav Zamlynskii speak to the media following the unloading of weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, and other military hardware delivered on a National Airlines plane by the United States military at Boryspil Airport near Kyiv in Boryspil, Ukraine. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images TENSIONS HEADACHES — Biden said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States would deploy thousands of troops to Eastern Europe if Russia continues its military buildup along Ukraine’s border or mounts a renewed invasion of the country, Quint Forgey writes. But the American president also said he would not send troops into Ukraine, even as the White House warned that Russia was likely to move its forces across the border at any moment. Biden’s remarks came after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin placed the roughly 8,500 troops “on a heightened preparedness to deploy,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said at a news briefing on Monday, with the “bulk” of those troops intended to bolster the NATO Response Force. NATO has not yet activated that multinational force in response to Russia’s aggression, although the alliance announced on Monday that several of its European member states were deploying additional ships and fighter jets to Eastern Europe and putting new forces on standby. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday accused the United States of “escalating tensions” by putting the troops on high alert, telling reporters that Moscow was “watching these U.S. actions with great concern.” NIGHTLY NUMBER 62 percent The decrease in OpenTable restaurant reservations in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, 2022 compared with Jan. 24, 2019.   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.     PARTING WORDS FILLING IN THE GRID — The launch of the website Grid earlier this month represented the latest bet that the market for explainer journalism still exists in the digital space. But unlike others in the field, Grid has a unique origin story, one that involves early ties to a global consulting firm best known for its crisis communications management and lobbying work on behalf of foreign governments, most notably the United Arab Emirates, Max Tani and Daniel Lippman write. Months before Grid brought on board any writers or staff, the new digital media organization hired APCO Worldwide to help with its launch. The global marketing and consulting firm, which is headquartered in D.C. but is a registered lobbyist for various clients based in the UAE, confirmed to POLITICO that it “provided consulting services for Grid during the first half of 2021.” A spokesperson said it has no continuing role with the digital news organization, which launched earlier this month. And Laura McGann, Grid’s top editor, said in a statement that APCO did not win a competitive bidding process for a PR contract for the site. The contract, instead, has gone to DKC News, which does public relations work for Grid. But Grid maintains links to APCO, which represents a number of major UAE clients, including the company’s state-owned oil company.   A message from AT&T: Brooke Dryden’s daughter was diagnosed with learning disabilities at an early age. She requires an individualized education plan and weekly therapy with speech specialists. However, rural Colorado does not have the kind of specialists she needs. With the help of accessible and affordable broadband, Brooke is able to ensure that she receives regular virtual therapy and never falls behind. Brooke’s dream is to see her daughter not just survive but thrive in the world. That’s why AT&T is dedicated to helping close the digital divide with a $2 billion, 3-year commitment, so more low-income families like Brooke's can achieve their American Dream. Learn more.     Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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