Americans showed the world how to die from COVID-19. Are they about to do it again?

WASHINGTON-One indication of where COVID-19 stands in the current American political priority list was the news Tuesday from the U.S. Senate of a deal to finally fund President Joe Biden's ongoing pandemic measures.

Biden had asked for $22 billion; he's going to get $10 billion. Only 60 per cent of his domestic program will be funded. For foreign aid, he's getting nothing.

Playing politics with the pandemic is nothing new in the U.S., but the old saying, show me your budget and I'll show you your priorities" is apt. The pandemic may not be over, but many Americans and their representatives sure feel they're over it.

If you wandered out of that congressional announcement into the streets of Washington, you'd see a similar attitude on display: proof-of-vaccine requirements have been lifted at restaurants, masks are few and far between, the topic of conversation at the playgrounds has turned to the Supreme Court and Ukraine.

Coronawho? Oh, that old pandemic. Isn't it over?

The news I see from Toronto paints a different picture back home: more of my family and friends have reported testing positive in the past two weeks than during the entire pandemic, which according to a story in the Star this week is a common experience. Wastewater indicators in Toronto are way up, as are hospitalizations. That old familiar panic is creeping in - though apparently not for the provincial government, where the health minister repeated, we need to get on with our lives and learn to live with COVID."

The U.S. has a big head start on that front. This country showed the world how to die from COVID, and for a while now it has been determined to live with it, for better or for worse, in the absence of most control measures or restrictions.

That isn't entirely difficult to understand - and not just because of politics and fatigue. During a White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing Tuesday, Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky reported that cases are down four per cent over the past week, hospital admissions were down 17 per cent, deaths are down 16 per cent. Cases are at their lowest rates since last summer. Nationally, the most recent American wave appears to be receding.

But Walensky said Omicron's BA.2 variant is now projected to account for 72 per cent of circulating variants nationally, with all regions of the country reporting that BA.2 is now the dominant variant." Because of that, she said, everyone should get up to date on their vaccinations (About 66 per cent of the U.S. population is vaccinated, and about 30 per cent boosted). High prior infection rates help, but Walensky and others on the team were emphasizing the ongoing need to get a booster, and for senior citizens and the immunocompromised older than 50 to get a fourth shot, which they became eligible for this month.

When you look beyond the encouraging national averages, you see causes for concern in northeastern states - according the New York Times tracking, cases in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are up 30 per cent over the past two weeks.

In the past during the pandemic, what happens in the northeast is an indicator of what is to come. But Americans may be ill-prepared to switch back into self-protection mode. As Katherine Wu reported in The Atlantic Tuesday, home testing enthusiasm is down, government testing sites are being closed, daily case reporting is being reduced in some states, and the American response to the possibility of re-implementing restrictions might generally be summed up with the phrase nah, I'm good."

Walensky, in Tuesday's briefing, noted that local officials in regional hot spots should be ready to reimplement containment measures based on data. Some may be getting ready to do so: The city of Philadelphia announced Monday that after a month of mask-and-restriction-free living, an oncoming wave could soon see mask mandates reimposed. But its unclear such measures will be embraced again by the public. This is absurd and another example of how the far left will do everything they can to control our lives," Dr. Mehmet Oz, a prominent TV personality and Pennsylvania Senate candidate tweeted in response. Trump ally Oz may not be entirely typical, but the done-with-it attitude does seem pervasive.

As Wu wrote in the Atlantic, The next wave may be less a BA.2 wave, and more a so what? wave - one many Americans care little to see, because, after two years of crisis, they care so little to respond."

Take the congressional funding announcement Tuesday. Most Americans seem to understand that if the rest of the world remains largely unvaccinated, new variants will continue to emerge, and spread to the U.S. Yet Congress is giving Biden no funding for his global vaccination efforts.

Jeff Zients, in his last briefing as Biden's COVID czar Tuesday, said this was a mistake. This virus knows no borders. It's in our national interest to vaccinate the world and protect against possible new variants."

At least publicly, even Biden's Republican opponents in the Senate seemed to agree in principle, but they reportedly would not approve such funding - and possibly not even the domestic funding - unless Trump-era immigration bans at the border were extended.

So while case counts and deaths are low and falling, other political concerns have become higher priorities. Is that a sure way to ensure the pandemic will force its way back to the top of the list of concerns soon, as it has for many people in Toronto?

Americans certainly seem determined to find out.

Edward Keenan is the Star's Washington Bureau chief. He covers U.S. politics and current affairs. Reach him via email: ekeenan@thestar.ca