US Politics

Kamala Harris has become the third most powerful woman in the world by virtue of being elected as America’s next vice-president, according to the latest rankings of a popular annual power list.The Democratic senator from California was catapulted right into the No 3 spot for her debut on Forbes magazine’s world’s 100 most powerful women list. She appears just below Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who made the top spot for the 10th straight year, in the 2020 list published this week.Forbes highlighted Harris’s victory as Joe Biden’s running mate in the Democratic win over Donald Trump and his vice-president, Mike Pence, in the November race for the White House, noting she will be America’s first female vice-president and the first person of color in that role.Harris, who was the attorney general of California before being elected to the US Senate, will be the first Black American and first Asian American to be elected vice-president.She made a speech after the election victory in which she noted that she may be the first but she will not be the last woman in that role, and Forbes pointed to the break-out moment in her debate against Pence before the election when she confidently and calmly blocked Pence’s repeated interruptions by declaring: “Mr Vice-President, I’m speaking.”That riposte “launched a thousand memes (and even a handful of T-shirts), but it also became a rallying cry for women across America”, Forbes noted.Beyond the stand-out moment for Harris and US politics, the 2020 list prominently featured female leaders who have earned accolades on the world stage for their handling of the coronavirus pandemic.Women from prime ministers to corporate executives earned spots in the list for their achievements helping mitigate and control the deadly contagious virus, which has infected more than 67 million people and caused 1.54 million deaths, Forbes said.New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, Lagarde, who was previously head of the International Monetary Fund, and the Tokyo governor, Yuriko Koike, were particularly effective, it said.“Where they differ in age, nationality and job description, they are united in the ways they have been using their platforms to address the unique challenges of 2020,” Forbes said on its website.It quoted Norway’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, also on the list, who said recently that “countries where human rights are respected and where women are able to reach top positions in society are also the countries that are the best-equipped to handle crises by Covid-19”.New Zealand eliminated coronavirus infections with a strict lockdown, reporting just over 2,000 cases of the virus and 25 deaths.Taiwan kept the pandemic under control after instituting strict restrictions and largely closing its borders in January, long before western countries, limiting cases of the virus to just over 700 and seven deaths, it said.Of the 17 newcomers to the Forbes list, Carol Tomé, chief executive of United Parcel Service, where delivery volumes soared during lockdowns, and Linda Rendle, chief executive of Clorox, which boosted production of cleaning goods as demand ballooned amid the surging virus, were noted for their work.At CVS Health, also in the US, Karen Lynch, who becomes chief executive in February, took over the pharmacy giant’s Covid response and extensive network of testing sites. In 2021, she will be responsible for overseeing vaccine distribution at the company’s nearly 10,000 US pharmacy locations.Stacey Cunningham, the first woman to head the New York stock exchange, made the “swift” decision to shut down in-person trading as the virus was spreading in March, it said.Britain’s Queen Elizabeth was just 46th on the list.Reuters contributed reporting More

David Dinkins, the first black mayor of New York City, who has died aged 93, was in many ways the right man at the wrong time. His single term as mayor of the city he called “a gorgeous mosaic”, from 1990 until 1993, was a period of chaos for New York, consumed by a then-huge deficit of $1.8bn, the flight of business and money, a soaring murder rate and the seeming constant provocation of racial and ethnic conflict. Dinkins’ political personality was that of a conciliator, cautious and dignified, which contrasted starkly with his predecessor, Ed Koch, and indeed his successor, Rudy Giuliani, both of whom were as aggressive, abrasive and assertive as the population they represented.This image had been Dinkins’ selling point in 1989 to New York’s Democratic party. But during his mayoralty, as New York’s melting pot became a crucible, Dinkins was unable to make the sort of crucial gesture that might have calmed the city, like John Lindsay’s walk through Harlem in 1968 after Martin Luther King’s assassination sparked riots in other cities.Dinkins was born in Trenton, New