Three Reasons to Demand New Covid Funding Now

At current infection rates, 20 new variants may develop every week.

The White House has asked for $22.4 billion in new funding to address Covid-19, with approximately $18 billion to be spent in the US and approximately $4 billion for global aid. These requests are inadequate to meet the full challenge but would be a significant improvement over the status quo. Here are three reasons Congress must approve this funding immediately.

1. It isn’t over.

Despite the president’s recent statement to the contrary, the pandemic hasn’t ended. More precisely, Covid-19 has moved from a state of rapid and unexpected growth (the public health definition of a “pandemic”) to one that's called “endemic.” That means the disease has become widespread across the US in high numbers.

Covid-19 still causes hundreds of deaths in this country every day. (As I write these words, the daily US death toll is 413.) Failure to provide these funds will lead to a breakdown in our entire Covid response, from prevention to testing through treatment and long-term recovery.

2. We must stop the virus from evolving.

The US should invest in global pandemic funding, first and foremost because it's immoral not to help. But our failure to address the disease worldwide also means we’re gambling with our own lives. Here’s why: If these epidemiological findings from April 2022 still hold, every one million Covid cases produces six new variants. As of this writing, there were 468,763 new cases of Covid worldwide in the last 24 hours. That comes to 3,281,341 cases weekly.

That’s nearly 20 new variants every week. Most will be harmless, but not all. Any one of them could prove deadlier and more contagious than anything we’ve seen so far. $4 billion in funding would begin to address a crisis that continues to devastate the world – especially the world’s poor – while reducing the risk to Americans from future variants.

3. We must stem the devastating tide of long Covid.

Those effects appear to include “increased risks of some brain disorders two years after infection” as well as other, better-known but equally devastating symptoms.  This has grave economic, social, and human implications, given that long Covid may currently be keeping as many as 4 million people out of work.

Washington needs to know that people want this spending to start now. This is an excellent time for people to contact the White House (202-456-1111) and their members of Congress (202-224-3121) to express support for this funding, as well as for the funds that have been requested to address Monkeypox.