BIDEN MAKES SOCIAL SPENDING CASE — President Joe Biden will speak today at a health care–focused conference hosted by the progressive advocacy group Families USA, touting the actions that he’s taken during his first year in office and rallying support for the path ahead. In a video address, the president will take credit for enrolling millions of people in newly subsidized Obamacare plans and allowing Medicaid to cover more people longer after they give birth, Alice reports. The president in his speech will give a single call to action for executing the rest of his agenda: pushing Congress to pass the social spending bill derailed late last year by the more conservative members of the Democratic party. “We need the Senate to pass my Build Back Better Act, which will lower premiums for more than 9 million Americans, cover 4 million Americans in states that have failed to expand Medicaid, lower prescription drug costs, and bring down the price of insulin from $1,000 a month to $35 a month,” he said. “We have to get this done. We have to get it done together. And we will.” Stay tuned: Alice will also be speaking at the conference Wednesday about the outlook for BBB, abortion rights and more. FAUCI: WE STILL AREN’T CONTROLLING COVID — The world is a long way from moving the pandemic into a new chapter of eliminating and eventually eradicating the virus, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci told Erin in an interview last week. “If you want to look at where we are, we're not at a level of control,” Fauci said. “You would have to get enough people vaccinated and boosted and enough people infected who recovered, either vaccinated or not, so that the level of protection in society is low enough that it doesn't disrupt you and dominate what you do.” The variant cycle may not be over. “There's a best-case scenario, and a worst-case scenario,” the longtime director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said. “The best-case scenario is … that we know there will be another variant, but the variant will be such that it isn't one that completely bumps off the protection from the underlying community immunity,” he said. “The worst-case scenario is that when Omicron goes down, we get another very different variant that actually eludes the community immunity that’s been built up.” And we’re not done with boosters just yet. Fauci said the U.S. doesn’t know how third shots will hold up. “We don’t know that after the third shot, even though the antibody level will inevitably go down, whether that third shot gives you a degree of durable memory B cell and T cell immunity that the durability of protection would go well beyond the laboratory data of the antibody going down.” FDA LIMITS ANTIBODY TREATMENTS AMID OMICRON — The Food and Drug Administration on Monday restricted the use of two monoclonal antibodies, made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, that are thought to be ineffective against the Omicron variant. The agency revised the emergency use authorizations for those treatments, limiting them to coronavirus strains that could be countered by those antibodies, POLITICO’s Lauren Gardner reports. But: Federal officials estimate that Omicron is responsible for more than 99 percent of U.S. cases as of mid-January. GlaxoSmithKline and Vir’s sotrovimab is the only antibody cocktail shown to be effective against the variant. The FDA noted that other therapeutics and treatments for Covid are available, including two antiviral pill regimens and remdesivir, an intravenous drug whose use regulators expanded on Friday to include non-hospitalized Covid patients at risk of developing severe illness. But that treatment must be administered in a clinical setting, and the antiviral drugs are plagued by supply constraints and logistical challenges, making it difficult for many Americans to access them. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed the federal government to continue shipping all authorized monoclonal antibodies, arguing people are still falling ill with the Delta variant that pummeled his state last summer and fall. | 
