Biden has made it his top priority to recover the United States from the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden uses several approaches to combatting COVID. He used the Defense Production Act to mobilize the production of vaccines, equipment, and ventilators. He also ordered the government to enforce a data-driven response to the COVID pandemic and created a COVID-19 Pandemic Testing Board. Biden has tied COVID-19 with racial inequality and racism in regards to disproportioned response and resource sharing with regards to racial communities. He has established the Health and Human Services COVID-19 Equity Task Force. Biden expanded access to care and treatments for combatting COVID-19 and started a travel policy to keep COVID from spreading by requiring masks to be worn on federally regulated modes of travel.
Across the nation, schools were closing to do remote learning. Many parents and their children found that remote learning was not as effective as in-person learning. Thus, parents demanded that schools reopen. Biden wasn't necessarily always on-board with the idea of getting America back to in-person learning. In a Press Briefing, the White House Press Secretary said how there should be a one day a week re-opening of schools. The Administration never actually had a plan for addressing parents concerns over schools not re-opening. In the end, Biden took a position to reopen schools. However, teachers unions were abusing the coronavirus pandemic as a means to call for strikes and push for remote learning. These strikes obstructed the reopening of schools for months. Eventually, the country was able to get back to in-person schooling.
President Trump signed the first COVID-19 Stimulus Package before he left office. In March, President Biden signed a second round of COVID-19 stimulus checks. The bill cost the U.S $1.9T dollars and helped some Americans recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
In May, Biden promised that the U.S would produce a billion vaccines. He achieved that goal and by the end of 2021, most Americans got vaccinated.
On August 27th, the Biden Administration released a report on the coronavirus pandemic origins and came to the conclusion that the origins of the virus were "inconclusive." However, there is evidence to prove that the coronavirus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab. In fact, since 2005, the United States government has been working with the Chinese government to do tests on SARS coronaviruses, including tests of these viruses on bats. The COVID-19 pandemic just so happens to be a SARS coronavirus (SARS.CoV2). The U.S government has been funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology via funding a company named EcoHealth Alliance. Records show that the Department of Health and Human Services received reports from EcoHealth Alliance that spoke of studies to ensure that bats and humans could coincide. Basically, they were studying the use of bats and viruses to somehow mitigate the risks of a pandemic. Shockingly, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was actually infecting bats with new modified coronaviruses that were made to be more infectious than an original strain of SARS. It has been alleged that the COVID-19 pandemic was being developed as a biochemical weapon. In the end, the virus leaked out of the Wuhan lab and the Chinese government lied about the virus in the early critical months that action needed to be taken to prevent a pandemic. As early as September, China knew that the virus had leaked out and that scientists in the Wuhan lab were infected. China told the world that the coronavirus was contained and not a highly spreadable communicable disease. They lied and the virus spread. The coronavirus was modified so that it could transmit to more people than naturally possible. This virus was made by design to be released into a population, and if that population reaches contact with other populations, the virus would spread at a rapid rate. There is no way that the Chinese government and health officials in the U.S government did not know about the coronavirus. Since the U.S has been giving the Chinese technology and funding to study these viruses since 2005, they would have known the tests being conducted. Evidently a corrupt few of the top health officials in the United States hid this pandemic research from past Presidents. Even President Trump did not know about the EcoHealth Alliance funding. In the early months of the pandemic, an effort was pursued to ensure social media giants censored any conversations of the Wuhan lab leak theory on their platforms and those who supported the theory were labeled conspiracy theorists. But in the end, the lab leak theory has been proven by the government's funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its foreknowledge of the Chinese' studies on SARS coronaviruses which led to the release of SARS.CoV2.
In an attempt to encourage Americans to get vaccinated and for eligible Americans to get a booster shot, President Biden received a COVID-19 booster shot. The event was on September 27th and began his habit of using the Eisenhower Executive Office building set for his speeches.
