This is the blunt President Biden. The pandemic will get worse before it gets better, he says. We could see 500,000 deaths by the end of next month. But it will get better.
Biden, who is calling it a full-scale wartime effort said at the White House on Thursday that he was signing the Defense Production Act in order to speed vaccine and supplies and to “take care of our people.” Invoking the DPA was a step Donald Trump refused to take.
The Washington Post reports Biden offered “a sober assessment about the crisis. “We didn’t get into this mess overnight,” he said in remarks at the White House. He said it would take months to get Americans vaccinated. “We will get through this. We will defeat this pandemic.””
The New York Times reports it’s unclear where the additional supply will come from:
Local officials have expressed a hope that the Biden administration would step up vaccine production to make second doses available for the expanded pool of eligible people. Production of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines authorized in the United States are running flat out, and it is not clear whether the administration could significantly expand the overall supply any time soon.
Biden will release a 200-page document entitled “National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness” that not only provides an outline for a response to the disease but also shows the government is doing something publicly to slow the pandemic. He did not mince words about his predecessors efforts.
