Joe Biden Tells ’60 Minutes’ That The Covid Pandemic ‘Is Over’
19.09.2022 - 03:43
/ deadline.com
President Joe Biden said in a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday that the Covid pandemic “is over,” one of a series of newsworthy items he said during a sit down with Scott Pelley.
“The pandemic is over,” Biden said in a portion of the segment at the Detroit Auto Show last week. “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it …but the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”
Public health agencies still treat Covid as health emergencies, but the head of the World Health Organization was optimistic in his remarks last week. He said that “we’re not there yet, but the end is in sight.”
In the interview, his first for 60 Minutes since becoming president, Biden also addressed concerns about inflation, amid a sobering report last week showing a month-to-month uptick in the Consumer Price Index.
Biden told Pelley that the rise was “just an inch, hardly at all,” but Pelley then remarked, “You’re not arguing that 8.3% is good news.” That was a reference to the annual rate.
“No, I’m not saying it is good news,” Biden said. “But it was 8.2% or– 8.2% before. I mean, it’s not– you’re ac– we act– make it sound like all of a sudden, ‘My god, it went to 8.2%.'”
He added, “We’re in a position where, for the last several months, it hasn’t spiked. It has just barely– it’s been basically even. And in the meantime, we created all these jobs and– and prices– have– have gone up, but they’ve come down for energy.”
Biden also addressed the situation in Ukraine, where forces have recaptured large chunks of territory from the Russians. The president said that the U.S. would commit to Ukraine “as