It’s been five years since Americans were hoarding toilet paper and baking banana bread in quarantine. Yet somehow, billions in “emergency” COVID-19 funding is still sloshing around like hand sanitizer in a purse from 2020. But guess what? The Trump team just sent the memo: Party’s over, folks.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced this week they are pulling back a cool $11.4 billion in leftover pandemic cash from health departments. In a statement, the department said, “The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

Naturally, the public-health-industrial-complex is melting down harder than a Pfizer shipment left in the sun. One health official with the National Association of County & City Health Officials wailed that this move is “cruel and unusual.”

Cruel? You know what’s cruel? Charging taxpayers for a pandemic response in 2025 that happened in 2020 – while we’re paying $6 for eggs and still can’t get a doctor’s appointment without booking it through a call center in Uzbekistan.

Yes, COVID-19 is still out there, and yes, people are still dying – like they do from heart disease, cancer, car accidents, and listening to CDC press conferences. But that doesn’t justify endless emergency funding five years after the pandemic started. It’s not still a “crisis” no matter what the Democrats and their bureaucratic friends tell everyone.

So yes, the feds are finally turning off the COVID-19 cash spigot. And to that we say: it’s about time. Maybe now our health departments can go back to their regular duties – like telling us kale is good for us and inspecting gas station sushi.