Is the Pandemic Over?

President Joe Biden has a way of catching his staff off guard. He did it again during an interview for CBS' "60 Minutes," when he was asked if the COVID-19 pandemic is over. 

“The pandemic is over," the president said. "We still have a problem with COVID, we’re still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over.”

As recently as last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifically said that the pandemic was not over. 

The head of the World Health Organization, too, had said the same thing just days before Biden's interview aired on Sept. 18. "We are not there yet but the end is in sight,” WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a press conference on Sept. 14.

Science Editor Jessica McDonald reviewed the current COVID-19 data and talked to epidemiologists about Biden's declaration. 

As Jessica reports, epidemiologists say there’s no single agreed-upon definition for what constitutes the end of a pandemic — and some say we’re not there yet.

For more, read her article "Is the Pandemic ‘Over’? Biden Says So, But Scientists Say That’s Up for Debate." 

Reader: Can you guys fact check a claim from Stacy Abrams regarding her recent abortion claims?  She claims that a heartbeat doesn't exist at 6 weeks and the sound is manufactured to make men feel they can take control of [women's] bodies. Please post too, you're not bias, right? 

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: We wrote about this issue in 2019, when five states were considering what proponents called fetal heartbeat legislation and critics called six-week abortion bans. 

As our Science Editor, Jessica McDonald, wrote: 

A developing heart has all of its primary structures after about nine weeks of pregnancy. Some forms of ultrasound can detect cardiac activity in an embryo in the sixth week, but a heartbeat wouldn’t be audible until about 10 weeks on a Doppler fetal monitor.

Jessica also quoted a statement from the American College of Gynecologists, which said: “What is interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically-induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops. Thus, ACOG does not use the term ‘heartbeat’ to describe these legislative bans on abortion because it is misleading language, out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy.”

For more, read Jessica's Ask FactCheck “When Are Heartbeats Audible During Pregnancy?” She covers information about the development of the heart, how and when heartbeats are detected, and what early detection of a heartbeat means for a pregnancy.  

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Viral Posts Spin Falsehood Out of Denmark’s COVID-19 Booster Drive": Denmark announced a plan for its fall COVID-19 vaccination drive, saying it will offer omicron-specific booster shots to high-risk individuals, including everyone 50 and over. But U.S.-based misinformation peddlers misleadingly suggest that means the shots are unsafe for those under 50. The Danish Health Authority said that is a misinterpretation. 
• "GOP Ad Mischaracterizes Michigan Candidate’s Response to 2020 Protests": A day after a protest in Grand Rapids inspired by the murder of George Floyd turned violent, Democratic House candidate Hillary Scholten of Michigan pleaded for “peaceful” protests and urged demonstrators “to not resort to violence and destruction.” Yet, a six-second Facebook ad from a Republican PAC falsely claims Scholten “dismissed the destruction” during the May 30, 2020, demonstration. 
• "Republican Talking Point Omits Key Details About Stimulus Payments to Inmates": Some congressional Democrats voted for COVID-19 relief bills that resulted in stimulus checks being sent to inmates — but so did some congressional Republicans. Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was one of the prisoners eligible for a $1,400 stimulus check – but he didn’t get to keep it, because a federal court ruled that the payment could be seized to pay Tsarnaev’s criminal fines and for restitution to his victims. But those two facts – that Republicans voted for previous stimulus checks and Tsarnaev didn’t keep his check – were omitted from Republican attacks on a number of Democrats who voted for the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 
• "Johnson’s False Claim about Barnes’ Tax Plan": Like many Democrats, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes says he wants to cut “middle-class” taxes and make sure the wealthy “pay their fair share.” But an ad from his opponent, Sen. Ron Johnson, in the race for U.S. Senate falsely tells the state’s voters that Barnes wants to “double your income taxes.”
• "NRSC’s Misleading Attack on Warnock": An ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee makes two misleading claims about votes cast by Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia.

• "Ensayos clínicos muestran que la ivermectina no beneficia a pacientes con COVID-19, contrario a afirmaciones en redes sociales": Ensayos clínicos aleatorios han encontrado repetidamente que la ivermectina no brinda beneficios para los pacientes con COVID-19. Los Institutos Nacionales de Salud recomiendan contra su uso para el COVID-19. Entusiastas de la ivermectina continúan afirmando falsamente lo contrario. 
• "¿Se acabó la pandemia? Biden dice que sí, pero los científicos dicen que es discutible": En un momento sorpresivo de una entrevista con el programa “60 Minutes”, el presidente Joe Biden dijo que la pandemia del COVID-19 “se ha terminado”. Si bien reconoció correctamente que el coronavirus sigue siendo un problema, los epidemiólogos dicen que no existe una definición universal sobre qué constituye el final de una pandemia, y algunos dicen que aún no estamos ahí.