“President Joe Biden’s pledge that there will be sufficient vaccines for 300 million Americans by the end of summer represents a bold and politically risky response to criticism his pandemic plan lacks ambition,” CNN reports.
“In effect, the President is putting a date on a return of a semblance of normal life — with no guarantee that he can deliver.”
“The Biden administration on Tuesday said it would boost the supply of coronavirus vaccines sent to states by about 16% for the next three weeks and will purchase enough additional doses to vaccinate most of the U.S. population with a two-dose regimen by the end of the summer,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Senior administration officials said the federal government is working to purchase an additional 100 million doses each of the Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. vaccines, increasing the total U.S. vaccine order by 50% to 600 million from 400 million. Officials said they expect the additional doses to be delivered over the summer.”
“The purchases will provide enough supply to vaccinate 300 million Americans in a two-dose regimen over the summer.”
“Schools operating in person have seen scant transmission of the coronavirus, particularly when masks and distancing are employed, but some indoor athletics have led to infections and should be curtailed if schools want to operate safely, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in papers published Tuesday,” the Washington Post reports.
“President Biden is scheduled to take executive actions as early as Thursday to reopen federal marketplaces selling Affordable Care Act health plans and to lower recent barriers to joining Medicaid,” the Washington Post reports.
“The orders will be Biden’s first steps since taking office to help Americans gain health insurance, a prominent campaign goal that has assumed escalating significance as the pandemic has dramatized the need for affordable health care — and deprived millions of Americans coverage as they have lost jobs in the economic fallout.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator under former President Donald Trump, revealed that she had no full-time team in the White House working on the response to COVID-19 under the former president, CBS News reports.
Associated Press: “President Joe Biden, in his first three days in office, has painted a bleak picture of the country’s immediate future, warning Americans that it will take months, not weeks, to reorient a nation facing a historic convergence of crises. The dire language is meant as a call to action, but it’s also a deliberate effort to temper expectations.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, the former coordinator of the Trump White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, says nothing in her four decades of public service prepared her for the chaotic Trump White House or the politically charged handling of the pandemic, telling CBS News she “always” considered quitting her post.
Said Birx: “I mean, why would you want to put yourself through that every day? Colleagues of mine that I had known for decades… decades in that one experience, because I was in the White House, decided that I had become this political person, even though they had known me forever. I had to ask myself every morning, is there something that I think I can do that would be helpful in responding to this pandemic and it’s something I asked myself every night.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that the lack of truthfulness from the Trump administration regarding the Covid-19 pandemic “very likely” cost American lives.
Said Fauci: “Particularly when you’re in the situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths that we have — when you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful.”
“President Biden is using his first full day in office on Thursday to go on the offensive against the coronavirus, promising to make aggressive use of his executive authority to tame, and perhaps bring to an end, the worst public health crisis in a century,” New York Times reports.
“In a 200-page document released Thursday called ‘National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness,’ the new administration outlines the kind of centralized federal response that Democrats have long demanded and President Donald J. Trump refused.”
“To carry it out, Mr. Biden will sign a dozen executive orders or actions in an afternoon White House ceremony. Soon after he was sworn in on Wednesday, he signed an order requiring masks to be worn on all federal property and by all federal employees. And he urged all Americans to take this most basic of precautions for 100 days.”
“U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams resigned at President-elect Joe Biden’s request on Wednesday, as the incoming president sought to make a symbolic break with his predecessor’s covid-19 response,” the Washington Post reports.
The John’s Hopkins tracker shows more than 400,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.
A new Associated Press-NORC poll finds 53% of Americans name COVID-19 as one of the top five issues they want the government to tackle this year, and 68% mention in some way the economy, which is still reeling from the outbreak.
In an open-ended question, those priorities far outpace others, like foreign affairs, immigration, climate change or racial inequality. The findings suggest Biden’s political fate is riding on his administration’s response to the pandemic.
First Read: “Nothing he will say in his inaugural address and no executive order he will issue in his first days will be more important than achieving his goal of injecting 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days as president.”
“If he gets that right, he will oversee a less pessimistic American public; he’ll get a stronger economy; and he’ll do something that his predecessor was unable to execute in his final days.”
“If Biden doesn’t get it right, however, he’ll fail on the job he was elected to do.”
Washington Post: “Five prominent anti-vaccine organizations that have been known to spread misleading information about the coronavirus received more than $850,000 in loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, raising questions about why the government is giving money to groups actively opposing its agenda and seeking to undermine public health during a critical period.”
“As U.S. authorities debate whether to keep schools open, a consensus is emerging in Europe that children are a considerable factor in the spread of Covid-19—and more countries are shutting schools for the first time since the spring,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Closures have been announced recently in the U.K., Germany, Ireland, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands on concerns about a more infectious variant of the virus first detected in the U.K. and rising case counts despite lockdowns.”
“President-elect Joe Biden plans to use FEMA and the National Guard to build coronavirus vaccine clinics across the United States,” CNBC reports.
“The Biden administration will also ‘quickly jumpstart’ efforts to make the vaccines available at local pharmacies across the U.S., which should ensure that Americans have access to doses at facilities only miles from their home.”
“Operation Warp Speed leaders waited more than two months to approve a plan to distribute and administer Covid-19 vaccines proposed by U.S. health officials, leaving states with little time to implement a mass-vaccination campaign amid a coronavirus surge,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.