The Daily Agenda: COVID is here to stay

But drugs can make you feel better ... Lesko backs a RINO ... And lobbyists get all the face time.

As Arizonans watch the summer turn to winter, the “tripledemic” season is upon us once again. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is again warning that the cold months will bring rising cases of COVID, the flu and RSV across the country. 

After widespread vaccinations became available in the U.S., many of us ripped off our masks and declared the COVID pandemic over. But for vulnerable populations and those who can’t or don’t get vaccinated, COVID never really stopped being a threat. 

Roughly 30,000 Arizonans have died of COVID, out of roughly 2.5 million confirmed cases in the state since the pandemic began. And although pandemic life ended, the deaths did not. Another 19 people died last week, according to Arizona’s COVID dashboard. 

Still, for most of us, COVID is a minor annoyance. These days, we quarantine through a few meetings on Zoom and continue with our lives. It’s like the flu (which still kills around 35,000 Americans per year). 

Treatment medicines are getting better, and in May, the FDA approved the first oral antiviral pill, Paxlovid, to significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID. 

But depending on where you live, it ain’t exactly easy to get the stuff. 

Dozens of national and Arizona-based healthcare groups are calling on the federal government to ease access to the drug for small pharmacies, which make up the backbone of rural healthcare and serve particularly underserved populations.

You see, the federal government has bought up a ton of this stuff, just like it did with protective gear at the beginning of the pandemic, to ensure providers have access to enough supply. But as with many things involving the federal government, there’s a lot of red tape and barriers to access, the National Community Pharmacists Association warned in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

And just like at the beginning of the pandemic, who gets access to these new drugs and how it’s made available is still a big open question. 

Throughout the pandemic, people of color were more likely to be hospitalized from the virus, in part because of their higher risk of exposure and higher risk of developing a severe case of COVID. People trusted their local pharmacies to administer vaccines, and they’re turning to them now for antiviral drugs. 

“Without having these COVID-19 therapeutics readily accessible on shelves in pharmacies that serve rural and underserved areas, the gap in access to COVID-19 treatment and care is widening,” the pharmacists warned in their letter. 

The three main barriers to access, the pharmacists said, are the assessments that patients must undergo to qualify for the drugs, like bloodwork that patients or providers have to pay for; the cost of the drug, which isn’t free; and the complex federal portal that pharmacists have to use to order it, which is especially difficult on community pharmacists, who don’t have the corporate resources to be able to effectively navigate the system.  

Arizona already has a low number of pharmacies per capita. You wouldn’t think that living in the Valley, but if you live in northeastern Arizona, you’re probably driving a long way to find a pharmacist, and they’re probably an independent shop. 

And unlike with vaccines, the new antiviral treatments are not covered by the government. 

“Think about the amount of (federal) money that was used to stop COVID, and now insurers are either not covering these treatments or they're wanting copays, and it's at a high level,” Kim Owens, a nurse and PR guru who is working with the pharmacists, said. “They should just waive those co-pays for the antivirals that are going to keep these patients out of the hospital and decrease the overall cost of the system.”

Carpetbagging is a blood sport: Outgoing U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko shunned her would-be MAGA replacements in Congressional District 8 by endorsing Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, who actually lives in the district (but hasn’t actually declared he’s running) and has long clashed with his party’s America First wing. Meanwhile, Blake Masters put out his first campaign ad for the West Valley district, replete with images of sprawling landscapes of his Southern Arizona home. Finally, Scottsdale resident Abe Hamadeh is leading the early polls. 

Speaking of out of district¹: Arizona House Republican Whip Teresa Martinez recorded a fun spooky Halloween story about the Superstition Mountains’ Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine. It’s part of a “postcard” series she’s doing, but we’re hoping she’ll start a Jim Harold-style podcast shortly!

And we can’t even make it to midnight: Republican Rep. Matt Gress is calling on Gov. Katie Hobbs to extend booze sales until 3 a.m. pointing to an obscure 2021 law allowing the governor to do that “in connection with a professional or collegiate national sporting championship event held in this state,” in this case, the local sportsball franchise’s tournament. 

Maybe it was the new speaker calling: All six members of Arizona’s Republican congressional delegation supported new U.S. House Speaker “MAGA Mike” Johnson, who helped craft some of the less-conspiratorial arguments against certifying the 2020 election, as Rachel Leingang writes for the Guardian U.S.² His ascension to speaker doesn’t bode well for the 2024 election. Elsewhere in D.C.,  Kari Lake’s friends in the “real news” are hounding U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego with tough questions like, “Are you paid off by the cartel or are you selling out America for free?” He avoided the cameras by holding up his phone for what appears to be a fake call, the Republic’s Ronald Hansen writes. 

Let the taps flow — or not: The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation wants to cut Arizona’s Colorado River water share much less drastically than it originally said was needed, the Daily Star’s Tony Davis writes. Federal officials proposed cutting the supply by about 3 million acre-feet total over the next three years, rather than 2-4 million per year over the next three years. Cities and states have voluntarily cut use to stave off mandated cuts, but many southwestern cities are considering increasing the price of tap water to further curtail use and to pay for the cost of replacing aging infrastructure, KUNC’s Alex Hager writes. 

SB1070 forever: Texas lawmakers voted to let local police arrest people for breaking federal immigration law, à la Arizona’s SB1070 from 2010, and the governor appears likely to sign it. The law will almost certainly spark a lawsuit and could give the U.S. Supreme Court a chance to reconsider its 2012 decision that struck down the major components of the Arizona law, the New York Times reports.

“What Texas is doing is taking up Arizona’s mantle,” Daniel Morales, a professor of law at the University of Houston, told the Times. “This is a complete relitigation of the issues that appeared and were settled in that case.”

It’s their land: A pack of javelinas that plowed through a Sedona golf course is getting international attention. The Guardian, the Washington Post, Vox, the Republic, the Associated Press, every local TV and radio station and even Golf Digest picked up the story. We wouldn’t have jumped on the bandwagon except we really wanted an excuse to bring up this old edition of the “Reply All” podcast about feral hogs because it’s fantastic. 

We mentioned on Wednesday that Gov. Katie Hobbs was too busy to make it to her own Bipartisan Elections Task Force’s grand finale meeting this week. 

But you know what politicians can always find time for? Photo shoots with lobbyists!

Before you leave a comment, we know it wasn’t the same day. But still, priorities…

1. While the Superstition Mountains lie just outside of her district, nobody knows for sure where the Lost Dutchman’s gold mine might be…

2. Hi, Rachel!