“Virtually anyone and everyone in any category can start getting vaccinated,” said Fauci optimistically.
On key issues – like when every American who wants a vaccine can get it, when all students can return to the classroom and when life can take on an appearance of normality – Biden either contested or offered only a partial projection, admitting that he does not want to commit himself too much and later be found guilty. This contrasts sharply with its predecessor, which began to predict the end of the crisis almost as soon as it started.
His approach only seemed to be reinforced this week after disappointing news – and for some, surprising officials – from Johnson & Johnson. Fauci moderated his expectations for a “hunting season” after private talks between federal health officials and officials at the drug maker, who said he expected to have fewer doses of his vaccine available if authorized by the Food and Drug Administration.
“This was based on J&J – the Johnson product – taking considerably more doses than we now know they will have,” said Fauci this week in explaining his initial April target, adding that he now believes in restrictions on who is eligible for a vaccine it will fall in “mid to late May and early June”.
A person familiar with the process, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, told CNN that the more optimistic public comments were a reflection of private and optimistic conversations between the government and Johnson & Johnson. As the company was more hopeful in the past few weeks about what to expect in April, so were employees – and their public statements reflected that.
But expectations of a large dose increase were dashed when Johnson & Johnson moderated its projections. The company is still struggling to increase production at its Baltimore facility, and the government now believes there will be less than 7 million doses of its vaccine available initially if it is authorized, as expected, in the coming weeks.
Johnson & Johnson has a contractual obligation to supply the federal government with 100 million doses by the end of June.
“We are doing everything we can, working with the company, to accelerate its delivery schedule,” said Jeff Zients, coordinator of Biden’s coronavirus.
Instructional lesson
The Johnson & Johnson episode proved instructive to some within the White House, who remain eager to provide the public with good news about vaccine delivery and a tendency to normality, but have been concerned with making promises they cannot keep.
Biden will visit a Pfizer plant in Michigan on Friday, hoping to emphasize the government’s efforts to get doses in the arms of Americans quickly. The United States bought 300 million doses of the vaccine from the company and plans to deliver them ahead of schedule. But even with big commitments and fast-paced schedules, Biden is still cautious about naming a firm date on which every American who wants a chance can have one.
The concrete goals that Biden set, including vaccinating 1 million Americans a day, were extremely cautious, as the United States was almost on target when Biden took office.
And others – like his promise to have enough vaccines available to almost all Americans by the end of July – come with serious warnings. He said that even on that date many Americans will still have to wait due to the lack of personnel and paraphernalia to administer the shots.
At least in schools, Biden blamed communication errors for the messy timetable, although it remains unclear when the administration believes that all students – including high school students – can return to classrooms.
But elsewhere, Biden and his team are discovering that even following the science and listening to the experts – both of which they considered essential to their campaign speech – does not result in clear or straightforward answers to the questions that Americans are desperate for almost one year after the start of the pandemic.
Realistic goals
Biden’s aides say he is being realistic in the midst of an unpredictable and unprecedented health crisis, and does not want to raise Americans’ hopes, when they could easily be frustrated again by manufacturing confusions, resurgent variants or other invisible setbacks for return the country to normal.
He also took seriously the experience of the previous government, which offered several reopening and “flattening” terms that came and went, often without scientific basis.
At the beginning of the crisis, Trump offered the rosy name of “15 days to slow the spread” in the hope that the outbreak would only last a few weeks. When it became clear that this was not happening, Trump extended the guidelines to 30 days, but still offered deadlines with little to sustain them.
He told Americans that he wanted the country “open and eager to go to Easter” – a timeline that government health experts questioned privately. When that date came and went, authorities – including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner – pinned their hopes on the summer.
“I think you will see in June that much of the country is expected to return to normal, and the hope is that by July the country is really rocking again,” said Kushner last spring.
This also turned out to be wrong, as cases started to increase and states maintained their blocks.
In October, while his re-election campaign was languishing, Trump said the country was “bending the curve”, even when cases began to skyrocket. Biden used the isolated predictions of science to claim that his rival was not being frank with the American people.
“Be careful not to foresee things that you don’t know for sure what will happen, because then you will be held responsible,” Biden said during CNN’s city hall on Tuesday, describing the advice he received from health experts like Fauci.
He made the observation by answering a question about when the country would return to normal, which he longed for Christmas – almost a year from now. This is more than an autumn goal once offered by Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor, although even Fauci acknowledged on Wednesday that predicting “normality” was a matter of guesswork.
“It’s perfectly reasonable to say that. We don’t know,” he said of Biden’s Christmas projection during an interview on CNN. “The president made an estimate, which I think is quite reasonable.”
The day after Biden’s city hall, however, the White House said that even Biden’s Christmas forecast should not be taken as an absolute commitment.
“We are not in a place where we can predict exactly when everyone will feel normal again,” said press secretary Jen Psaki.
Broader projections
In some cases, the caution of Biden and his team in offering anything except broader projections of how and when their efforts to contain the pandemic will materialize has caused confusion.
The White House’s position on the reopening of schools was confused when Psaki, in explaining Biden’s promise, said that this could mean that only 50% of schools open one day a week.
She later said it was “not the ceiling” for the government’s aspirations, and Biden said on Tuesday that the White House’s confused position boiled down to “a communication error.”
But the White House still found itself caught between the desire to reopen to allow parents to get back to work and the teachers’ unions defending members wary of returning to classrooms without strict protections against the virus.
Even Biden’s attempts at clarification did not offer a date when he believed that every American student could return to personal learning. He said his goal was to have K-8 classes in classrooms five days a week within his first 100 days as president, but he could not offer a similar goal for high school students.
And in subsequent interviews, the government was unable to say explicitly whether vaccinating teachers should be a prerequisite for reopening schools, which the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in their guidelines not to be the case.
“These are really difficult things for which there are no clear answers,” said Jim Messina, who was President Barack Obama’s deputy chief of staff before running his reelection campaign. “And you saw a president who will continue to be very honest with the country, even if some people don’t want to hear it.”