The Biden Administration blew it on Covid

 It's about a year now since Joe Biden was sworn in as President and we can see the Biden Administration has handled the Coronavirus situation horribly.  The Administration had a fantastic opportunity to declare victory early in 2021 and put this behind us.  But they chose not to do that.  The Biden Administration dropped the ball on pursuing the things America needs to put Covid in the rear view mirror while offering a message of fear and dictatorial mandates, and wedding themselves to a bureaucrat who declared that he is the science.  The result was more Covid 19 deaths in 2021 than in 2020, strong disagreement and a loss of public confidence in the measures promoted by the Biden Administration, none of which is good for America.

But it didn't have to be this way.  The Biden Administration took office with three different vaccines available to issue to the public and almost 1 million people getting the jab every day.  Shortly after taking office, Congress passed a Covid relief act with money for testing, schools and other funds that could be used in fighting on Covid.*  

What the Biden Administration should have done was to embrace their campaign slogan - no more shutting down the economy or the country, now we shut down the virus.  Step One in that process could have been cleaning up the data on Covid.  The Biden Administration could have immediately reduced the scope of the crisis by separating number of cases of people hospitalized or dying due to Covid from the number of people hospitalized and dying with Covid.  A person who enters the hospital to have appendicitis treated who happens to have Covid is not the same as a person who enters the hospital and has to be put on a ventilator due to Covid.  Originally, counting Covid this way was a good idea to get a handle on the disease but now we need better statistics to better understand the severity of the problem and the Federal Government is not providing that data.

Once the Covid situation was better understood, and people recognized it was not as severe as once thought, the Biden Administration could have said, we've got vaccines that protect against the virus and mitigate the severity of it so no more mask requirements, no more business or school shut downs.  To supplement the vaccines, let's use the money allocated by Congress and buy scads and scads of testing kits to distribute to medical facilities and to the public.  

Want your 80 year old granny to be safe, have her get the jab and test yourself before you go to visit.

The next step would have been to be honest with the American people.  President Biden could have told everyone that Covid is never going away - Coronavirus has been prevalent in animals forever.  Now that the human version is in the wild, it's not going anywhere either.  It's going to be like the flu - with a new variant hitting us each year.  Delta variant early in 2021 proved that.  

To deal with that, the President could have announced that we're going to do the following:

• Get ready for new strains - Make sure vaccine vendors are prepared to modify vaccines for new strains of Covid that come out, the same way we modify flu shots each year to deal with new strains of flu.
• Pivot from vaccines to treatment.  Vaccine or no vaccine, people are going to get Covid.  The Biden Administration could have announced their own version of Operation Warp Speed to evaluate and provide the medical community with information on all the different ways to treat Covid and while also create new ones.

But the Administration didn't do that.  Oh sure the President endorsed the vaccine and has advocated people getting the vaccine shots.  However, the messaging has been awful.  The Administration offered no reward for getting the vaccine - no relaxation of mask requirements, still endorsing school closing in the first half of 2020.  Later when the number of people getting the jab didn't reach the arbitrary levels set by the Administration we saw the political equivalent of a temper tantrum with the Biden Administration issuing regulations to mandate people get shots or lose their jobs.  At a time when businesses across the Country are struggling to find employees, how is requiring that people who don't get the vaccine must be fired consistent with the promise to not shut down the economy?

I'm guessing here, but I think the negative approach is probably a combination of the natural inclination of progressives and Democrats toward bigger government/greater central control and the recommendations of Dr. Anthony Fauci.  The Biden Administration has pretty much hitched their Covid wagon to Dr. Fauci, who in turn has declared that attacks on him are "attacks on science."  Dr. Fauci has rejected suggestions to count natural immunity along with vaccination numbers, doesn't seem to accept scientific studies performed in other countries and generally has advocated an extreme, government heavy approach to combatting Covid.

At the same time the Biden Administration has been listening to Dr. Fauci, they are also heeding special interests.  For example, the CDC recommendations on schools were pretty much written by a Teacher's union that sought draconian measures to be in place.  Those recommendations resulted in the majority of school districts around the country not re-opening in the first half of 2021.  To appease the progressive wing, massive numbers of people are entering the country illegally.  Because the volume of people so far exceeds the capacity of the Border Patrol, these individuals are being permitted entry without being tested for Covid or treated.  We know from reports that a percentage of those folks entering the country do have Covid.  Regardless, they they are put on planes and busses and shipped around the country with local officials sometimes being alerted to the incoming group and sometimes not.  That's not a plan to shut down the virus.

Meanwhile the Biden Administration has dropped the ball on what's really need to shut down the virus and not shut down the economy or the country.  Testing dollars were allocated by Congress but not spent to buy testing kits.  The Omnicron variant was discovered in November.  People won't be able to order testing kits until this week and delivery won't occur for 10 days to 2 weeks after that.  The Administration has done nothing similar to Operation Warp Speed to promote development of treatments or cures for Covid. 

The failure to provide testing resources, the lack of effort to actively promote treatments and cures mean many lives lost can be laid at the feet of President Biden.  Coupling those failures with Biden's decision to embrace the negative (labeling the current situation a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" for example) means that rather than achieving the unity Biden promised in the campaign, the United States will remain disunited for another year.

* I'm not going to debate the other moneys that were provided like cash checks and extending unemployment benefits.  That's for a different column.