Jersey, where his father, William, was a barber. When his parents divorced, David moved to Harlem with his mother, Sally (nee Lucy), a domestic worker. Eventually he and his sister, Joyce, returned to Trenton, where he attended high school, and discovered segregation, which he had not experienced in New York – the school’s swimming pool was not open to black people.After graduation he wanted to join the Marine Corps, but found the “negro quota” filled. He entered the army and managed to transfer to the Marines, becoming one of the “Montford Point” recruits who integrated the corps. Discharged in 1946, he entered Howard University in Washington, one of the elite traditionally black colleges, where he graduated with an honours degree in mathematics. When his college sweetheart, Joyce Burrows, graduated in 1953, they married and moved to New York. Dinkins attended law school at Brooklyn College, getting his degree in 1956. In the meantime, he worked in a liquor store for his father-in-law, Daniel, a property magnate in Harlem and a powerful figure within Tammany Hall, the Democratic power structure in the city.While Dinkins was opening a private law practice, his father-in-law introduced him to the Carver Democratic Club, run by J Raymond Jones, “The Harlem Fox”, under whose mentorship Dinkins became one of the so-called “Gang of Four”, the group of rising young black politicians that also included the future US congressman Charles Rangel, the Manhattan borough president Percy Sutton and deputy mayor (under Koch) Basil Patterson.In 1965 Dinkins was elected to the state assembly, but in the face of redistricting, he did not run for a second term. Instead, he worked his way up through administrative positions. In 1973, he became the first black president of the city’s Board of Elections, and was credited with widening the voter base. The mayor, Abe Beame, nominated him as a deputy, which led to the revelation that Dinkins had failed to file tax returns for four years. This “oversight” was rectified, but it scuppered his nomination. In 1975 Beame appointed him city clerk, an influential position he held until 1985, when he won, on his third attempt, election as Manhattan’s borough president.Koch had originally been elected mayor in 1978, after running as a reformer against Tammany Hall, but in 1989 he was seeking an unprecedented fourth term following mammoth corruption scandals, and had also angered New York’s black community with his opposition to Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. That April the city was rocked by an attack on a white female jogger in Central Park, which led to the arrest of five black and Hispanic youths (13 years later their convictions were overturned when the real rapist confessed). Shortly before the primary in August that would decide the Democratic candidate, Yusuf Hawkins, a black 16-year-old, was shot dead by a gang of white youths who attacked him in their Brooklyn neighbourhood of Bensonhurst.In the face of massive racial tension, Dinkins was seen as a voice of reason, and he easily won the primary over Koch. In the election he faced Giuliani, whose reputation as a mafia-busting US attorney led him to adopt a strong law-and-order platform. Although Democrats held an almost five to one advantage in voter registrations, Giuliani added the endorsement of New York’s Liberal party, which helped him win more than half of Koch’s voters. Dinkins was elected by a margin of only 46,000 votes, 51% to 48%, and New York became the last of America’s 10 largest cities to elect a black mayor. In his inaugural address, he spoke of “a new coalition of conscience and purpose”.Taking office in the middle of a recession, with 357,000 private jobs gone and federal aid cut, Dinkins had a difficult time keeping campaign promises in the face of a tightening budget, and was forced to raise city taxes. He moved to improve public housing, and to keep libraries open while cutting other programmes. He did a deal with the Disney corporation to help clean up Times Square, and another to keep the US Open Tennis in Queens. With a murder rate approaching 2,000 per year, he appointed a black police commissioner, Lee Brown, who came in from Atlanta and Houston with a reputation as a reformer. But while Dinkins waited for Brown to report, the city again exploded.In August 1990, a tourist attending the US Open Tennis was stabbed to death on a subway platform. Dinkins announced a massive increase in the number of uniformed police. A few months later, the city was split by a black boycott of Korean-owned grocery stores, when a Korean-American owner accused a Haitian-American customer of shoplifting.Finally, in August 1991, the keg burst as a driver in a motorcade taking the head of a Lubavitcher Orthodox Jewish sect through Crown Heights in Brooklyn swerved on to a sidewalk and killed a seven-year-old black