Examining what the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency means

Thursday marks the end of America’s COVID-19 public health emergency.

It means you’ll have to buy COVID tests out of pocket, you’ll be charged for treatments like Paxlovid, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention won’t be able to force labs to report COVID test results, so tracking cases will be unreliable.

As of Thursday, the U.S. has administered 676,006,980 vaccinations, all of which were free.

However, American taxpayers have spent billions of dollars. First, to research and develop the vaccines. Then, billions more to buy the actual doses. Then, billions more to administer them.

We’re still working to understand the effects of the pandemic.

Here's how the end of the Covid-19 public health emergency affects you

WRAL’s Dan Haggerty points out another casualty of the coronavirus.

“We’ve lost the ability to share common truths, which some would argue is the backbone of civilization. We need to have unspoken agreements, and COVID disrupted that and we can’t seem to figure out how to get it back,” he said.

Haggerty said a factor is claims made by the government without the proper context.

“I’m so bent out of shape by the CDC telling the people who have spent billions of dollars on a vaccine that it’s free,” he said.