One year ago, President Joe Biden spoke on the White House’s South Lawn with more than 1,000 maskless people in attendance, declaring the country’s independence from the coronavirus to much applause.

He noted at that time, “Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence: America is coming back together… Two hundred and forty-five years ago, we declared our independence from a distant king. Today, we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.”

But as if to give himself an out, Biden admitted, “That’s not to say the battle against COVID-19 is over. We’ve got a lot more work to do.”

He then invoked his vaccine-only strategy, stating, “Thanks to our heroic vaccine effort, we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus. We can live our lives, our kids can go back to school, our economy is roaring back.”

The essence of the speech was not to pronounce the achievement of any meaningful elimination of the virus as China recently did in Shanghai. He intended to place the country on notice that America was abandoning any significant mitigation measures that would impede the complete reopening of the US economy, including the full reopening of schools to in-person instruction, whatever the cost.

And one year later, the Biden administration has completed what his predecessor Donald Trump began—the dismantling of all mitigation measures to contain the virus and even any reporting and measurements to determine its impact, effectively declaring it a permanent fixture in society.

Biden remarked last year, “Businesses are opening and hiring again. We’re seeing record job creation, and record economic growth, the best in four decades, and I might add, the best in the world. Today across this nation, we could say with confidence, America is coming back together … Today, while the virus hasn’t been vanquished, we know this—it no longer controls our lives, it no longer paralyzes our nation.”

Biden’s seeming blunder was a deliberate lie. The World Socialist Web Site noted back on March 13, 2021, that his assurances to Americans that the country was on track to defeat COVID-19 and “mark our independence from this virus” by July 4 were misleading, distorted and full of lies.

International public health experts had repeatedly warned that a vaccine-only strategy, while allowing the virus to spread across communities unimpeded, raised the danger of newer and more contagious and lethal variants evolving.

The comparison of Biden’s remarks to former President George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech delivered on May 1, 2003, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln is obvious and instructive. The war itself wasn’t declared over until December 15, 2011, an eight-year conflict with horrific ramifications to the region’s populations that will linger for generations.

A 2013 analysis by researchers from the US, Iraq and Canada estimated that from March 1, 2003, to June 30, 2011, there were 405,000 excess deaths directly attributed to the conflict. A Lancet study placed the number of civilians and fighters who died at 650,000. Mortality surveys and public health measurements place the death toll as high as 2.4 million.

The consequences of COVID-19 could well be even worse, and on a global scale, not just in the United States. When Biden made his infamous declaration of independence from the coronavirus speech last year, the official number of COVID-19 deaths in the US had reached 625,000. One year later, another 418,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. And according to the Economist’s “excess death” modeling, more than a half-million Americans have perished in past 365 days.

The Biden administration’s campaign to ensure schools were opened for in-person instruction in the fall of 2021 led to the most extensive mass infections among the youngest in the country. More than 75 percent of children under 18 have been infected at least once. This has fueled the Delta variant and numerous iterations of the Omicron variant across the US since.

When Biden gave his “independence” speech, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provisional data placed COVID-related deaths among children under 500. However, after August 2021, the death toll among children rapidly escalated, reaching over 1,250 by mid-February of 2022. There have also been more than 90,000 children hospitalized during the pandemic.

And according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, another 200 children have died since then. Yet, not once has the Biden administration apologized to the children and parents of these families for his brazen lie during a CNN presidential town hall, when he reassured an 8 year old about her low risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19.

Additionally, 200,000 American children have been orphaned by these criminal policies attempting to prioritize business profits over the population’s well-being. More than a quarter-million between 18 and 64 died, of whom nearly 68,000 were under 50. The Delta variant was particularly deadly among this age group. From Biden’s speech until February 2022, COVID was either the second or third leading cause of death in the US.

Meanwhile, a growing number of COVID-related deaths occur among those previously considered fully vaccinated. In January and February of 2022, more than 50,000 vaccinated Americans died from COVID-19 caused by Omicron, which has evolved into a highly infectious, immune-evading strain. The vaccines have also proven to offer only a relatively brief period of immunity, necessitating multiple courses of booster shots to sustain reasonable protection from severe disease.

Evidence is also mounting that reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 is very common, and without any mitigation measures, the population can expect to be infected twice yearly. Recent population studies have also indicated that reinfections increase the chances of dying or becoming hospitalized compared to those with just one previous infection. These risks also apply to people previously vaccinated.

This condition is well-known as Long COVID, a multisystem disorder that commonly affects the lungs, heart, vasculature and other organ systems. Besides the common symptoms of fatigue, joint pains and brain fog, the damage it does to critical systems can have long-term consequences. The post-acute COVID syndrome can impact approximately one in five to one in four people, and debilitating Long COVID has been seen in one-third of them.

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and co-author of the VA study on reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 noted, “We show that compared to people with first infection, people with reinfection exhibited increased risks of all-cause mortality, hospitalization, and several prespecified outcomes. The risks were evident in subgroups including those who were unvaccinated, had one shot, or two or more shots prior to the second infection … altogether, the findings show that reinfection adds non-trivial risks of all-cause mortality and adverse health outcomes in the acute and post-acute phase of reinfection.”

And while Americans are facing a catastrophic economic hardship with inflation soaring and gas and food prices climbing, 727 US billionaires have amassed another $1.7 trillion in wealth as the country marked the needless death of more than one million people from COVID-19.

However, the White House has said that unless Congress approves a $22.5 billion COVID funding request (less than one-60th of the increase in billionaires’ wealth), there will be no monies for next-generation vaccines and therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies and antivirals. During the spring, the Washington Post reported that the Biden administration officials were predicting the possibility of a massive wave of infections and deaths during the fall and winter months. The uninsured and underinsured would be left destitute.

On May 9, 2022, Biden made a statement appealing for more funding for COVID and the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, which has led to a substantial number of civilian and military casualties, including the internal and external displacement of millions of Ukrainians. It has also been implicated in the ongoing energy and food crisis that is producing massive social catastrophes across the globe.

In his statement on the war funding, Biden remarked, “I have nearly exhausted the resources given to me by a bipartisan majority in Congress to support Ukraine’s fighters. This aid has been critical to Ukraine’s success on the battlefield … I am pleased that, in my conversations with Congressional leaders, there appears to be strong support for the proposal I submitted, and Congress is likely to pass it in substantially the form I proposed.” And without virtually no opposition, Congress committed $54 billion to the war effort.

In his appeal to Congress for COVID funding, Biden noted, “Without timely COVID funding, more Americans will die needlessly.” No one in the media or Congress has bothered to point the contradiction between this statement and his “declaration of independence” from COVID-19 one year ago.

And as recent hearings in Congress have shown, there will be no future funding for the pandemic, which will hold the population hostage for years, leading to further loss of life and health in the United States, as the pandemic continues to rage around the world, unchecked in every major country except China.