With four offhand words, “the pandemic is over,” President Joe Biden
touched off a firestorm during his Sunday “60 Minutes” interview.

The White House cleanup attempt was swift. Obviously the president
wasn’t saying the American people shouldn’t take Covid seriously, it
told reporters. Sure, he could have been more nuanced, but he was simply
saying we’ve hit a different phase.

And yet: A summary declaration that the pandemic is kaput carried
implications that Biden did not appear to fathom as he walked the floor
of the Detroit Auto Show with Scott Pelley. For one, more than 300
Americans are still dying from the disease each day as the nation’s
public health establishment works to convince Americans to get the new
bivalent booster shot ahead of a possible winter wave.

The remarks also did nothing to convince Republicans to back an
administration request for $22 billion in new Covid relief funding, a
fight that will come to a head in the coming days. As Sen. John Cornyn
(R-Texas) told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday: “If it’s over, then I wouldn’t
suspect they need any more money.”

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.