Worse Than We Imagined’: Team Trump Left Biden a COVID Nightmare

https://www.thedailybeast.com/worse-than-we-imagined-team-trump-left-biden-a-covid-19-nightmare

Erin Banco, Scott Bixby, Sam Brodey
Published Jan. 21, 2021 5:00AM ET

 

Twelve minutes before noon on Wednesday, President Joe Biden was sworn into office as the nation’s 46th president. Seven hours later, the United States reported more than 4,409 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, according to data collected by the COVID-19 Tracking Project.

The Biden administration came into power with purpose and an extensive agenda to combat the coronavirus pandemic, but purpose and planning only gets you so far—particularly when the president’s team is only just now getting a clear picture of how badly the previous administration had managed the crisis.

“What we’re inheriting from the Trump administration is so much worse than we could have imagined,” Jeff Zients, the Biden administration’s COVID-19 czar, said in a call with reporters Wednesday. “We don't have the visibility that we would hope to have into supply and allocations.”

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The new administration is already behind, in part because the Trump administration was unprecedentedly hostile during the transition. The question now, however, is how Biden can get a handle on a raging pandemic when his team is already so far behind.

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It’s not just the spread of the virus that the Biden team needs to tackle. Officials will also have to confront the disinformation and misinformation about the virus that has permeated all four corners of the country—where people still believe the virus is a hoax and that public health guidelines are too great of an imposition on their personal freedom to follow. But it’s unclear what power of persuasion the Biden administration will hold and if it will be enough to convince people to take the virus more seriously.

“At least we won’t have a president that’s actively fighting those rules on national television,” one official working with the new Biden COVID-19 team said.

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Biden’s COVID-19 team says the president will use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to ensure that health-care facilities have what they need for personal protective equipment and to continue to scale testing across the country. Officials say Biden will also use the act and “other legal authorities” for “raw materials to ensure that bottlenecks do not slow down [vaccine] production,” Zients said, specifically mentioned the production of syringes as critical to success.

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“Making vaccines is not simple, and you can't cut any corners,” Frieden said. “We'll see if there's anything more that can be done.”

Biden enters office as states across the country are grappling with massive vaccine shortages. Hospitals and pharmacies have begun to run out, forcing them to cancel first and second dose appointments. Officials in states such as California, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, and Arizona this week called on the federal government to not only help facilitate the shipment of additional vaccines but to clearly communicate how many doses they should expect to receive in the coming days. They’ve received no answers [from Trump administration], according to six state health officials, all of whom requested to remain anonymous to speak more freely about the issue.

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But as White House officials begin to strategize on how best to remedy the situation they are finding that the foundation on which the Trump administration built its vaccine distribution program is more flawed than previously understood, according to two individuals involved with vaccine planning. From the accounting to the way vaccines are allocated and scheduled for delivery—the system doesn’t allow for the quick movement of vaccines off the manufacturing line to state vaccine distribution points, those officials said.

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