Biden’s promises on pandemic create political risk

By Sean Sullivan,

President Biden placed the riskiest bet of his battle against the pandemic this week by promising a big step toward normalcy by July 4, potentially triggering a backlash if all Americans are not eligible for vaccines by May 1 or able to enjoy backyard barbecues on Independence Day.

The goals, made in a prime-time address Thursday, lifted the hopes of Americans longing for a relaxed and enjoyable summer, setting Biden up for big political rewards if he delivers. But they also put the president’s stamp firmly on the recovery effort, creating a risk if the current decline in deaths and infections is suddenly reversed, possibly for reasons beyond his control.

“It’s always tricky to make specific promises,” said Kathleen Sebelius, who served as secretary of health and human services under Barack Obama. “Is there a risk? You bet. Is there a sense of accountability that goes along with that? You bet.”

Sebelius was secretary when the widely anticipated rollout of the Affordable Care Act was torpedoed by a glitchy website, compelling her to promise that it would be fixed by a specific date — then hope desperately that it would happen.

“One of the most terrifying things I had to do in my entire career was to, after acknowledging that Healthcare.gov was flawed to the point that it was basically unusable, we then said, ‘By December 1st it will be usable,’ ” Sebelius recalled.

In the coronavirus recovery effort, public health experts said the unknowns include whether dangerous new variants of the virus will spread; whether a rush to open the economy in some states will yield a new spike in infections; whether the cultural divide over masks and social distancing will interfere with recovery initiatives; and whether many Americans will simply decline to get vaccinated.

Beyond that, as the ACA website debacle shows, bureaucratic and technical challenges have snagged other major government endeavors, a risk that hangs over the “find a vaccination” website and hotline that Biden has promised.

The realm of high-risk, high-reward is new terrain for Biden when it comes to the coronavirus, since until this week he had mostly tempered expectations about defeating the pandemic. He also routinely blamed the Trump administration’s mismanagement for adding to his challenge, suggesting that he did not have full ownership of the recovery effort.

This week, Biden appeared to conclude that the time had come for a different tone and message, and that Americans would tire of admonitions to wear masks and keep apart unless they also received more reason for hope and a sense of when things might get better.

On Friday, the president’s shift to taking more responsibility for the government’s response was increasingly evident, a change he had begun with the previous night’s speech.

“To every American watching: Help is here, and we will not stop working for you,” Biden said at an event in the White House Rose Garden celebrating the sweeping $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan he had signed into law the previous day.

After ticking through many of the provisions in the law, including $1,400 stimulus checks that will go to many Americans, the president added a caveat, noting that various factors could sidetrack the recovery effort.

“I said last night: This is not over,” he said. “Conditions can change. We’re not finished yet.”

“The devil is in the details,” he added. “. . . We have to get this right. Details matter, because we have to continue to build confidence in the American people that their government can work for them and deliver.”

But conveying those nuances and cautions to a weary public eager to make plans for weddings, family reunions, vacations and other events they have been unable to schedule during the past year could prove challenging. Biden on Thursday gave Americans specific dates to look forward to — May 1 and July 4 — and the details are likely to be lost in the back-and-forth of political discourse.

Republicans wasted little time Friday seizing on the dates Biden had set, seeking to muddy his message and previewing the attacks to come should he struggle to follow though on his pledges.

“If every willing person in America is vaccinated for #COVID19 by May, as POTUS has said, why put our lives on hold till July the 4th?” tweeted Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), in a misrepresentation of Biden’s message.

The president had actually said that all Americans by May 1 could sign up to get the vaccine, regardless of age, occupation or health status. In his speech, he noted more than once that it still might take some time to get an appointment and receive the shots.

Still, Cornyn’s tweet highlighted unanswered questions about what the situation will look like on July 4, beyond serving as a symbolic moment for the country.

Officials at the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to set specific targets for how many people would need to be vaccinated to realize the president’s goal of allowing small celebratory gatherings on Independence Day.

“I don’t think we can put a single metric on that,” said Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC.

White House officials said Friday that the dates Biden set were informed by a close examination of the supply of vaccines and the number of health professionals available to administer them. It is crucial to set up milestones to mark the country’s progress, they added.

“I think we all would agree that it’s important to have deadlines and goals,” said Jeff Zients, coordinator of the White House coronavirus response.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki conceded that it may not be easy to reach all the goals the administration has set, but she added that is no reason not to adopt them — a view she said is shared by Biden and White House chief of staff Ron Klain.

“Our calculation is that we’re not going to let the challenge of a goal we’ve set prevent us from setting it,” Psaki said in an interview. “The president and Jeff Zients and Ron Klain and many of the senior leaders on the team feel it’s pretty imperative, in an effort to level with the public, to also set clear markers for ourselves.”

Biden and his aides have shown some restraint and savvy when it comes to expectation-setting. As president-elect, Biden set a goal of 1 million vaccinations per day and promoted it for weeks, even as some questioned whether it was too ambitious.

A month and a half later, that number appeared far less imposing, in part because of a speedier pace of vaccination in the final days of the Trump presidency, and now Biden has doubled that goal.

Similarly, some public health experts say it was likely that the states would have made all adults eligible for vaccines by May 1 in any case. But by declaring that as a goal in a prime-time address, Biden has marked that target as his own, potentially getting more credit when it happens.

As of Friday, 34.1 million people in the United States had been fully vaccinated, representing a little more than 10 percent of the total population, according to a Washington Post tally. Psaki said in the interview that the administration would soon embark on a “massive public campaign” focusing on vaccines, in an effort to combat the resistance to the inoculations that has emerged in some communities.

The intensifying efforts were evident Friday as the Biden administration announced the opening of a new mass-vaccination center at Ford Field in Detroit with a capability of administering 6,000 shots a day. Among Biden’s promises Thursday was a vow to double the number of federally run mass-vaccination centers.

His administration is also spearheading the creation of a website to help people find vaccines — a pilot program is underway in some states — as well as a toll-free number for those who do not have Internet access.

Talk of the website has conjured memories for some of the botched 2013 ACA website launch that Sebelius referenced. Several members of the Biden administration were in the Obama White House at the time, and Zients himself was brought in to help fix the site, something he did successfully.

Beyond these hurdles, there are other challenges in trying to speed up the pace of vaccinations. One is that a sizable portion of the country has displayed some skepticism about getting vaccinated, even as public health experts, celebrities and politicians have waged an aggressive campaign to tout vaccine safety and importance.

The percentage of Americans who said they wanted to “wait and see” how the vaccines worked out for others before getting their own shots remains significant, although it dropped from 31 percent in January to 22 percent in February, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study.

Biden underscored Thursday that to achieve the goals he set out, Americans will need to do their part by getting vaccinated, wearing masks and practicing social distancing. He warned that if individuals let down their guard now or engage in risky behavior, the recovery could be set back significantly.

But that message has been complicated by competing directives from Republican politicians and government officials. In Texas, for example, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) recently lifted a mask mandate and allowed businesses to reopen at 100 percent capacity — an approach Biden dismissed as “Neanderthal thinking.”

Even in the face of such obstacles, and after restating the caveats he had issued Thursday, Biden in his comments Friday appeared unable to resist hinting that more normal, pre-pandemic conditions were on the horizon.

“Wish I could come out and shake hands with every one of you,” Biden said at the end of his remarks, addressing the members of Congress arrayed in the Rose Garden. “But next time, it won’t be so far apart.”