Joe Biden Covid team mocks Trump plan while borrowing its Playbook

Photographer: Mario Tama / Getty Images

President Joe Biden and his top advisers have mocked the Trump administration’s playbook for spreading coronavirus vaccines, but so far have made only modest changes to the plan that hits their target rate of more than a million shots a day.

Biden has said vaccine distribution was “worse than we expected.” White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said a Trump plan “ didn’t really exist. ” Adviser Cedric Richmond said they had “left no plan.” Xavier Becerra, Biden’s choice of health secretary, said it was like taking over a plane in a dive.

But while Biden’s approach to the virus – candid warnings about the pandemic, masking mandates for federal ownership – is a reversal of Trump’s policies, his administration’s distribution of vaccines so far looks little different from that of his predecessor. Before Biden was sworn in, vaccines were already being delivered at a rapid pace to reach his goal of 100 million doses in his first 100 days as president.

The Biden government has said they will order new doses, but will do so by exercising options in contracts negotiated by the previous government, which found it premature to do so. They say they will use the Defense Production Act, which Trump has used repeatedly. Rather than a total overhaul, they have otherwise made price corrections and modest shifts. Data released by Friday Johnson & Johnson will spark hopes that a third vaccine may hit the US market soon.

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Still, Biden’s ability to change direction sharply is inherently limited. The sheer magnitude of the distribution efforts would make any major change costly and risk relapse, even if only temporarily. Some aspects of the program don’t offer much wiggle room to start with, while the trickiest parts are yet to come – and completely on Biden’s shoulders.

All of Biden’s attempts to shape the program were also undermined by Trump, who delayed the transition because he contested the election results and refused to admit it. Trump’s team said more than 300 transition briefings were held with health officials, although Biden officials have said the information exchange was limited to a few days before the inauguration.

Partisan rhetoric

Some officials who have led Trump’s efforts have objected to what they see as partisan sniping of Biden’s team, warning that it hurts morale among career staff working on the vaccine rollout.

“The transition is not going as well as I and my team had hoped,” said Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific advisor to Operation Warp Speed, the joint effort of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense to develop and distribute vaccines in record time . Biden’s team dropped the name, hoping to boost confidence in the shots and force Slaoui out.

“The team does not understand why the operation is already being criticized. It’s so unfair and unjustified, ”said Slaoui. “If it wasn’t for this surgery, we might not have as many vaccines as we do now.”

Among those who have pumped the brakes on claims that Biden has gotten nothing is Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert who was overruled by Trump and now serves as Biden’s advisor.

“We are certainly not starting from scratch,” Fauci said last week. “It takes what happened, but amplifies it in a big way.” Biden has also given credit to scientists and the Trump administration for getting the vaccine program off the ground. “And that honor is absolutely due,” he said.

Biden’s approach

There are differences. Biden supports, and is, federally run vaccination centers and mobile clinics aim for please give states one delivery example of three weeks. They’ve switched to increase the number of people available to administer it, even though Trump officials said it’s vaccine shortages, not vaccinators. Biden has pledged to let science lead the way and make briefings public, in stark contrast to Trump, who sidelined health advisers in favor of those who bolstered his own opinion.

Biden has also pushed for fairness – saying that communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the virus and should not be left out in the comment. Vaccinations can get more complicated as the months go on, the supply increases, and the more accessible groups – including health professionals and long-term residents – are fully vaccinated.

But most of the distribution effort remains unchanged, undermining the claims of some Biden advisors that they have not inherited a plan. Many of the most persistent bottlenecks do not stem from the decisions of the federal government: companies simply cannot produce vaccines fast enough and supplies are scarce; even if the distribution is smooth, the administration of doses at the local level is supported.

“What we see here is that they are marching through the Operation Warp Speed ​​playbook,” added Michael Pratt, a former Health and Human Services official under Trump. “Something cannot be a dismal failure and have already reached the ‘ambitious goal’ you set.”

Almost every industrialized nation is plagued by vaccine delays. The European Union has moved to restrict the export of vaccines. According to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker, the US administered 8.3 doses per 100 people, outpacing the UK and Israel, but surpassing Germany, Canada, France and the EU in general.

The war of words has intensified since the day of the inauguration. Slaoui said the Biden government had told him he would remain as a consultant, only to read in news reports that he had been asked to resign. He said he had asked Zients about the reports and was told to step down.

“I accepted at their request to do it that way,” Slaoui said in an interview. “There are two ways to look good: you look good because you do great things, or you look good because you make others look bad. I hope that the new administration does not enter into that game. “

Biden has held other key Trump personnel in place, including General Gustave Perna, who co-led Operation Warp Speed ​​with Slaoui, focusing on distribution.

100 day promise

Biden bounces on the question of whether 100 million doses in 100 days – a goal he set before the vaccinations began – is too modest a goal. The US first reported more than a million daily doses on Jan. 13, and the daily moving average reached more than a million on Jan. 23, Biden’s third full day of work. Two days later, Biden revised his goal and said he thinks 1.5 million daily doses were achievable in the first 100 days. The US has only achieved that goal once so far: inauguration day.

“It is really incorrect to say there was no plan – because we are already reaching 1.3 million doses in weapons per day, which is more than President Biden’s initial goal,” said Brett Giroir, who was in charge. the previous government’s efforts to step up. to test.