President Biden made it the policy of his Administration to institute vaccine mandates. Although emergency powers have been used before for infectious diseases during Gerald R. Ford's Administration, it did not come to a mandate of vaccination. No part of the Constitution gives the President any power to mandate any kind of health treatment or procedure outside of immediate Federal employment. Joe Biden issued a vaccine mandate that spilled over into non-Federal employees. He did this by ordering OSHA to mandate vaccinations for employees of businesses having 100 or more workers. Thus, most businesses in the U.S mandated vaccination for employment. This led to many individuals who did not want to receive the vaccine to lose their jobs. Many health care workers who worked hard to fight COVID-19 during the initial spike in hospitalizations were fired because of health care vaccine mandates. The vaccine mandate also led to the airport shortages across the nation that kept Americans from using basic transportation services. Furthermore, the people's right to freedom of choice was violated by the vaccine mandate as the government denied Federal employees health and religious exemptions. The vaccine mandates did achieve a goal to vaccinate most of the U.S population. But, the mandates also solidified the population of people who did not want to receive the vaccine, to never get vaccinated. It also destroyed trust in the Federal government for people that have a skeptical view of government vaccines. The question of whether or not the vaccine mandates are unconstitutional has been answered. The Supreme Court issued a decision that deemed the vaccine mandates on non-Federal and non-health care employees unconstitutional, thus ending said mandates for non-Federal and non-health care employees. Now, the executive branch will have no power to issue mandates on any employee outside of the Federal government and the health care sector. If a mandate is ever to be done on the private sector of the country, Congress will have to pass a law to mandate vaccines. The vaccine mandates were a mistake from the beginning. When Biden was President-Elect, he said he would not issue a vaccine mandate. Biden’s health care officials also reiterated that mandates would not be put in place. Dr. Anthony Fauci even said that the mandates would be unenforceable and violate personal freedom. In the end, Biden, the health care officials, and Dr. Anthony Fauci became the biggest supporters of vaccine mandates, contradicting their original stance on the policy.
In late 2021, most of America had been vaccinated. However, two coronavirus variants, Delta and Omicron spread rapidly. Individuals who were vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine were quickly re-infected with minor to severe symptoms. This raised the question as to how effective the Pfizer vaccine really is. Evidence is showing that the Pfizer vaccine is losing efficacy to new variants. The mistake made by Biden is that he bought billions of doses of Pfizer, and did not push for the use of the Johnson & Johnson, or Moderna vaccines which are more effective against COVID-19 and its variants. If Biden does not begin vaccinating Americans with Johnson & Johnson or Moderna, we will eventually see a reinfection of vaccinated individuals when new variants show up.
Biden has complained in the past that Trump did not do enough to stop COVID-19. Biden has also called Trump's travel ban on China and other countries "xenophobic." However, Biden has done the exact same thing that Trump did when he instated travel bans on South Africa in response to the Omicron variant. Trump was against lockdowns during the height of the pandemic with much scrutiny from the media, and Biden chose not to do lockdowns even when a surge of Omicron and Delta occurred, yet Biden received no scrutiny from the media. Trump purchased most of the Pfizer vaccine supply used during the first few months of Biden's Presidency, yet the media said that Trump wasn’t doing enough to get vaccines released. Biden has purchased more vaccines; however, he said that when he came into office that there were no vaccines. The media did not correct the President, and let him take credit for the vaccines. In each moment when Biden and Trump's policy on COVID-19 reached an agreement, the criticism on Trump was not portrayed on Biden.
President Biden failed to assess testing. Much like the situation during Trump's Presidency, COVID-19 tests were a mess to get a hold of. In the last month of Biden's first year, a COVID-19 test shortage occurred when millions of Americans went out to receive tests during the Omicron spike. The country ran out of test kits and people could not find out whether they were infected with COVID-19 or not. However, this situation was not scrutinized by the media when it occurred under Biden, only when it happened under Trump.
Biden has repeatedly blamed the unvaccinated for the surge in COVID-19. But the truth is, as Americans were being vaccinated, a surge of illegal immigrants came into the country. The government promised to test each illegal immigrant, but public records show that only 20% have actually been tested. This means that we don't know if those illegal immigrants have COVID-19 or not. The Delta variant surged during the heights of both nationwide vaccinations and the border crisis. Since many illegal immigrants entering the U.S are from countries other than Mexico, it is possible that the Delta surge came from these migrants. There are migrants from as far as the Middle East to Central America and even Africa that have entered the United States illegally. Some of the countries in these regions had a surge in the Delta variant cases. Furthermore, Pfizer which has been made into the main vaccination source by the Federal government has lost its efficacy to the new COVID variants and the original virus. We keep getting boosted with Pfizer, yet it keeps losing its efficacy against the coronavirus. Many of the people in hospitals are vaccinated and many of the cases in our country are of vaccinated people being re-infected. To say that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated is not true as it is a pandemic of many factors that can’t simply be enumerated to one issue. This messaging from the White House has hurt their vaccination strategy even further and has sown deeper polarization of the country. Another case of mixed messaging is the Federal government’s instating and revocation of Federal mask mandates three different times across 2021. These mandates and their back-and-forth removal and reinstatement have confused many Federal employees and military service members.
