The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel was visible even before President Biden’s national address Thursday night. It was visible before he signed into law the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that afternoon. But in announcing his goal that by July 4th the pandemic would be controlled enough to have holiday gatherings again, the light grew bright enough to plant victory gardens.
Biden will order states to ensure by May 1 that all adults are eligible for a coronavirus vaccine, although many may not be able to get one just then. He had previously pledged that sufficient vaccines would be available by the end of May. On Wednesday he announced plans to purchase an additional 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. This is, Biden said, “a national effort, just like we saw during World War II.”
Axios reported on Thursday:
- The U.S. is administering over 2 million shots per day, on average. Roughly 25% of the adult population has gotten at least one shot.
- The federal government has purchased more doses than this country will be able to use: 300 million from Pfizer, 300 million from Moderna and 200 million from Johnson & Johnson.
- The Pfizer and Moderna orders alone would be more than enough to fully vaccinate every American adult. (The vaccines aren’t yet authorized for use in children.)
The pandemic threat and the scope of its economic fallout is not unlike the situation FDR faced upon entering office, one that “may not dwarf but eclipse what FDR faced,” Biden said last spring.
Indeed, Biden’s address Thursday at times possessed the tone of an FDR fireside chat. It was as personal as presidential. Occasionally he leaned in, not as Bill Clinton would in a power move, but to convey intimacy. He appealed to Americans to do their part, “to get vaccinated when it’s your turn and when you can find an opportunity, and to help your family and friends and neighbors get vaccinated as well.” Do that, Biden said, and by July 4th “there’s a good chance you, your families, and friends will be able to get together in your backyard or in your neighborhood and have a cookout and a barbeque and celebrate Independence Day.”
To reach that goal, Biden appealed for national unity not just in spirit but in action. Get vaccinated. Keep washing hands and staying socially distanced. And “keep wearing the masks as recommended by the CDC.”
Biden referenced the nation’s last year of suffering and loss in a way Americans had not heard from his predecessor:
We’ve lost so much over the last year.
We’ve lost family and friends.
We’ve lost businesses and dreams we spent years building.
We’ve lost time — time with each other.
And our children have lost so much time with their friends, time with their schools. No graduation ceremonies this — this spring. No graduations from college, high school, moving-up ceremonies.
You know, and there’s something else we lost.
We lost faith in whether our government and our democracy can deliver on really hard things for the American people.
But as I stand here tonight, we’re proving once again something I have said time and time again until they’re probably tired of hearing me say it. I say it foreign leaders and domestic alike: It’s never, ever a good bet to bet against the American people. America is coming back.
Back to contact with reality as well, as Josh Marshall observed in citing the New York Times.
The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, dinged Biden for saying there are already more Americans dead from the virus that died in “World War I, World War II, Vietnam War and 9/11 combined.” Not all deaths. If Biden meant combat deaths, okay, but he should say so, Kessler writes.
“I set a goal that many of you said was kind of way over the top,” Biden said. Kessler called Biden “the master of underpromising and then overdelivering” but could find no polling to back up the “way over the top” claim. “Most news accounts depicted Biden’s goal as potentially difficult, but not impossible,” Kessler added. Seriously. Perhaps instead Biden should have used Donald Trump’s patented “A lot of people are saying . . . ”
No Pinocchios awarded last night. A lot of people are saying that until we can have dinners out again that foretaste of normal returning makes their jaws loosen for the first time in years.