Biden Displays Basic Pandemic Competence With His COVID Executive Orders
Hours after his swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday, President Joe Biden got started on the most pressing challenge facing the country: the pandemic that has killed over 400,000 of its citizens.
Biden hit the ground running, signing three executive orders on the coronavirus and releasing a 21-page summary of his “National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness.” Coming off a president who repeatedly undermined science and his own public-health experts; flouted basic safety protocols and held massive, mostly mask-less campaign rallies; and effectively botched the rollout of the largest mass-vaccination campaign in American history, the bar is not particularly high. The clear room for improvement was reflected in the summary’s first of seven goals: “Restore trust with the American people,” an effort that involves, among other things, conducting “regular, expert-led, science-based briefings.”
But Biden’s moves go far beyond pro-science rhetoric, and signal a significant shift from the Trump administration, which refused to coordinate a federal response to combat the coronavirus, leaving it up to state governments. On Thursday, Biden released the full 198-page version of his national pandemic strategy and signed 10 more executive orders aimed at increasing testing and vaccine production, and implementing safety measures.
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Among the biggest challenges Biden and his team face is the absence of vaccine distribution plans: Within hours of the new administration, Biden advisers were reportedly shocked to find Trump had left his successor to basically start from “square one” on vaccine distribution strategy, even after multiple vaccines had, for weeks, been approved for use in the U.S. “There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source told CNN, throwing Biden’s pledge to dramatically ramp up vaccine distribution and administration into doubt. (Already, some experts have criticized Biden’s 100 million shots in 100 days promise as not ambitious enough. “What we’re inheriting is so much worse than we could have imagined,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said. Biden also has the goal of having 100 federally supported community vaccinations centers in operation within the next month, and has already directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin that effort, according to the New York Times.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-displays-basic-pandemic-competence-with-his-covid-executive-orders/ar-BB1cYQIu?li=BBnbfcQ
Refreshing isn't it?