By the end of 2021, more people died from coronavirus than in 2020. This meant that more people died from COVID-19 under President Biden than under President Trump. When this became apparent, the media did not criticize Biden like they criticized Trump. Biden on the campaign trail said that no President should be in office if they have 200,000 deaths. Now that Biden has exceeded that under his Presidency, he has not called for his own removal. Even with more restrictive policies, criticism of Republican states for opening up, and instating unconstitutional vaccine mandates: President Biden still continues to play politics with the pandemic. Much of the successful operations that Biden has created are the same that Trump pursued. However, the plans he added did not help to stop COVID-19, and the truth is no virus can be completely contained. It is not Trump or Biden's fault for the deaths of 850,000 people. But, it is the offset consequence of the U.S government's funding of a shady Chinese lab and the Chinese government's lies about what they were developing, and when the virus actually leaked. Biden should demand reparations from the Chinese government for their dangerous tests and their lies about COVID origins. Also, Biden should order an immediate background check and internal investigation of all health agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services to determine who may be responsible for not providing oversight into the funding of EcoHealth Alliance which funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But instead of tackling these necessary and controllable problems, Biden has turned to using the pandemic for politics. He tied racial equity to pandemic response, failed to measure the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine (which the government continues to order despite its clear decrease in effectiveness against the coronavirus) and he blamed the unvaccinated for the pandemic, which in turn, only divided this country further.
By mid-December, the Omicron variant spread all throughout the United States. Biden's policies on COVID-19 began to break down as a COVID test shortage made it hard for people to get tested and only created long lines which helped spread COVID even further. The CDC then changed guidelines on cloth masks, urging Americans to get N-95 masks instead. The change in messaging and the failure of the Administration’s policies led Americans to question why they had been following guidelines for so long. Worst of all, vaccinated people were getting re-infected with coronavirus. By the time that the vaccines were given to most Americans, Biden should have pushed for the development of therapeutics. It was clear early on that studies showed Pfizer would be ineffective to future variants of coronavirus and continue to lose its effectiveness against existing ones. The Pfizer vaccine is continuing to lose efficacy but the government is still buying the company’s vaccines and will now also purchase their pills. With no change in policy or a push to use the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, COVID-19 will be a factor we will have to live with. In response to the early Omicron cases, Biden visited the National Institute of Health. There, Biden made a speech about Omicron and told the American people that he will expand booster vaccinations and urged Americans to get the booster. He also urged children to get vaccinated and also committed to creating a contingency plan for vaccinations.
On December 22nd, President Biden promised to release 500 million at-home COVID tests for free and a website where individuals could order them. Some disruptions occurred due to supply shortages, but the plan has rolled out and those who order the free tests will receive them in the mail.
In the wake of the coronavirus, two states, Mississippi and Texas were the first in the country to open up their states from coronavirus restrictions and mandates. This meant that no restrictions were in place to control COVID-19 when it comes to the citizens. Biden called Texas and Mississippi "neanderthals" for doing this. However, by the end of 2021 pretty much all the states in the country have opened up. Sadly, statistics show that the states that locked down during the pandemic actually had more deaths than those that decided to open. Liberal states sacrificed freedoms and their economy, yet failed to stop the spread of COVID. This showed that the coronavirus could not be controlled and just has to be something we all live with.
In direct contradiction to his COVID-19 policies, his past comments about Trump's response to COVID and Republican states' letting people decide on wearing masks and getting vaccinated, President Biden said that there is “no Federal solution" to stopping COVID-19. However, Biden has tried to handle everything from a Federal level and has even violated the Constitution with his short-lived vaccine mandates.
President Biden’s COVID-19 strategy is far from perfect. Much of his successful plans are the same as President Trump’s. Probably the best addition to the fight against coronavirus is Biden’s COVID-19 Testing Board. Other than that, he failed to create a dynamic treatment solution and vaccination choice so that Americans could choose what they wanted to do to protect from COVID.
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