President Biden took his oath under the promise of ending Covid-19 in the United States, or at least severely curtailing the influence it had on everyday life. By all accounts, even by accounts of media outlets typically friendly to him, the President has failed spectacularly.
By relying so heavily on vaccines, which have also failed at shutting down viral transmission, Biden left the country open to further infections and set up a playing field in 2022 where Covid-19 seems to have the advantage.
It’s not because there wasn’t enough time or money, both were on our side a year ago. It also wasn’t due to lack of foresight as many public health experts warned the Biden administration about the specific scenario we’re seeing now with a lack of testing availability.
There’s no way to spin the fact that Joe Biden has completely bungled the federal Covid response in 2021, which is why he admitted there isn’t one. Despite lofty promises and numerous public addresses on the matter, very little progress was made other than using federal power to force citizens into vaccine compliance over the threat of losing their jobs.
Many questions loom of Biden’s Covid-19 response up to this point, and the fear is what it will lead to in 2022.
Regarding air quality and filtration, OSHA and the Biden administration have been derelict in directing the billions of federal dollars available to schools and local governments around the country to upgrade ventilation systems:
But two years into the pandemic, the U.S. is still laser-focused on vaccines, and has largely ignored other factors. In particular, federal regulators haven’t done much to incentivize Americans to wear higher-quality face coverings, or to maintain better filtration and cleaner air in indoor spaces.
In fact, many of the masks that are still worn today aren’t really masks at all, but cloth face coverings that were used as makeshift protection back in early 2020.
Meanwhile, the federal government hasn’t done much to improve the quality of air filtration in buildings. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued numerous emergency standards requiring employees to be vaccinated, but so far has ignored calls to issue a firm standard for air quality.
It seems implausible that since 2020 when mountains of money were set aside for states and schools specifically to upgrade ventilation systems, very little was done. Instead, the fight remains over masks and vaccines.
Regarding the availability of testing, experts were warning for months, even since the summer that coming up on a potential winter wave, America was facing a shortage of widely available Covid-19 tests. Biden pledged numerous times since January to ramp up expanded testing available, and failed:
Rapid tests remain in short supply, and they’re pricey, too. Bizarrely, the Biden administration initially scoffed at the idea of making them available for free. Instead, the White House announced a complicated scheme to let people with health insurance pay upfront for tests, then ask their health plan to pay them back later. Eventually, though, the administration announced a plan to buy 500 million COVID-19 rapid tests and mail them for free to anybody who requests the kits via a new government website. The first deliveries, however, won’t begin until sometime in January, and it’s not clear how many tests will be available immediately.
Viruses do not move at the speed of government, which is practically stationary. For Biden to announce in late December a plan to expand testing and provide more access by late January cannot be described as anything but failure and incompetence. They were warned, repeatedly, of the need for more testing capability, and they punted.
The “get vaccinated to end the pandemic” promise has turned into the “get boosted to end the pandemic” promise but that’s now turning into a likely scenario of never-ending Covid booster shots from now until eternity.
In the fall, Biden’s call for booster shots was met with scorn from the FDA, which initially voted down a plan to approve boosters. Then, a few FDA officials resigned in protest, and magically a month later the agency approved the plan for boosters.
Then more chaos as the agency quietly scrapped early plans because the rollout was so hectic and confusing in October and November. It’s safe to say Biden bungled booster shots as well:
The Biden administration’s late-2021 COVID response was marred by the back-and-forth debate over booster shots — whether they were necessary for everybody, and whether the White House interfered with the scientific process of getting them approved.
That ship has sailed. Especially with the emergence of the omicron variant, a broad consensus has emerged that adults should be boosted. Now, there’s a new, looming question: Will Americans need a fourth dose, or even additional doses beyond that?
There has been no coherent Covid-19 message from the White House since the “mission accomplished” speech back in July of 2021. Since that time, the administration has floundered with no leadership and no meaningful direction. Various experts saw the warning signs of a winter wave, yet Biden ignored it up until December 21, days before the holiday gathering season commenced.
2021 will be the year Covid defeated the Biden administration and America pays the price well into 2022.
