WASHINGTON (AP) – For almost a year it was Trump’s show. Now President Joe Biden is calling on the nation’s leading scientists and public health experts to regularly inform the American public about the pandemic that has claimed more than 425,000 lives in the United States.
Starting on Wednesday, management experts will give talks three times a week on the state of the outbreak, efforts to control it and the race to deliver vaccines and therapies to end it.
Expect a stark contrast to the last government’s instructions, when public health officials were repeatedly harmed by a president who shared his unproven ideas without hesitation.
“We are bringing the professionals back to talk about COVID in a bare and raw way,” Biden told reporters on Tuesday. “Any questions you have, that’s how we’re going to deal with them, because we’re letting science speak again.”
The new instructions, which began just a week after the start of Biden’s term, are intended to be an explicit rejection of his predecessor’s approach to the coronavirus outbreak.
President Donald Trump claimed the center stage and confused the message of the country’s leading public health experts in the early days of the virus and finally gagged them as the number of deaths from the pandemic became more pronounced.
The new briefings are part of Biden’s attempt to rebuild public confidence in institutions, especially in the federal government, with a commitment to share the bad news with the good.
“I will always be honest with you about the state of affairs,” he said on Tuesday, repeating a central promise from his inaugural speech.
It’s a message that helped get Biden to the White House. As a candidate, he warned that the nation was facing a wave of coronavirus cases in what would be a “dark winter”; Trump, for his part, falsely claimed that the worst of the virus was over.
Dr. David Hamer, professor of global health and medicine at Boston University School of Public Health, said receiving briefings from health officials “based on serious science” would go a long way in improving public perception of the vaccine.
“There is a certain hesitation about the vaccine and therefore educating people about the vaccine, how it works, how safe it is and how it can protect against the disease, but also slow transmission is very important,” he said.
The stakes for Biden, whose presidency depends on how to deal with the pandemic and the biggest vaccination campaign in global history, could hardly be bigger.
Biden is pressing a tired population to commit again to measures of social distance and wearing masks, pointing to scientific models that suggest that practices can save 50,000 lives in the coming months. He has insisted that members of his government model the best behaviors for the country.
These messages found few advocates in the previous administration, as Trump openly disrespected the science-based guidelines of his own administration. Facial coverage was scarce at his reelection rallies and social distance was almost nonexistent.
In the weeks leading up to Biden’s inauguration, the United States broke records in new cases and reported deaths almost every day, as many states imposed expensive restrictions to slow the spread of the virus. Even so, Trump restricted media appearances by his top scientists and public health officials and continued to spread misinformation.
Asked by CNN last week whether the Trump administration’s lack of candor about the virus has cost lives, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist, replied, “You know, it is very likely that it will.”
The Trump administration stopped regular scientific briefings at the beginning of the pandemic, after Trump expressed anger at the terrible warnings from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, in February about the threat of the virus.
Trump later told the Bob Woodward newspaper that he was “minimizing” to avoid creating panic about the virus. Aides said he was also trying to protect the economy to increase his prospects for re-election.
When the pandemic settled in the United States last spring, Trump took the position of a “wartime president”, holding extensive meetings at the White House, where he – not science – was the star. Trump pointed to strong television ratings for his first appearances and timed the sessions to overtake the national evening news.
In the instruction room, Trump shared his skepticism about facial coverings, despite scientists’ widespread conclusions that wearing a mask helps prevent the virus from spreading. He wondered aloud if the Americans could ingest toxic bleach to kill the virus like cleaning a surface. He encouraged governors to “reopen” their states, even as the number of cases increased.
Wednesday’s briefing will be conducted virtually, rather than in person at the White House, to allow questions from health journalists and to maintain a set time, regardless of the West Wing schedule. He will have Jeff Zients, the coordinator of the Biden government to respond to the pandemic; his deputy, Andy Slavitt; Fauci; Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chairman of Biden’s equality task force COVID-19; and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC.
This happens when government scientists, led by Fauci, have made regular appearances in the media to share their experience in television and podcast interviews. Last week, Fauci called his current circumstances “liberating” and said that “one of the news in this government is, if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess”.
Hamer said the Trump administration has created enough confusion and distrust around the coronavirus and vaccine that the Biden government has a long way to go to rebuild public confidence, adding that some Americans may never change.
“It will take time. It is difficult to say exactly how much damage was done, ”he said. “I think there may be pockets within the country that may be more resistant to hearing the evidence, because they may have thought about what they heard in the past. But others can still be influenced and educated. “
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Alexandra Jaffe, editor of the Associated Press, contributed to this report.