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President Joe Biden’s battle plan to beat Covid-19 is “perfect,” but restoring Americans’ confidence in “science-based leadership” will not be easy after four years of Donald Trump, experts said Thursday. public health.
“The most important thing the Biden administration needs to do to fight the pandemic is to communicate honestly and openly with the American people about what needs to be done,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “The constant obfuscation and misinformation of the Trump administration, all that is ‘it’s a hoax’, which has killed our response to the pandemic.”
Dr David Battinelli, chief medical officer and senior vice president of Northwell Health, said in an email: “The plan presented by President Biden and his team of experts is perfect. It is based on recommendations from top scientists and health. experts and should have been the plan from the start. “
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Experts intervened as Biden, on the first full day of his presidency, signed 10 executive orders aimed, among other things, to boost vaccine production and distribution and to make masks mandatory at airports and on planes, trains and more. the boats.
As of Thursday afternoon, 24.5 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 had been reported in the United States, with 407,384 deaths, according to the latest statistics from NBC News. Both are prominent figures in the world.
“We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and it will take months to fix it,” Biden said, warning that the country is expected to kill 500,000 next month. “But let me be just as clear: we will overcome this. We will overcome this pandemic.”
Biden’s 198-page strategy to end the pandemic boiled down to seven key points.
Polly Price, professor of law and public health at Emory University, said three points in particular: increasing Covid-19 testing, using the Defense Production Act to increase the supply of personal protective equipment and inject billions of dollars and technical assistance from the federal government. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Vaccine Distribution – will be music to state and local governments.
“State officials and public health experts have called for these three actions in particular,” Price said in an email.
Biden’s team said the Trump administration left the job of getting vaccines out of the hands of Americans to state and local governments, resulting in distribution problems. “What we are inheriting is much worse than we could have imagined,” Jeffrey Zients, Biden’s Covid-19 coordinator, said Thursday during a call with reporters.
Price said an executive order alone would not solve the problem and that “adequate funding and technical assistance for CDC immunization programs will be needed in most states to improve distribution” – especially if Biden is to reach its ambitious goal of donating 100 million vaccines. vaccines in 100 days, which would be a huge jump from the 17.5 million vaccines administered since the vaccines became available on December 14.
A much heavier lift, Price said, will be Biden’s goal to establish “masked mandates nationwide by working with governors and mayors.”
“The White House task force led by President Trump has issued weekly reports to states, calling for mask warrants and better social distancing,” Price said. “These opinions were ignored in many instances, possibly due to inconsistent messages from the president and the CDC’s sidelining in favor of what appeared to be a ‘politically’ White House task force. confidence in the guidance of the CDC and scientific leadership the role will be difficult. “
Trump was called the world’s biggest propagator of coronavirus disinformation last year by researchers at the Cornell Alliance for Science. They found that nearly 38% of the “ disinformation conversation ” started with Trump’s actions like promoting unproven miracle cures for Covid-19, downplaying the danger of coronavirus, or claiming without any evidence that the pandemic was a Democratic Party hoax aimed at derailing his presidency.
Trump has also hampered the drive to get Americans to don masks by refusing to wear one regularly at public events, even after catching the virus himself.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s senior epidemiologist, who survived a White House attempt to undermine it, said Thursday Biden appeared to be cut from a different tissue.
“One of the new things about this administration is that if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Just say you don’t know the answer.”
Dr Sadiya Khan, epidemiologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said Biden’s plan “offers hope for a systematic and scientific approach to alleviating the burden of the Covid-19 pandemic and is a welcome change “.
“The plan focuses on meeting critical needs for a strong public health response, such as a universal blanket mandate,” Khan said. “There is good data that there is no danger or risk in wearing a mask and that there are great benefits.”
Yet, she warned, “while the plan describes critical issues, it lacks a clear plan of action on how to accomplish these things.”
“But, for the first time in four years, the plan offers a commitment to trust the science, examine the available evidence and promote equity and access to health care,” she said. .
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