In the days leading up to the November elections, Joe Biden told some whoppers on the subject of health care. Perhaps that’s to be expected in the heat of a political campaign.
Mr. Biden’s recent Covid-19 vaccination in Delaware proves he now understands that his consistent skepticism about the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed was misguided. This is probably excusable in an election as the words that come out of a politician’s mouth are rarely correlated to reality. Trump is responsible for his inability to convince the American public that he set up the apparatus to get us out of the global pandemic. That failure of communication is probably reason enough to lose an election.
Candidate Biden claimed that the president had no plan for addressing the virus and warned that Americans couldn’t trust Mr. Trump to oversee a quick and safe vaccine approval. This wasn’t true and Candidate Biden probably knew it, but it was the responsibility of Mr. Trump to make that case. Mr. Biden was not obligated to explain the effectiveness of the Trump administration if the Trump administration couldn’t explain their accomplishments in a convincing way.
With yesterday’s vaccination, Mr. Biden has effectively rebutted his own campaign warnings.
His acknowledgment of the vaccine and the public display of its use was designed to inspire Americans to trust the vaccine. The act is an admission that his candidate claims were made for purely political positioning and not based on scientific or logistical evidence. He lied on the campaign trail (or at least used Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt – FUD) to convince people that Mr. Trump was failing at this important task and therefore they should hire him. Admitting that Mr. Trump was doing a good job at getting the vaccine to the American public would not have been in Mr. Biden’s best interest at getting hired to run the country.
The outstanding work of the pharmaceutical industry, encouraged and enabled by President Trump, has already resulted in two approved vaccines, and yes, there is a distribution plan.
Drug distributor McKesson Corp. began picking up doses of the vaccine from manufacturing plants on Saturday for distribution around the country. United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. trucks started rolling out Sunday to deliver the doses to hospitals and other sites.
The federal government plans to distribute over the coming week a total of 7.9 million doses of vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer Inc., which developed the first Covid-19 shot authorized for use in the U.S.
Vaccinations will continue, without Mr. Biden having to do anything. And there are still more vaccines in the pipeline which could soon come to market, as long as he doesn’t get in the way. The J&J vaccine is a one-dose treatment and the preliminary results have been fantastic.
Yet despite his own vaccination experience, Mr. Biden is still talking as if there’s a huge problem he will be called upon to solve. According to a Bloomberg report on Washington’s latest massive goring of taxpayers, Mr. Biden seems to think there’s much more Covid spending to come.
The economy is awash in money; politicians just need to let people use it. Americans suffering economically are suffering from shutdowns, which never worked as intended, inflicted enormous collateral damage, and are now becoming untenable with the arrival of vaccines.
Washington’s work is over. Washington didn’t do enough to save many businesses as they were tied up in the politics of helping things that didn’t really get hurt. That was a shame, but that is the political reality of our country. Republicans and Democrats spent far too much time discussing how to not let a good tragedy go to waste. But now we see the light at the end of the tunnel.
By the time that Mr. Biden is inaugurated, 50-60M people will have been vaccinated (that is about 1/7 of the US population). Combined with the existing survivors of natural infections, this will now probably exceed 25% of the US population.
Within the first two months of Mr. Biden’s reign, we will have vaccinated or infected over 50% of the US population and may reach 60-70%. By the time of opening day of the MLB season, it is reasonable to assume that we will be at 80% which is effectively full herd immunity. We should still try to reach 90% and that should happen in early summer.
Due to Operation Warp Speed, we could have approximately a dozen manufacturers of vaccines for the COVID-19 in a few more months. All we need to do is wear masks and social distance for another couple of months and then the US participation in the global pandemic will be over. This has nothing to do with the leadership of Joe Biden, it is purely a function of the continuity of the efforts of the Trump administration.
Biden should simply sit back and enjoy the ride back to a fully functional economy. The Trump train will get him there without him having to do anything. All he can do now, is screw it up.
This analysis is based on the fine reporting of the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman.
