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National review
Biden’s COVID messaging dishonesty
After a campaign in which Joe Biden expressed supreme confidence that he could end the coronavirus pandemic, or at least significantly reduce the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, his administration’s handling of the pandemic left a lot to be desired. Check back last fall. Biden was giving speeches about how he trusted vaccines in general, but didn’t trust Donald Trump, and therefore was skeptical of coronavirus vaccines in particular. Biden’s running mate, then Senator Kamala Harris, said she would hesitate to take a vaccine released during Trump’s tenure. When asked if she would if Dr Anthony Fauci and other reputable health authorities approved it, she doubled down: “They will be muzzled; they will be deleted. By December, it was clear that the vaccines were in fact close to FDA approval and that by the time Biden and Harris took their respective top positions in the executive branch, distribution would be well underway. Biden received the Pfizer vaccine in the middle of the month and Harris received it just before the end of the year. It was right that the leaders of the incoming administration were protected. But the fact remains that Biden and Harris, without merit, undermined confidence in a medical miracle for their own political benefit and then jumped to the front of the line for it. After receiving the vaccine, Biden moved into the White House with a mandate to bring the pandemic under control. He announced his lunar plan for national immunization: to administer 100 million vaccines before his 100th day in office. It was a dishonest public relations ploy. During Biden’s inauguration week, the United States performed an average of 983,000 vaccinations per day, meaning the administration was setting itself a benchmark it could already be assured of reaching. Naturally, the public noticed and almost immediately Biden was forced to increase his goal: he would now aim for an average of 1.5 million vaccinations per day by the end of his first 100 days. We have already achieved this higher goal, and not because of the new efforts of the Biden administration. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty reported, the Biden administration’s vaccination plan includes new federal sites, but more doses of the vaccine. This does not present an opportunity to expand immunization efforts – there are already many places where people can be vaccinated – but a bureaucratic hurdle that has made things more difficult for states, some of which did not even know that additional doses would not be available. on new sites. Worse yet, yesterday’s Morning Jolt noted that there was still a substantial gap between the number of vaccines provided by Pfizer and Moderna and the number of vaccines actually administered: This morning, according to the New York Times, Moderna and Pfizer have shipped over 70 million doses to states, and one way or another, states only got 52.8 million of those shots in people’s arms. The Bloomberg chart has a slightly better figure, showing states administered 54.6 million doses, out of roughly the same total. That leaves 15.4 to 17.2 million doses in transit or on shelves somewhere. The country vaccinates about 1.67 million people per day according to Times data, 1.69 million per day on the Bloomberg chart. Not great. The Biden administration has also been nonchalant in its approach to reopening schools. White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced last week that her goal was to have 51% of schools open “at least one day a week.” This target suffers from the same problem as the vaccination target: it has already been reached and exceeded. About 64% of school districts already offered some sort of in-person instruction when Psaki spoke. The goal, given the huge costs of virtual education for students, should be to open the remaining 36% and turn partial reopens into full-time reopens. To some extent, Biden fended off Psaki’s incredibly lazy goal at a CNN mayoralty event on Tuesday, saying, “I think a lot of them [will be open] five days a week. The goal will be five days a week ”and qualify Psaki’s statement as an“ error ”. However, questions remain: if this was just a mistake, why did it take a week to correct it? And why is the correction so vague that it leaves room for special effects? How much, exactly, is “a lot” for the Biden administration? Biden’s game of expectations is a symptom of a bigger problem: He never had the pandemic management plan he said. His campaign season claim he made was always an act of smoke and mirrors that had more to do with tone and messages than politics. To hide the lack of tangible changes it has made, the new administration has attempted to flood the area with already achieved goals and to tout their achievements as achievements. Dishonesty comes in many forms, and the Biden administration has not been more direct than its predecessors, even if its deceptions are sometimes more astute.
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