Despite the very understandable impulse to move on from the pandemic, the pandemic hasn’t moved on from us, currently killing four hundred Americans a day and hospitalizing six thousand. But the disappearance of COVID from the list of political priorities has had another major side effect: the Biden administration is now moving to dismantle what few remaining public health measures exist in the United States to manage the virus, and with little opposition.

Earlier this week, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, Dr Ashish Jha, made a stunning announcement: the administration is planning to stop buying coronavirus vaccines, treatments, and tests by the end of this year. If carried out, it’ll be the latest and arguably most dramatic step by US officials to turn the US pandemic response wholly into a matter of individual responsibility, all while giving private insurers and Big Pharma a massive windfall. Jha made the announcement, fittingly, at an event sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

“One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about in the last many months . . . is getting us out of that acute emergency phase where the US government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests,” Jha told the attendees. “My hope is that, in 2023, you’re going to see the commercialization of almost all of these products. Some of that is actually going to begin this fall, in the days and weeks ahead.”