I’m surprised by how reasonable he sounds here. I shouldn’t be, as it’s in his interest to highlight the progress made on COVID control since he became president. But the Democratic impulse towards maximum precautions is so intense that it feels scandalous towards the end of the clip when he starts talking about how there’s no need to close schools.
His message today was simple: Get vaxxed if you haven’t yet, get tested before socializing, and don’t panic about Omicron. If you’ve done the things you should, beginning with getting your shots, “you should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays as you planned it.” Good advice, all told.
Why, he even gave Donald Trump a little credit. More on that below.
BIDEN: “We should all be concerned about omicron, but not panicked. If you’re fully vaccinated, and especially if you’ve got your booster shot, you are highly protected. … And no, this is not March of 2020. 200 million people are fully vaccinated." pic.twitter.com/aaF0nXkw84
— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) December 21, 2021
If Biden had delivered this speech a few days from now he would have been able to tout another major milestone, the arrival of effective therapeutics against COVID. According to Bloomberg, the FDA is days away from authorizing Pfizer’s and Merck’s wonder drugs for emergency use.
An announcement may come as early as Wednesday, according to three of the people. They asked not to be identified ahead of the authorization and cautioned that the plan could change…
“It’s the biggest thing to happen in the pandemic after vaccines,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. The timing of the announcement, so late in the year, is unusual for the FDA and reflects the urgency behind the medicines, he said.
The U.S. government has ordered 10 million courses of the Pfizer pill and about 3 million courses of Merck’s, which isn’t as effective, clinical studies indicate, and may carry risks.
Great, great news — but, as with Biden’s new testing initiative, almost certainly too late to help much with Omicron. The new wave is apt to crash down and then subside before the tests or the drugs are available freely enough to make much difference. We’ll be well prepared for spring and summer but winter is baked in. Sorry, Joe. Should’ve moved more quickly:
Biden facing persistent questions after speech about testing delays.@Yamiche: What's your message to Americans who are trying to get tested now and … wondering what took so long to ramp up testing?
BIDEN: C’mon, ‘what took so long’… it didn’t take long at all. pic.twitter.com/5bTuozKkO7
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) December 21, 2021
Experts have been bleating about the dearth of rapid tests for more than a year. That was supposed to have been a January 2021 priority for Biden, not a December 2021 one.
You can tell how eager he is to try to get the entire country on the same page by his willingness to do something he almost never does, which is to cite Trump and his administration approvingly in the context of COVID. (Or any context.) He did it twice in this afternoon’s speech:
President Biden: "I got my booster shot…and just the other day former President Trump announced he had gotten his booster shot. It may be one of the few things he and I agree on." pic.twitter.com/PDkXXuqvhr
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 21, 2021
Biden credits the Trump administration for the development of the vaccine: "Thanks to the prior administration, and our scientific community, America is one of the first countries to get the vaccine." pic.twitter.com/FDdmtJ9ykg
— Axios (@axios) December 21, 2021
I’m picturing it now: The Donald J. Trump Vaccination Center, Hotel, and Casino.
The most heartening development of the past two weeks has been administration officials and even hyper-cautious cable-news doctors making the case for not hunkering down amid the Omicron surge if you’re protected. That applies especially to schools. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was on-message with Biden this morning, stressing that kids need to be in class:
“Student safety, staff safety is the number-one priority, but, yes, our children need to be in school,” US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona tells @jimsciutto as the spread of the Omicron variant prompts concerns among some parents about a wholesale return to remote learning. pic.twitter.com/LKxpxXklTe
— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) December 21, 2021
There’s no excuse to keep them home. The risk of severe illness among kids hasn’t increased even as nastier variants have come down the pike and vaccines are now available for those whose parents want to hedge against that risk anyway. We have more than 18 months of practice at keeping schools safe from COVID, to the extent they were ever under threat. Keep the schools open until there’s a compelling reason to do otherwise.
Even this borderline socialist agrees:
"I do not see a scenario for any kind of shutdown because we are so vaccinated as a city," NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said. "We don't want to shut down, we want to vaccinate. Simple as that."
He urges anyone seeing Billy Joel tonight at MSG to wear a mask while not drinking. pic.twitter.com/LUG8ypykCU
— Jimmy Vielkind (@JimmyVielkind) December 20, 2021
Would Democratic opinion have shifted this much if Glenn Youngkin hadn’t shocked America by flipping Virginia last month? My cynical impulse is to say no, but the effects of lost class time on kids may be so glaring by now that precaution-crazy liberals would have changed their risk calculus anyway. Either way, the national trend is against closing schools even in blue jurisdictions:
Districts have mostly reassured families that despite targeted classroom closures to contain spread of the virus, they plan to continue in-person learning until the Christmas break and reopen as planned in January. New York City, Boston and Montgomery County, Md., in suburban Washington, were among the large school systems that said they would not shift districtwide to remote learning, or would do so only if forced to by public health officials…
The picture had been bright enough that many schools relaxed virus restrictions in recent weeks.
Several school districts in Florida dropped their mask mandates. New Jersey relaxed school quarantine rules, decoupling them from community transmission rates and reducing the number of stay-at-home days for students who had close contact with an infected person.
If Omicron is as brief and mild as everyone hopes, it’ll leave barely a trace in America’s classrooms.
I’ll leave you with Dr. Leana Wen, normally a hawk about COVID precautions but currently keen on holding the Times Square bash on New Year’s Eve as scheduled. Get your shots, keep calm, and carry on — that’s her message. Even the expert class is exhausted with pandemic America.
I do not think that Mayor De Blasio should cancel NYC’s New Year celebration. This is outdoors & requires vaccination. Yes, omicron is surging, but we need to continue activities that are of high-value while adding precautions that reduce risk. @BilldeBlasio @VictorBlackwell pic.twitter.com/tyOfQ5fT7g
— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) December 20, 2021