boy, Gavin Cato. Hours later, a group of black youths killed an Australian rabbinical student. The two killings prompted almost five days of rioting, with black citizens protesting over the boy’s death and Jewish groups claiming the police were failing to protect them.Although an independent investigation in 1993 cleared Dinkins against charges of withholding police aid, it did criticise his relative lack of action. By then it was too late to heal the wounds. Giuliani turned the tables on him and took a larger percentage of the white vote and he won his rematch in the mayoralty race that November.In 1998 Giuliani and the city settled a lawsuit against the city by Jewish organisations, with the mayor calling Dinkins’ response “inadequate”. Dinkins invited Giuliani to dinner, saying: “I extend my hand to him in brotherhood,” but Giuliani declined this Obama-like gesture. In his 2013 memoir, A Mayor’s Life: Governing New York’s Gorgeous Mosaic (written with Peter Knobler), Dinkins called Giuliani a “cold, unkind person who practised the politics of boundless ambition”.After leaving office, Dinkins was a professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and hosted a radio talk show. A keen tennis player, he served on the board of the US Tennis Association. He remained active in politics, and in 2013 supported his former aide Bill de Blasio in his successful campaign for election as mayor.Dinkins’ wife died in October. He is survived by his son, David, and daughter, Donna.• David Norman Dinkins, politician, born 10 July 1927; died 23 November 2020 More

Recent reports here and elsewhere in the media have focused on gun violence in the US, reporting a dramatic rise in mass shootings in 2020 – despite the pandemic – which by November had overtaken the total for 2019. The term mass shooting conjures up images of Columbine and Parkland, but the story for 2020 is more complex.
How many mass shootings there have been in 2020 depends on how we define what a mass shooting is. Gun Violence Archive (GVA), the source of recent media reporting about rising levels of mass shootings, includes any event where four or more victims are shot (as opposed to four or more killed, the more traditional FBI definition). This includes domestic shootings, gang, drug, and organised crime-related shootings typically excluded from other mass shooting figures (for example, in our database). GVA reports 582 mass shootings in 2020 alone.
There are benefits to this more inclusive approach. First, it rightly acknowledges that all shootings are tragedies and all victims deserve to be counted. But the downside to this overly broad definition is that it implies there have been 500+ “Columbine-type” public mass shootings in 2020 alone.
We took a closer look at these 582 mass shootings and found that in the majority (51%), no one was killed. Drive-by shootings, gang-related incidents or fights where the perpetrator and victims had a prior relationship accounted for 95% of instances. These cases were clustered in America’s large urban centres and the victims tended to be people of colour. Such shootings skyrocketed in June and remained high over the summer. Cities across the country are experiencing record-breaking surges in gun homicides in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic likely plays a major role here, exacerbating risk factors for violence, including a lack of jobs and education opportunities, increased stress and mental health concerns, and limited access to healthcare. Gun sales are also up, which is related to the other explanation – recent unrest over racial injustice and questions about police legitimacy in the wake of controversial killings of Black Americans by the police has resulted in communities policing themselves.
Lock, stock and barrel: sales of guns went up at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. sirtravelalot via Shutterstock
By contrast, only 18 of the 582 mass shootings reached the more standard definition of four or more people killed. The majority of these cases were domestic murder-suicides, 72% of which occurred in private homes. The pandemic plays a role here too – increasing stress and depression while fewer resources are available to women and families at risk, quarantined in their homes. There is global concern about the rising rates of domestic violence during the pandemic, and domestic violence calls to police and crisis lines have spiked in 2020.
How COVID broke the cycle
Excluding domestic violence and felony homicides, there have been only two mass public shootings in 2020 – down from eight or nine, respectively, in the preceding three years. Until this year, shootings at churches, workplaces and the like were becoming more frequent and deadly, driven by hate and fame-seeking motivations. The two shootings in 2020 were in February and March, then the public mass shootings stopped.
