It was a moving moment when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took a candlelight vigil to mark a milestone that still seems unfathomable, the loss of 500,000 Americans to the coronavirus.
“For loved ones who are left behind: I know very well. I know what it’s like not to be there when it happens. I know what it’s like when you’re there holding your hands, there’s a look in your eyes and they run away,” he said. the president who had his share of family tragedies.
But there is a paradox, now that the recent news about Covid-19 has become largely positive. This has sparked accusations that the government is being too pessimistic and needs to ease the state of emergency this summer.
However, it is a tightrope act. Politically speaking, Biden does not want to predict better times ahead; better to keep expectations low and exceed them. From a medical point of view, Anthony Fauci does not want Americans to prematurely abandon masks and social distance, so that there is no other virus outbreak, as it did last year.
This is a repeat of the debate that raged during Donald Trump’s last year, when he and many Republicans denounced the state blockades – “Liberate Michigan!” – and many Democrats have accused them of putting profits on people.
Among the positive signs: Hospitalization rates have plummeted to the lowest level since the beginning of November. New cases are decreasing (less than 60,000 on Monday), as are daily deaths (less than 1,500 on Monday). These numbers are still very high, but they are a long way from when we sometimes lost more than 4,000 Americans a day. Pfizer and Moderna say they could increase the 75 million doses they have administered so far to 220 million doses by the end of March.
TRUMP VACUUM PUTS LOCAL OFFICIALS IN THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE MEDIA
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes: “Once the old and vulnerable are genuinely protected, the death toll drops and vaccines are generally available, the toll emergency measures take on almost everyone – homeowners. businesses, university students, churches, parents, school children, the lonely and the elderly – will really become worse than any remaining coronavirus threat. “
It is a pity that there are no more open schools, although these are local decisions and teacher unions are sometimes an obstacle. It is horrible that so many people remain unemployed and restaurants and other businesses are closing. There are also mental health problems for so many parents and children who have been home for so long.
Douthat says: “The danger of overly cautious and waiting for Biden and Fauci’s Christmas rhetoric is that it provides coverage and encouragement for fearful officials to extend the entire set of emergency measures for many unnecessary months.”
But part of the reason for the reluctance is the way the virus continued to roar during a year of Trumpian rhetoric “around the corner”, especially after Thanksgiving and Christmas trips and family reunions. And there are still X factors as variants of the virus.
When Fauci is asked in interviews whether Americans will still have to wear masks until 2022, he says it is possible that he is mistaken in his defense. When CNN asked if the country could not return to normality for a year or more, Fauci replied that it could not say: “Because then it will be a catchphrase that is not true. I am saying: we do not know.”
Fauci is again becoming a target of the right, criticism perhaps fueled by his comments that Trump did nothing to minimize Covid.
“Your job is to convey information to the public, not to threaten condemnation, nor to persuade or induce us to do things,” says the National Review. Still, Fauci “is underestimating the vaccine’s effectiveness” and insisting, to quote him, “a baseline that is so low that it is virtually no threat”.
The NR says: “This is a disqualifying statement – an insane standard that no free society would ever surrender to. For Fauci, the herd’s immunity is effectively 99 percent.”
SUBSCRIBE HOWIE’S MEDIA’S BUZZMETER PODCAST, A RIFF OF THE HOTTEST STORIES OF THE DAY
Remember that Fauci’s job, which he has been doing since the Reagan administration, is to provide medical advice. He is not a policy maker. He doesn’t run at all. Whether he is overly cautious or not, it is the president, governors, mayors and county executives who will decide the pace of the reopening, along with the Americans individually, based on their actions.
I want to embrace the notion that Covid will be largely defeated by the summer. But so far, only 6% of the country has been fully vaccinated. I hope that better times are a reality, not a mirage, but the simple fact is that we are not there yet.