Biden administration’s ‘soft closing’ to the pandemic means a hard landing for the under-insured.

Last summer, getting vaccinated was promoted as the most fun, fashionable thing a person could do. Free vaccines and boosters were a centerpiece of the Biden administration’s policy and messaging. The unsung hero of that cultural moment, of course, was significant federal expenditures underwriting vaccine supplies.

Now, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator Ashish Jha has announced the federal government will end its expenditures for Covid vaccines, treatments and tests this fall. The popular federal program that sent Americans free at-home Covid tests was shuttered Sept. 2. He stated, “My hope is that in 2023, you’re going to see the commercialization of all of these products.”

But you’d think the good times were still rolling. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona stated that the new CDC guidelines for Covid in schools should provide “students, parents, and educators the confidence they need to head back to school this year with a sense of joy and optimism.”

None of this seems like particularly joyful, hopeful news. The U.S. will be among the first countries to stop providing free Covid vaccinations and treatments, leaving low-income people – a group that is overrepresented among the pandemic’s victims – with even less protection.

It’s easy to understand why the Biden team would want to remain upbeat. But glossing over the nation’s Covid death toll – which is currently equivalent to another 9/11 Twin Towers attack every week – won’t help procure the resources needed to control the pandemic. Over the past year, we’ve seen a worrying pivot from aspiration to acceptance in pandemic policy – with CDC and White House officials normalizing high levels of death and other poor outcomes rather than articulating a road map for reducing them to the lowest possible levels.

The official response to these outcomes has been, effectively, a policy of no policies. Since spring 2021, U.S. leadership has issued increasingly threadbare, permissive Covid guidance, such as allowing people who test positive to exit isolation after a mere five days. The policy vacuum around Covid is compelling businesses, child care providers, camps and church committees to make decisions that should be made by national institutions.

If calls to “follow the science” dominated in 2020, policymakers are now pivoting to follow public opinion.

“Protect the vulnerable” has been a common refrain in U.S. Covid policy, but meaningful protection remains elusive. Jha has argued that pharmaceuticals like Evusheld and Paxlovid are the best means of protecting vulnerable groups – but has also tended to gloss over the obstacles that prevent ready access to these treatments. Now, the White House is touting the “soft closing” of the pandemic, even as it refuses to pick up the tab for those it continues to harm the most.

MARTHA LINCOLN is an assistant professor of cultural and medical anthropology at San Francisco State University. ANNE N. SOSIN is a policy fellow at Dartmouth’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy.