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March 26, 2021

Your Questions About Biden and the Pandemic, Answered

Plus, more Congressional Review Act resolutions released

 

A vaccination center in Spanish Fork, Utah, on Thursday. (Rick Bowmer/AP
Photo)

The Chief

I missed President Biden's first news conference, though judging from
the reactions

I didn't miss much. The questions reflected the insular nature of the
D.C. press corps, which doesn't understand policy (there were multiple
questions on the 2024 election?) The transcript indicates

that no reporter asked anything about the pandemic-you know, the thing
that turned us into shut-ins for a year.

So let me remedy that by asking and answering a host of questions about
COVID-19 and the Biden administration's response.

Have we ended the pandemic? Not quite. With the end of the COVID
Tracking Project we have to go to the CDC's tracker
. You
can see that the map of COVID cases

over time looks somewhat like the map of Virginia:

The difference is that Virginia comes to a stop, and the COVID cases
took a left turn around Newport News. The 7-day moving average has
ticked up slightly the past few days, and has basically been flat for
close to three weeks. Infections are rising in a majority of states
,
in some cases by as much as 30 percent.

Now, that's not entirely bad. As vaccinations rise, particularly among
the elderly, cases become less of a barometer of how we're doing.
About 80 percent of the deaths come from the population over 65, and 71
percent of them
have gotten at least one dose of vaccine, with nearly 45 percent fully
vaccinated. A case can be bad without being fatal, but as more at-risk
people get vaccinated, the trends of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths
ought to pull away from one another.

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So are people dying? People are still dying
at
about the peak rate of the summer surge. This is way down from the
winter carnage, but it's around 1,000 a day. And this has also
flattened out over the past week after a significant drop.
Hospitalizations
have also
flattened out, although it's welcome that they continue to go down,
albeit slightly. We just haven't vaccinated quite enough of the
population to see real changes in the numbers just yet.

So how's that going? Better than most of the world. Biden said in his
opening remarks

yesterday that we would hit 200 million shots in arms in his first 100
days, and we are now on that pace, with a seven-day average

of 2.5 million shots a day making up for lower figures at the beginning
of Biden's term. The numbers are likely to keep going up as age limits
for vaccination are lowered or revoked (we just learned that everyone in
California will be eligible by April 15). That puts us at around the 75
percent mark by maybe July.

That trajectory, however, is likely to surge throughout April and May
and then drop off, as hesitant people waver on getting the jab. Some of
this hesitancy isn't really about the vaccine but about the mechanism
to get an appointment
, which
inevitably includes using the internet. Eventually we will hit a point
where demand will drop, but not now. So the real question for the Biden
team is how they're bridging the digital divide and making the vaccine
accessible to all.

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How are you bridging the digital divide and making the vaccine
accessible to all? Thanks, good question. The administration recently
announced a $10 billion investment in high-risk communities, although
"getting people an appointment" wasn't on the list of that
funding. I know the administration wants to do a federal sign-up, but
that won't be released until May 1 at least.

The big question is where these resources are being delivered. The west
coast, northeast and plains states have done a good job on vaccinations.
The worst states for vaccinating the population are Georgia, Alabama,
Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. I see a pattern. Yes, ice storms, but
also a disinterest in governance. That's the hurdle the Biden team
must surmount, because we know hot spots don't stay inside state
borders.

Will we have enough vaccine? You'd think the answer is
"absolutely," especially now that the AstraZeneca vaccine (after
some hiccups

about what data it was presenting to the public) is showing results that
should approve it for use in the U.S. There is a strange lack of takeup

on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the only one-shot vaccine approved,
which would really help in tougher-to-vaccinate communities (it
doesn't require ultra-cold temperatures). States appear to be hording
J&J doses until they have enough to institute a mass program to reach
the underserved. This is a rerun of the equity question that hobbled the
early rollout somewhat.

A bigger problem could be the EU's proposed new rules

to cut exports of the vaccine for up to six weeks; the U.S. gets some of
its supply from there. They have not yet gone into effect, however.

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What about vaccinating the world? This is critical, because ultimately
our path forward out of this tragedy as a health and economic matter
relies on a global solution. Right now we have severe vaccine inequality
,
which threatens the world. The U.S. has not agreed to the global
proposal to take down IP protections for vaccines, and they haven't
really been pushed on it, certainly not by the domestic press. We've
zealously guarded our supply and let China take the lead

on vaccine diplomacy.

Eventually we will have a surplus, but we shouldn't wait to help the
world. We tie ourselves in knots on equity within the country and have
followed the completely unequal global strategy of wealth dictating
vaccine access. America First policies don't make sense in this
crisis.

Can you make it so this doesn't happen again? Congress says they're
working on it
,
though advance preparation is not our strong suit. Funding for public
health at the state and local level tops the list. Our response this
time unnecessarily led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths
,
so any fixes to that would be welcome. In a functioning government this
would actually top the list of priorities.

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Evolution on Resolution

More resolutions to nullify Trump-era regulations under the
Congressional Review Act are finally rolling in. The one that I
highlighted on Monday
,
the so-called "fake lender" rule, was introduced yesterday
.
This OCC rule enables federally chartered banks to rent out their
charter to non-bank lenders as a means to get around state interest rate
caps. Here's a two-page summary
.
The EPA's methane rule is also apparently on the chopping block
,
though I haven't seen that formally introduced. This joins the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission rule that I discussed Tuesday
.

There are really dozens of potential CRA resolutions available
, and "three"
isn't a great substitute with a little over a week to go before the
deadline. But that appears to be as far as the Democratic leadership
wants to go.   

What Day of Biden's Presidency Is It?

Day 66.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Chuck Schumer's Senate agenda

is "get a lot of things blocked by the filibuster until there's a
breakthrough." (HuffPost)

* Biden did speak up about the need to end abuse of the filibuster

at his press conference. (NBC News)

* The Suez Canal crisis could take weeks to fix
,
and ships are considering going all the way around Africa. (Bloomberg)

* Biden's foreign policy is stuck in neutral

and advocates are concerned. (Politico)

* Without legislative change, will Biden's pro-union stance be enough
?
(New York Times)

* AOC and other progressives getting secret meetings with Ron Klain
.
(Axios)

* Missouri blocking a voter-approved Medicaid expansion

over the funding. I thought the American Rescue Plan added federal
incentives for this making it actually worthwhile for states? (Kansas
City Star)

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