Joe Biden's First Day as US President 3:01
(CNN) -
President Joe Biden has kept his word to "handle hell" of the pandemic, prompted by the urgency to revive a sick and distressed nation and the certainty that his entire presidency is based on eradicating Covid-19. .
So far, it has been easy for the new president to criticize the Trump administration's obviously negligent and incompetent response to the worst public health crisis in 100 years.
But words are no longer enough now that you're behind the desk in the Oval Office with Americans dreaming of a vaccine and a return to work, family life, and travel.
Reflecting this pressure, Biden appeared before the cameras on Thursday, signing a series of decrees that showed him in the act of exercising his new power to fight the virus.
Harnessing the power of the presidency to drive action, he issued a detailed new pandemic strategy and promised a genuine "wartime" effort to expand vaccine distribution, supplies, and testing.
He ordered the use of masks on federal lands and on interstate travel by train, bus and plane.
Biden plans new vaccination sites across the country and to activate pharmacies in every neighborhood.
There is a strong impression that after four years of chaos and incompetence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, serious people are now in charge.
This administration appears to be better equipped with specialized knowledge, respect for science, organizational skills and experience than the previous one.
And there is a president who is now empowering his team instead of muddying his message.
In a break from the lies, twists, and boastful nonsense of previous White House reports, Biden sent Dr. Anthony Fauci to share the science and the truth without fear of presidential retaliation.
"The idea that you can come here and talk about what you know, what the evidence is, what science is - letting science speak, is a somewhat liberating feeling," said the government's leading infectious disease expert, who he often collided with the fantastic alternate realities of former President Donald Trump.
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Fauci, who was sidelined by Trump, who spilled politicized and uniformed misinformation at the coronavirus task force briefings, said things were already much more professional.
"You know, one of the new things in this administration is that if you don't know the answer, don't guess," he said.
What's so surprising is that Biden's approach, while welcome, in many cases is to implement measures that a comprehensive response to the pandemic from the previous administration would have initially taken.
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It is based on a bet that bringing the federal government's expertise, money, and scale in a crisis can reverse the situation and ultimately provide the leadership and coordination that has been lacking in the year since the coronavirus hit the US.
Ending the virus threat would, in turn, be the best way to alleviate the economic disaster after another 900,000 people filed for unemployment claims for the first time last week, putting new pressure on Congress to pass. Biden's $ 1.9 trillion rescue plan quickly despite Republican concerns about its cost.
The president will move from the epidemiological challenge of the virus on Friday to the economic consequences of the pandemic as he signs another series of decrees to provide relief after an intense start to his term.
The new political equation of the pandemic
There are two concurrent tracks in the accelerated response to the coronavirus: the rush to intensify the battle against the virus and the political effort to manage the consequences of the crisis and its impact in the first months of the new presidency.
Therefore, the president is embracing a twofold message: warning that the season of death and illness will intensify, while offering an optimistic prediction that the horror will not last forever.
"Things will keep getting worse before they get better ... The death toll will probably exceed 500,000 next month and the cases will continue to rise," Biden said when presenting his new strategy at the White House.
“We didn't get into this mess overnight.
It will take us months to change things.
And let me be equally clear: we will get through this.
We will defeat this pandemic.
But it is one thing to come up with a strategy.
It is something else for Biden, and his incoming team of senior scientists, medical experts and logistics experts, to quickly change the often slow machinery of the federal government.
The White House will need states, some of which have failed badly in all aspects of the pandemic, to respond to the new federal effort.
And while Biden can change policy with his pen, he needs a massive and swift investment from a tightly balanced Congress to make his plan work.
Then there are the medical factors beyond your control.
While hospitalizations are declining as a sign of hope, many experts fear it could be a temporary relief and that newer, more transmissible versions of the virus will negate hopes of a significant improvement in the situation in the spring.
And even in countries where the pandemic has been best managed, there have been a number of broken timelines on when normal life could resume, as the coronavirus defies attempts to eradicate it from societies.
So there is the question of how much more patience the American people have, with no clear answers yet from the government on when people out of age and the highest-risk medical categories can get vaccinated.
While the Biden administration is just beginning, the country has been locked in the purgatory of confinements, work and home schooling, amid separation from family members for 10 months.
Meanwhile, Trump's attacks on the legitimacy of Biden's election victory may challenge the authority of his new measures and the willingness of millions of Americans to listen.
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Sources told CNN previously that the Trump administration, which disrupted the transition to the new White House, did not leave any national vaccine plans and that the new administration was effectively starting from scratch.
While that rings true, given that the previous administration did not meet its target of 20 million vaccinated people by the end of 2020, Fauci on Thursday was less equivocal about it, saying: 'We are certainly not starting from scratch, because there is activity in course in distribution ».
In any event, announcing that they were starting from scratch also seemed to be an effort to manage Biden's expectations and give his team some time to kick-start the new anticovid offensive with the virus still spreading out of control.
While the new president's promise to deliver 100 million doses of the vaccine in his first 100 days would represent a significant improvement, it pales in the face of the scale of the problem.
Given that two vaccines currently licensed for emergency use in the US require two doses, the plan means that less than one-sixth of all Americans will be vaccinated by the end of April.
Unless the vaccine supply can be significantly increased, through Biden's more aggressive use of the Defense Production Act, for example, it could be many months before all Americans are vaccinated.
The new president spoke about the high risks of the pandemic response operation at the end of his event at the White House on Thursday when asked if he was setting the bar high enough.
“When I announced it, everyone said it is not possible.
Come on, give me a break, man, ”the president said, displaying an irritability with press doubts that will likely become more pronounced as their honeymoon period fades.
Still, many experts are confident that with a concentrated effort, the new administration will succeed in increasing both the supply and distribution of the vaccine.
It was notable, for example, that Fauci, like other experts, seemed to indicate that the biggest long-term concern was whether enough Americans would take the vaccine to ensure herd immunity, the point at which enough people have been infected with covid- 19 or immunized against it to stop the transmission of the virus.
"If we can get 70% to 85% of the country vaccinated, let's say late summer, mid-summer, I think that by the time we get to fall, we will be getting closer to a degree of normality," Fauci said.
If he's right, the American people will get their lives back, and Biden can expect a great reward from public trust, political capital, and a reputation for competition that would be invaluable in generating support for his ambitious legislative agenda and ultimately his place in the history.
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