Again, the COVID pandemic likely explains this sudden decrease. You can’t have a public shooting when public spaces like schools and shopping malls are closed and people are social-distancing at home. Mass shootings are also socially contagious and tend to occur in clusters – extensive media coverage of perpetrators becomes a draw for additional shooters. COVID broke the endless news cycle of mass shootings by giving us something else to worry about, putting a lid on contagious violence.
So in 2020, domestic mass shootings and felony-related mass shootings have increased. Public mass shootings with unknown victims where four or more people are killed are dramatically down. Each of these various forms of gun violence is a unique tragedy.
Perpetrators of public mass shootings, domestic mass shootings, and felony-related or retaliatory urban violence have different profiles and motivations, methods and motives. Their pathways to violence are different, thus the opportunities for prevention and intervention are different too. We need data-driven public policy solutions to all forms of mass shootings in America. More

After four punch-drunk years of Donald Trump, the weeks since the November presidential election have presented a chance, despite his machinations to overturn the result, to reflect on what might come next for the tens of millions of Americans struggling to get by. What lies around the corner after the departure of an administration that brought so much destruction matters to the lives of the least well-off and marginalised people?
President-elect Joe Biden sought to reassure people that he was on the case when he announced his top economic team last week. “Our message to everybody struggling right now is this: help is on the way,” he said, offering a steady economic hand to a weary public rattled by the virus and an unprecedented economic crisis.
Many people are simply so relieved that Biden and Harris won that they talk about “getting back to normal” after the chaos. That’s an understandable reaction given all that’s transpired. However, getting back to normal isn’t an option. Nor should it be the goal. When Trump took power, around 140 million Americans were either poor or on low incomes even without a pandemic – a staggering proportion.
For decades the wages of those at the top soared while paychecks for those at the bottom flatlined. Gender and racial income and wealth disparities endure. Despite widespread support for boosting minimum earnings, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn’t been increased since 2009. Roughly 60% of wealth in the US is estimated to be inherited. And, as if this wasn’t enough to contend with, in 2020 billionaire wealth surged past $1tn since the start of the pandemic. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) calculates that the wealth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos alone leapt by almost $70bn to a colossal $188.3bn as the year draws to a close.
Over the past four years I asked myself frequently what another term of the Trump wrecking ball would mean for the people at the sharp end of regressive policies and a reckless disregard for the most vulnerable in society. Thankfully, that is no longer the question. The question now is: after all the carnage, what next?
So far, indications are that Biden and his team recognise that as well as confronting the gargantuan challenges unleashed by Covid-19, longstanding inequities cannot be left unchecked. The presidential campaign was calibrated to highlight this, including around racial injustices. Overtures have been made, for example, on areas championed by progressives such as forgiving loan debt for many students and expanding access to Medicare. Biden has also pledged to strengthen unions and, well before the pandemic during his first campaign speech, endorsed increasing the federal minimum wage to $15.
Even in the face of unparalleled challenges – and while a lot rides on a Democratic win in the two Georgia Senate run-offs in January – Biden could and should “use all the tools” at a president’s disposal to shift the dial quickly, says Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the IPS. Examples include placing conditions on workers’ pay for companies bidding for federal contracts and leveraging the presidential “bully pulpit” to try to push proposals such as a minimum wage hike through the Senate.
There is also a genuine opportunity for the new administration to spearhead a concerted focus on policies affecting more than 61 million Americans who are disabled – a group all too often ignored in presidential campaigns and sidelined in policy. Biden’s disability plan makes for a comprehensive read. Off the bat, if the new administration takes steps to overturn the “abject neglect of disability rights enforcement” under Trump in areas ranging from education to housing it would be off to a good start, argues Rebecca Cokley, director of the disability justice initiative at the Center for American Progress.
The pandemic is the most pressing challenge facing the incoming administration. However, structural inequalities, the people lining up at food banks, the children going hungry or homeless, historic injustices and the out-of-control concentration of wealth, must also be priorities. Right now, the US at least has a chance to finally put some of this right. However in the UK, with the end of the Brexit transition period looming and the chancellor under pressure to fend off accusations that another dose of austerity isn’t on the way, it’s a whole different story. The lessons in both countries from past mistakes – ones that harm those most in need – must be learned.
