Biden administration

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 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