National Review
Biden admonishes reporter for questioning whether the vaccine’s goal is ambitious enough: ‘Give me a break’
President Biden rejected a reporter at a news conference on Thursday, who questioned whether the new government’s coronavirus vaccine target is ambitious enough. Biden set a goal to vaccinate 100 million Americans during his first 100 days in office. During the press conference, Biden called the Trump administration’s distribution of coronavirus vaccines a “terrible failure so far”, warning that “things will continue to get worse before they get better”. However, the seven-day moving average for coronavirus vaccine doses administered to Americans is currently at 912,000, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. (On Wednesday alone, 1.6 million doses were administered.) This indicates that Biden’s administration is not far from its goal of vaccinating one million Americans a day. On Thursday, Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller asked Biden if the vaccination target was “high enough” as “it’s basically where the US is now”. “When I announced it, you all said it was not possible. Come on, give me a break, man, ”replied Biden. “It’s a good start, a hundred million.” Internal projections from the Trump administration showed that the U.S. could administer at least 170 million doses by the end of April, two Trump administration officials told Bloomberg. During the press conference, Biden also announced that he would invoke the Defense Production Act to “speed up the manufacture of everything needed to protect, test and vaccinate and care for our people”. Biden warned that the number of deaths from coronavirus infections would reach 500,000 in February. More than 408,000 Americans died of COVID-19 on Thursday.