• Mary O’Hara is a journalist and author. Her latest book, The Shame Game: Overturning the toxic poverty narrative, is published by Policy Press. She was named best foreign columnist 2020 by the Southern California Journalism Awards More

The US government’s drive for a coronavirus vaccine was named “Operation Warp Speed” by Peter Marks, an official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and longtime Star Trek fan.
A staple of Star Trek storylines is alternative realities: someone slipping through a wormhole into a parallel universe where history took a radically different turn. Cable news viewers went through the wormhole at 2pm on Tuesday: two captains, two crews, two languages (one English, the other Klingon).
Those watching CNN and MSNBC could see a sombre president-elect, Joe Biden, opening his remarks by acknowledging the terrible Covid-19 death toll (more than 285,000 in the US), setting out an ambitious vision for his first hundred days in office (“Masking. Vaccinations. Opening schools”) and unveiling a healthcare team heavy on experience, science and diversity.
But those watching Fox News or other conservative networks found the lame-duck president, Donald Trump, making no mention of the dead (“In many respects we’re still doing incredibly, with our stock markets and everything else, which are hitting all new highs”), boasting about the speed of vaccine development and ranting egregious lies about a stolen election.
In what is now routinely described as a split-screen nation, the contrast was on the nose. It was also an unusual role reversal from the norm, with the outgoing president delivering happy talk and sunny uplands, while his successor offered a darker vision that warned of trouble ahead.
It was the latest of Biden’s team unveilings in his home city of Wilmington, Delaware. Speaking against a blue “Office of the president-elect” backdrop, he said bleakly: “Last week, Covid-19 was the number one cause of death in America.
“For Black, Latino, and Native Americans – who are nearly three times as likely to die from it – Covid-19 is a mass casualty. For families and friends left behind, it’s a gaping hole in your heart that will never be fully healed.”
Over in Washington, in the south court auditorium in the White House grounds, Trump spoke against a less subtle backdrop of stars and stripes icons and “Operation Warp Speed” written in block letters. His vaccine summit had been dismissed as a public relations stunt amid embarrassing reports that his administration passed on buying additional doses of Pfizer’s vaccine.
Despite a daily death toll that now rivals that of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, Trump began by taking a victory lap, praising Vice-President Mike Pence for doing “an absolutely incredible” job at the head of the coronavirus taskforce. “Stand up, Mike. Great job!” Applause.

“We’re here to discuss a monumental national achievement,” Trump went on, describing the race for a vaccine with an exaggeration that veered back into Star Trek – or Buzz Lightyear – territory. “Before Operation Warp Speed the typical time frame for development and approval, as you know, could be infinity.”
He then promised: “This will vanquish the problem, this horrible scourge, as I call it, the China virus, because that’s where it came from.”
At the same moment that Trump was dabbling in casual racism, Biden was saying: “We’re in a very dark winter. Things may well get worse before they get better. A vaccine may soon be available but we need to level with one other. It will take longer than we would like to distribute it to all corners of the country …
“We’ll need to persuade enough Americans to take the vaccine. Many have become cynical about its usefulness. It’s daunting, but I promise you that we will make progress starting on day one. We didn’t get into this mess quickly and it’s going to take time to fix.”
Clenching both fists, he added: “But we can do this. That’s the truth, and telling you the truth is what this team, Vice President-elect Harris and I, will always do.”
Trump, meanwhile, sat at his now infamous tiny desk and signed a reportedly toothless executive order which – “America first” to the end – is designed to give US citizens priority access to vaccines before they are shipped abroad. He was joined on stage by a dozen officials, all but two of whom were men. They included his daughter and senior adviser Ivanka.
But they did not include the infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci, who had evidently realised the real party is now happening somewhere else. Fauci popped up on screen at the Biden event in Wilmington, stating: “I have been through many public health crises before, but this is the toughest one we have ever faced as a nation.”

