How To Beat Omicron

Voices across the spectrum are rising in fury over President Joe Biden’s socalled Omicron plan. The variant is hammering New York and other cities, delivering a sucker punch to hopeful businesses, especially in the hospitality and entertainment industry, that days ago saw a holiday rebound within their grasp.

On the left, Sen. Chuck Schumer is demanding 10 times the testing centers that Biden’s promised, while a New York Times reporter blasted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday over how the prez’s promised help won’t mostly start showing up for days or even weeks, despite Biden’s brag that he “predicted” this crisis.

What can the prez do now? For starters, half a billion tests sounds like a lot, but it is a drop in the ocean for millions of families who will want the confidence to go out or to meet their loved ones and for small buinesses who want to stay open and keep their staff free from infection.

He also needs to lean on the Centers for Disease Control to cut the quarantine period from 10 days to a week. Britain just did it, and everyone here seems to agree. What’s the holdup?

Plus, as Dr. Marty Makary notes, get the Food and Drug Administration out of its “no crisis” mentality: Proven treatments, some of them already in use for other ailments, await FDA approval, yet the bureaucrats (who suspended nearly all emergency approvals for COVID-fighting innovations soon after Biden took office) are sitting on their butts.

Biden said it’s not March 2020; fine words, but how about acting like it? It’s essential to begin lifting more outdated restrictions that strangle business and movement, embrace the medical advances made these last two years — and face the fact that promises of too little action that will come too late won’t cut it.