COVID-19 — here comes Biden
Joe Biden was vice president from 20 January 2009 to 20 January 2017, with Obama as his president. They were to become no strangers to pandemics.
The Obama/Biden years
For the first 18 months or so they confronted the H1N1 Swine flu pandemic, which was related to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. 12,469 Americans were to die of it. The CDC reported it on 17 April 2009, and 9 days later the acting director of health and human services declared it a public health emergency. On 11 June the WHO declared it a pandemic. Obama declared it an emergency on 23 October. The WHO announced that the pandemic was over on 10 August 2010.
On 1 October USAID launched PREDICT, a program to identify and prevent pandemics related to animal-born viruses. Swine flu had caught scientists off guard.
In 2012 began an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS, camel flu), but there have only been 2 cases in the U.S., there not being many camels in the country.
America was one of 44 countries and organizations that launched the Global Health Security Agenda in 2014 for infection prevention and control.
In 2014 there were a handful of cases of Ebola in the USA, of people who had traveled from abroad or who had treated them. The latter survived. Donald Trump several times tweeted his disapproval of Obama’s handling of the situation.
Unlike Trump, Obama was aware of the need to prepare for possible future pandemics. In 2015 the Obama administration ordered detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic. The NSC produced a report on the lessons learned from Ebola.
In 2016 the Obama administration published nursing home regulations aimed at improving infection control. The NSC issued a 69 page pandemic playbook: “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.” USNORTHCOM produced a “Branch Plan 3560 Pandemic Influenza and Infectious Disease Response.”
So, Biden was part of an administration that had dealt with pandemics and was aware of the need to plan for future pandemics. On 13 January 2017, a week before Trump’s inauguration, The Obama administration’s transition team conducted tabletop disaster response activities with Trump’s top aides.
The Trump years
I’ve written in previous articles how all the planning and preparation went to waste during the Trump administration.
On January 29 2020 Joe Biden write an op ed, “Trump is worst possible leader to deal with coronavirus outbreak”, describing how he would have handled COVID. Over the rest of the year he wrote or spoke often about what, in his opinion, Trump had undone or done wrong or failed to do, what the Obama administration had done and what he would do about COVID-19.
On 12 March 2020 Biden unveiled his own plan for dealing with COVID-19. He did, however, back Trump’s China travel ban.
Senator Ted Cruz predicted that if Biden won, suddenly all the Democratic governors and mayors would say it was OK to go back to work and school. Did that happen where you are?
When Trump was out campaigning at massive superspreader rallies and not wearing a mask, he frequently mocked Biden for wearing a mask and staying home.
When Trump became ill with COVID-19, Biden’s team pulled negative ads, but they resumed them after Trump was discharged from hospital.
Trump mocked Joe Biden: if elected, ‘he’ll listen to the scientists’ — one of the truest things Trump ever said.
On 9 November President-elect Biden unveiled his new COVID-19 panel, including ex-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former FDA commissioner Dr. David Kessler and Trump whistleblower Rick Bright. On 28 November he added nurse Jane Hopkins, executive director at Navajo Nation Department of Health Jill Jim and epidemiologist David Michaels.
With Trump denying that he had lost, Biden’s transition team struggled to get the cooperation they needed to be ready to hit the ground running in January. Trump’s vaccine team couldn’t brief the incoming Biden administration. Mnuchin tried to put $455 billion in Covid funds out of Biden team’s reach.
Biden takes over
On 20 January 2021 Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. He immediately halted the US withdrawal from the World Health Organization, and required masks on federal property. He issued a 198-page National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. However, he inherited a nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan. Millions of vaccine doses were missing and unaccounted for. His plan included improved vaccine distribution, expanded testing and reopening schools.
He pleaded with everyone to wear a mask for his first 100 days, calling it ‘a Patriotic Act.’
Meanwhile, because the virus had been so rampant, lots of mutations had occurred, and some of them were either more contagious, more deadly and/or more resistant to vaccines. This meant that the medical evidence supported stricter measures. The UK was apparently the first to identify such a variant, having set up the Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium in April 2020 to undertake random genetic sequencing of positive covid-19 samples around the UK. The US, on the other hand, was likely missing important coronavirus mutations due to a “dismal” rate of genetic sequencing. The CDC was working to double their rate of sequencing.
The administration invoked the Defense Production Act to speed up vaccine production, started work to increase vaccines to states by 16% and arranged to get syringes for bonus coronavirus vaccine. Biden hoped, but didn’t promise, to increase vaccination to 1.5 million a day. TSA workers were given authority to enforce Biden’s mask mandate.
Other changes: ICE won’t make immigration-enforcement arrests at COVID-19 vaccine sites. Airlines and airports must report those who disobey mask rules. States will be fully repaid for PPE and National Guard response to Covid-19. There will be direct vaccine shipments to pharmacies.
So, Biden inherited a rampant virus with worrisome mutations, an infrastructure for dealing with it that had several major deficiencies, despite the excellence of some parts of the system, and a nation that had withdrawn from international cooperation, which is much needed in pandemics. Nobody could turn that around overnight. Yet he hit the ground running with a much better idea than his predecessor of what needed to be done and how urgently. He’s off to a good start and I wish him and America lots of luck
To see far more stories about COVID-19, Trump and Biden, please click here.