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Confronting Omicron: One Step Forward, One Step Static

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Director at Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative
Joel M. Zinberg, M.D., J.D. is the Director of the Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative at Paragon Health Institute, and a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. A native New Yorker, he recently completed two years as General Counsel and Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President.
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President Joe Biden’s recent address on the Omicron variant was full of holiday miracles. After nearly a year in office, Biden finally conceded the obvious by acknowledging that President Trump deserves credit for developing Covid-19 vaccines in record time. Biden also offered a half-hearted compliment to Trump for announcing that he had gotten a booster shot.

Rounding out the seasonal marvels was the fact that Biden resisted the temptation — to which he and most other officials have routinely succumbed during the pandemic — to impose additional lockdowns. He acknowledged that the Omicron variant is highly transmissible and is leading to a surge in cases, but cautioned that we should not panic. And in welcome news to parents and children around the country, Biden even conceded that “we don’t have to shut down schools because of a case of Covid-19.”

Biden’s newfound more conservative approach appears to recognize that while the Omicron variant is more transmissible than earlier variants, vaccine and natural immunity continue to provide protection against severe disease…

Biden has, perhaps, finally realized that lockdowns are of limited utility and that their economic, social, and educational side effects far outweigh the direct damage from Covid-19.

Read the full article in National Review.

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