The 45th and 46th presidents share a notoriety for gaffes. So far, both had managed to stay on script. But Trump could not resist taking questions from the press. Why, someone asked, are you still hosting Christmas parties despite public health guidelines discouraging them? Trump insisted that there were far fewer parties and most people wore masks.
Then came the question: why not include members of the Biden transition in this summit? “Hopefully the next administration will be the Trump administration because you can’t steal hundreds of thousands of votes,” the president said airily, despite the fact he lost the November presidential election. “You can’t have fraud and deception and all of the things that they did and then slightly win a swing state.
“And you just have to look at the numbers, look at what’s been on tape, look at all the corruption and we’ll see you can’t win an election like that. So hopefully the next administration will be the Trump administration, a continuation.”
He went on to extol that administration’s glories, including a soaring stock market and the creation of a space force, as if these would be enough to make defeat mathematically impossible. For the record, the homeland security department and state leaders have debunked Trump’s election disinformation and found no significant evidence of interference or fraud.
Change the channel at that moment – as many yearn to do on his presidency – and you found Biden’s pick for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, delivering an apt warning: “The truth is that the best policies – and the best vaccines and treatments – will not heal our nation unless we overcome the fear, anxiety, anger, and distrust so many Americans are feeling right now.”
Does anyone have a vaccine for that? More

Joe Biden has reportedly selected Ohio congresswoman Marcia Fudge as his housing and urban development secretary and and the former agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack to reprise that role in his administration.
Fudge was first elected to Congress in 2008 to represent a district that includes Cleveland, and is a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Vilsack spent eight years as head of the US Department of Agriculture during the Obama administration and served two terms as Iowa governor. More

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Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday said he is feeling better after contracting Covid-19 and expects to leave the hospital on Wednesday.
The 76-year-old former New York City mayor, who is spearheading Trump’s flagging effort to overturn the Republican president’s election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, said he began to feel unusually tired on Friday.
By Sunday, when his diagnosis was announced, Giuliani said he was showing other “mild symptoms” but that currently he has no fever and only a small cough.
“I think they are going to let me out tomorrow morning,” Giuliani said in an interview with WABC Radio in New York. He was at Georgetown University hospital in Washington, two sources familiar with the situation said on Sunday.
Giuliani plans to attend a virtual hearing this week with Georgia lawmakers, one of the sources said on Tuesday.

With Trump’s legal effort so far failing to convince any court of the president’s claim that widespread fraud cost him the election, Giuliani has been meeting with state officials in a long-shot bid to persuade them to overturn the election results.
State and federal officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of fraud on any significant scale. Across the country, courts have rejected cases seeking to toss out votes, including the US supreme court, which on Tuesday refused to block Pennsylvania from formalizing Biden’s victory there.
In Georgia, state lawmakers are due to hold a virtual meeting on Thursday to discuss election issues, after a hearing last week in which Giuliani urged the lawmakers to intervene to overturn Biden’s victory in the state. Giuliani made similar pleas last week in Michigan and Arizona.
After news broke on Sunday of Giuliani’s test result, the Arizona state legislature said it would close both chambers this week out of caution “for recent cases and concerns relating to Covid-19”. Giuliani met with about a dozen Republican lawmakers there last week.
In his radio interview, Giuliani said he had tested negative just before his trip to the three states.
He also confirmed that Jenna Ellis, an attorney with whom he has worked side-by-side on Trump’s legal challenges, also had contracted the coronavirus. More

Joe Biden vowed on Tuesday to ensure 100m coronavirus vaccinations would be administered to Americans during his first 100 days in the White House – as Donald Trump held a parallel event where he ignored the deepening public health crisis, instead repeating his false claims that he, not Biden, won the November election.
The Democratic president-elect on Tuesday introduced his new leadership team covering healthcare and laid out an aggressive plan to defeat the coronavirus pandemic that contrasted sharply with the Trump administration’s efforts.
