A year in, experts assess Biden's hits and misses on handling the pandemic

Last January, 2021, the day after he was inaugurated, President Biden released a national strategy for beating COVID-19. The 200-page document was hailed as "encouraging" and "well-constructed" – a pandemic exit blueprint that had not been articulated by the Trump administration before it.

"The plan itself is well-articulated, clear and ambitious – appropriate given the challenge," says Michelle Williams, an epidemiologist and dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. But, she adds, "execution is always challenging."

At the time President Biden assumed office, cases and deaths were hitting record highs and the newly launched vaccines were in short supply. To move the country past "a dark winter of this pandemic," Biden pledged to restore public trust, vaccinate the country, minimize COVID-19 spread and reopen society – with a focus on equity – and resume America's global leadership.

The effort "started off really well," says Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, "The challenge is that this virus continues to throw us curves."

Reality set in as states and employers filled gaps in communication and coordination with wildly varying policies. The public lost its appetite for new guidance as pandemic fatigue increased. Then came the delta variant. And omicron. And yet another winter with new cases hitting new record highs.

One year after the release of Biden's initial , NPR spoke with experts in health law, epidemiology, virology and more to evaluate how