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March 28th, 2024

Insight

Biden sent the wrong message on COVID. He can still fix it

Doyle McManus

By Doyle McManus Los Angeles Times/(TNS)

Published Sept. 20, 2022

Biden sent the wrong message on COVID. He can still fix it
WASHINGTON — "The pandemic is over," President Joe Biden declared this month as he toured the Detroit Auto Show. "We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over."

"No one's wearing masks," he added, gesturing toward the convention center crowd. "Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape."

But the COVID epidemic isn't over. It has arguably lost its status as a disease that was utterly beyond control. But it's still causing more than 400 deaths a day, roughly three times as many as a bad season of influenza. New variants are still emerging; a wave of infections this winter could turn Biden's optimistic claim to ashes; and long COVID, a debilitating chronic condition, affects an estimated 16 million Americans.

"We are not where we need to be if we are going to, quote, 'live with the virus,'" Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden's chief medical adviser, said a day after the president's statement was broadcast on CBS' "60 Minutes." The number of COVID deaths, Fauci said, is still "unacceptably high."

Biden has a long history of gaffes, statements that misfire or land badly. Most are inconsequential. This wasn't.

The president's statement was bad on two levels, public health and politics.

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First, public health. For months, Biden and his aides have struggled to persuade Americans to get vaccinated against COVID — and to get boosters, especially if they are 60 or older. The results have been disappointing: Less than half the eligible population has accepted even a single booster. This month, the government rolled out a third booster, optimized for new COVID variants, but fewer than 2% of eligible patients showed up.

"I wish he hadn't said it," Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said of Biden's statement. "It's not helpful at a time when we're still trying to get people vaccinated."

Public health officials are already swapping reports of people who heard Biden's statement and decided to forgo another vaccination.

"We're already hearing pushback: 'If it's over, why do I need a booster?'" said Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota. "I get it; the country's done with the virus. The problem is the virus isn't done with us."

Biden's aides spent much of last week trying to explain. "Look at his whole statement," White House chief of staff Ron Klain said. "The sentence after 'the pandemic is over' is 'we have a lot of work to do.'"

But that nuance was lost in Biden's upbeat delivery, which sounded like a claim of victory. That's why Klain was still explaining a week later.

Almost as bad was the political impact. Republicans in Congress crowed that if Biden believes the pandemic has waned, there's no reason they should vote for more COVID spending.

Biden and his aides have asked Congress for $22.5 billion to pay for vaccines, testing and therapeutic drugs. The request was already stalled in the Senate; the president's statement made its prospects even dimmer.

Why would he say something that landed him in that much trouble?

Biden loves to be the bearer of good news, especially with an election approaching. (No politician likes to be the bearer of bad news with an election approaching.)

He'd undoubtedly like voters to remember that it was under his watch that the pandemic ended — or at least diminished enough that they could throw their irksome masks away.

It wasn't his only excursion into unwarranted optimism; only two weeks ago he argued that inflation had been tamed when it appears to have plateaued at an 8.3% annual rate.

To be fair, though, Biden has often veered into cockeyed optimism whether an election was near or not.

He declared victory over COVID once before, on July 4, 2021, when he said vaccines would soon deliver an "Independence Day" from the pandemic. That turned out to be a "mission accomplished" moment after variants of the virus caused breakthrough infections among the vaccinated.

In 2019, when Biden began his run for president, he told voters that his election would empower moderates in the Republican Party and produce a miraculous rebirth of old-fashioned bipartisanship. That hasn't turned out well either.

Optimism can be a good trait in a president. Franklin D. Roosevelt reassured Americans that they could prevail over the Depression and World War II. Ronald Reagan made optimism a hallmark of his vote-winning conservatism.

In Biden's case, though, overpromising has often backfired.

I once asked Biden, when he was vice president, how to recover from a gaffe. (I figured he knew how by then.) "Own it," he said emphatically. "Own it."

That's what the president ought to do now to repair the damage.

"We have to continue to make the case that COVID is still a threat," Wachter said. "We still need to encourage people to get a booster. And we need Congress and other policymakers to see ongoing funding as important, including funding for finding a new vaccine and research on long COVID."

The president was right to celebrate the good news: Thanks to vaccines and therapeutic drugs, COVID isn't as dangerous as it was two years ago. But without more vaccinations and more research, the disease will still cause tens of thousands of needless deaths.

Biden needs to correct his message, and he shouldn't wait for the midterm election to do it.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
09/20/22: Putin's brutality in Ukraine can get worse. Get ready for a chilly winter
09/13/22: China's economy is slowing, its population aging. That could make it dangerous
06/28/22: To deter China on Taiwan, Biden needs to reassure
05/24/22: India has become a US partner in countering China --- a limited partner, that is
05/11/22: Slow Joe's premature self-congratulation won't help the US in Ukraine
05/03/22: Can the US deter Putin from using his arsenal of battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine?
04/08/22:Biden's budget is big. Dems will vote to make it bigger
03/22/22: Ukraine's resistance offers a useful lesson to Taiwan
03/15/22: China wanted to appear neutral between Russia and Ukraine. It isn't
02/22/21: Who needs an invasion? Putin's offensive against Ukraine has been underway for a long time
02/09/21: If Putin wants an exit from the Ukraine crisis, the offramps are open
11/30/21: Biden wants to focus on China. Putin has another idea
11/23/21: Our oldest president just turned 79. He might have something to learn from the second-oldest
11/16/21: Can Biden and Xi talk their way out of a slide into conflict?
10/13/21: Congress has a chance to take bipartisan action on Facebook. Don't let it slip away
09/24/21: Can Dems win on crime issues with murders rising? Biden thinks so
06/29/21: Can Dems win on crime issues with murders rising? Biden thinks so
04/20/21:Afghanistan's war -- and America's stakes in it -- won't end when the troops leave
03/31/21: Here's why our new cold war with China could be a good thing
02/25/21: Sen. Joe Manchin drives Dems crazy. Here's why they need more senators like him
08/11/20: Goodbye to traditional political conventions --- and good riddance

05/19/20: We won't end COVID-19 with 'test and trace'
04/07/20: Joe Biden is stuck in his basement. It just might help him win
03/10/20: Where did Bernie's revolution go wrong?
03/05/20: Dems give Trump good reason to smile
02/18/20: Who will be the Un-Bernie?
02/11/20: Buttigieg wants to be the Goldilocks candidate. It just might work
01/21/20: The world according to Bernie
09/04/19: Trump's draft deal with the Taliban looks ugly, but it may be the best we can get
04/22/19: Something is missing from media-fawning Buttigieg campaign --- his stance on major issues
03/14/19: Biden, If He Runs, Will Face A Cruel Irony

Doyle McManus
Los Angeles Times
(TNS)

Doyle McManus is an American journalist, columnist, who appears often on Public Broadcasting Service's Washington Week.