Speaking at an event in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, Biden formally introduced the team of scientists and doctors he assembled to guide the nation through what they hope will be the final stage of a public health crisis that has killed nearly 284,000 American lives and is one of the worst crises ever to hit the US.
Preparing to assume office in the midst of what experts believe could be the pandemic’s darkest hour, Biden outlined his priorities for his first three months in office, including a commitment to distribute “100m shots in the first 100 days”, a plea for all Americans to wear masks during that period to prevent the spread of the virus and a promise to open a “majority of schools”.
“Out of our collective pain, we are going to find a collective purpose,” Biden said, striking a somber tone as he acknowledged the toll of the brutal coronavirus surge averaging more than 2,200 deaths per day. “To control the pandemic, to save lives and to heal as a nation.”
Leading what Biden dubbed his “core Covid healthcare team” was Xavier Becerra, his nominee for secretary of health and human services. Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants, served 12 terms in Congress and is California’s the attorney general. He would be the first Latino to serve as US health secretary.
“The mission of the Department of Health and Human Services has never been as vital or as urgent as it is today,” Becerra said via video link from California.
Among the other members of the health team is the former surgeon general Vivek Murthy, whom Biden nominated again for the role, and Rochelle Walensky, whom he picked to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, accepted Biden’s invitation to stay on as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a position he has held since 1984, and will serve as Biden’s chief medical adviser.
“Like every good doctor, he’ll tell me what I need to know, not what I want to know,” Biden said of Fauci, who has become one of the most prominent and trusted sources of information during the coronavirus epidemic, despite his turbulent relationship with Trump. Biden said he was honored to be the seventh president Fauci would serve.
In a pre-recorded video, Fauci said the current public health crisis was “the toughest one we have ever faced as a nation” and warned that the “road ahead will not be easy”.
Echoing Fauci, Biden and his nominees were clear-eyed about the challenges that lay ahead. The promise of multiple vaccines has raised hopes, but his team will be judged by its execution of what Biden vowed would be the “most efficient mass vaccination plan in US history”. A coronavirus vaccine by the drugmaker Pfizer is expected to receive approval by the Food and Drug Administration as soon as this week.
Still, “developing a vaccine is only one herculean task; distributing it is another”, Biden said, acknowledging that it may take longer than expected and would require persuading skeptical Americans to take the vaccine.
That, Biden said, risked slowing the process. He implored Congress to pass a coronavirus economic relief package that would help finance the administration of the vaccines. Forestalling aid, Biden warned, could dramatically “slow and stall” the distribution process.
Biden vowed a starkly different approach from that of the current occupant of the White House, who has spent his final weeks in office ignoring the crisis, fixated instead on overturning the results of an election he lost with increasingly wild legal challenges.
Whereas Trump has long downplayed the threat of the disease and disregarded public health guidelines, Biden, who used his presidential campaign to demonstrate the seriousness of the pandemic, said his team would “spare not a single effort” to defeat the virus and repeated his promise to be guided by science.
At a dueling event celebrating Operation Warp Speed, Trump boasted that his administration had procured vaccines much quicker than expected and claimed that even his critics were praising the achievement as “one of the miracles of modern medicine”.
Yet the celebratory White House event came as his administration faced new scrutiny after the New York Times reported that the Trump administration declined an opportunity to purchase more doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine this summer. The White House has denied the story, though several news outlets have corroborated the reporting.
As the virus continues its uncontrolled spread, Trump has refused to use his remaining time in office – and significant political sway – to urge Americans to take safety precautions such as mask-wearing and social distancing. Biden, meanwhile, has little power to influence public response to the virus until he is inaugurated next month.
In his remarks from Delaware, Biden warned that a preliminary review of the Trump administration’s vaccine distribution plan found several shortcomings, and it remained unclear how the administration had planned to get vaccines from the containers into the arms of 330 million Americans. Until then, Biden said the “easiest” and most “patriotic” action Americans could take to protect their families and friends was to wear a mask.
“We’re in a very dark winter – things may well get worse before they get better,” Biden said. “It’s daunting. But I promise you, we’ll make progress.” More