End the National Emergency and Public Health Emergency Declarations
End the National Emergency and Public Health Emergency Declarations
Stop the Abuses of Power, Corruption, and Fiscal Irresponsibility
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
The National COVID-19 Emergency, first declared by President Trump in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, was formally extended a second time by President Biden on February 18, 2022 and will come up for a third consideration by Biden in February, 2023. In January 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared a public health emergency (PHE) in response to the outbreak of COVID-19. Public health emergency declarations ease certain laws and regulations to make it easier to address the emergency and allow some federal grant money to flow toward addressing the emergency. A PHE is a lesser event than a national emergency, which triggers a rapid outlay of federal money to address the emergency. National emergencies also give great unliteral power to the president, allowing the president to do things such direct flows of money from the national treasury, deploy the national guard, etc.
From a clinical point of view from a physician who has treated COVID-19 from the very beginning, a PHE would be evident if hospital capacity was exceeded by COVID-19 patients and care could not be provided to other patients with urgent problems. As a general rule this would be >15% occupancy by COVID-19 patients. From that perspective, the COVID-19 PHE ended in January, 2021 once hospital capacity ramped up to meet demand. I checked the CDC website and the weekly cases of COVID-19 has maintained its unimpressive pattern of oscillations while hospitalized cases are about 5000 well below that 15% threshold of about 130,0000.
Emergency declarations have allowed for prepurchase of vaccines, government coverage of COVID-19 health care costs, Medicaid expansion, and Emergency Use Authorization of diagnostics, drugs, and vaccines without full FDA approval.
Throughout US history there has been a reluctance by the executive branch to end national emergencies and relinquish power. After investigations of abuses of power in prior years, the House agreed to a Senate amended bill, and President Gerald Ford signed the National Emergencies Act into law on September 14, 1976. This act was designed to restore the checks and balances of power and end emergencies. On two occasions, March 3, and November 15, 2022, the Senate voted 48-47 and 62-36, respectively, to end the national emergency declaration nearly three years after it was invoked. The House did not pick up the bills and the Biden administration said it would veto any attempts to end the emergency declaration. Would former President Trump have ended it? Why hasn’t any reporter asked him that question now?
As for the PHE controlled by HHS, twenty-five Republican governors have signed a letter asking President Joe Biden to direct HHS to end it, saying “it is time we move on from the pandemic and get back to life as normal.” A main reason for this move is to end the expansion of Medicaid provisions and get state budgets back into alignment.
In summary, both national emergencies and PHE are power grabs that facilitate unchecked decisions and flows of money fostering corruption and continued desire to extend the declarations. The House and the Senate figured this out back in the 1970’s and found a legislative way of ending them. Until these declarations are dropped, we will continue to careen out of control on health policy, pandemic response, corruption, and fiscal irresponsibility. The most important question you can can ask a lawmaker, governor, or president or candidate: “Are you in favor of dropping the emergency declaration and PHE? If not why?
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November 22, 2022 Senate Approves Resolution to End COVID-19 National Emergency Declaration
AMEN!!
“‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded—and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed such emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist.”
—F. A. Hayek, “Law, Legislation, & Liberty”
This article makes a great complement to the piece I just published calling on Ron Johnson to sponsor #MakePharmaLiable, #RememberBabyAlex, and #PutPeopleOverPharma legislation:
• “Letter to Senator Ron Johnson” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-senator-ron-johnson)
I credit attorney Jeff Childers with the brilliant strategy outlined in #MakePharmaLiable, which I believe strikes at the jugular of the pharmaceutical companies by removing all liability shields. The injection pogrom would collapse on impact as they would never survive the tidal wave of lawsuits.
Exactly right on all counts. A few days ago, I went to establish care with a new PCP. There was a sign on the door about masking and they practically put it on for me. When done, I went to the radiology building next door and no masks were required. A few days later, I came for labs, walked in to a large empty room, spent some time talking to the employee who finally casually handed me a mask. When I go to work in a medical facility, 90% of the staff are just refusing to comply with the masking rule because everyone now knows it is ridiculous and the other 10% are just nervous about getting in trouble. Let's end the madness.