Biden’s Covid-19 challenge
“IF THE PUBLIC-HEALTH PROFESSIONALS, IF DR. [Anthony] Fauci, if doctors tell us we should take it, I would be first in line. If Donald Trump tells us we should take it, then I’m not taking it.”
That was Vice President–elect Kamala Harris’ response when asked by the moderator of an Oct. 7 debate whether she would get vaccinated against COVID-19. It perfectly captured the politicization of the U.S. response to COVID-19 under the outgoing Trump Administration—and how dangerous that red and blue tinting of the pandemic response has been for the American public. Behaviors like wearing masks and social distancing, which should be about protecting public health, have turned into loaded statements of party affiliation and were twisted into campaign strategy, no doubt contributing to the high death toll from the disease and a worrying erosion in people’s confidence in the science that ultimately is the only way out of the pandemic. Joe Biden’s public-health team now faces a two-pronged challenge: confronting a still mysterious virus that shows no signs of waning, and convincing the American public that parts of the pandemic response that began under the Trump Administration—particularly vaccine development—remain untainted by political influence.
Biden and Harris have already
