of course all the right news sources pounced on that comment. No one, left or right, should have expected a new administration to "change the trajectory" in two days. There is only so much that can be done to change the current trajectory. When you have x% of people already infected and in hospitals (where patients often linger for 203 weeks before passing), public health experts can pretty accurately forecast where the trend lines will go over the next several weeks. They had already projected 500K dead by the end of February several weeks ago. They are hopeful this latest plateau may hold and maybe we start to see a decline now that the most vulnerable are getting vaccinated. But you know what happens? As soon as Americans think the worst is over they start tossing masks and socializing again. There is also a big worry the more contagious variant will take over as the dominant one before more people can get vaccinated. It's literally a race against time to get more vaccinated before that happens. Unfortunately even in the UK where they've vaccinated millions this new strain is taking over quickly and the sheer volume of cases has hospital overwhelmed. Then we have all the fools that don't want to get vaccinated.
Vaccines can only be produced so fast and distributed - yet the new administration is using the defense production act and signing orders left and right to ramp up production, distribution, setting up huge vaccination centers run by FEMA, working with states to figure out where the glitches are and to fix them (since many of the problems are at the state level - the Feds have distributed 40M doses but only 20M have made it into arms so far). That alone is 250% more than what the last administration did. On Thursday 1.3M were vaccinated, up from an average in the 900,000 the prior several days. Finally, Biden made that comment in the context of trying to help people who have run out resources - more aid, a longer freeze on evictions and foreclosures etc. Had they stayed in power it's highly unlikely Trump and the GOP would have done a thing. Trump had no plan past getting out the first big batch of vaccines. He washed his hands of it all, too busy whining about having the election stolen from him
Vaccines can only be produced so fast and distributed - yet the new administration is using the defense production act and signing orders left and right to ramp up production, distribution, setting up huge vaccination centers run by FEMA, working with states to figure out where the glitches are and to fix them (since many of the problems are at the state level - the Feds have distributed 40M doses but only 20M have made it into arms so far). That alone is 250% more than what the last administration did. On Thursday 1.3M were vaccinated, up from an average in the 900,000 the prior several days. Finally, Biden made that comment in the context of trying to help people who have run out resources - more aid, a longer freeze on evictions and foreclosures etc. Had they stayed in power it's highly unlikely Trump and the GOP would have done a thing. Trump had no plan past getting out the first big batch of vaccines. He washed his hands of it all, too busy whining about having the election stolen from him
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