President Joe Biden made several uncontroversial and controversial statements in an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday.
Between them:
In some other matters there were some doubts.
In 2024, his plan is to run for re-election, but no concrete decision has been made. Regarding the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, Biden said he has not seen or been informed of the documents found by the FBI, but his administration has thoroughly reviewed them as they relate to national security secrets. As for inflation, he did not promise that it would come down, but argued that it would be brought under control.
To say that Biden rarely gives wide-ranging interviews is an understatement.
The US leader often speaks to reporters, but almost never holds press conferences or gives long interviews.
That makes his interview, conducted last week and aired Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” worth studying, and we could have devoted an entire newsletter to any of the above topics.
The White House felt the need to make clear, on the pandemic and China and Taiwan, that Biden’s words did not amount to a change in policy.
Given how emphatically Biden has stated that the pandemic is over, let’s look at this.
“The pandemic is over,” Biden told CBS’ Scott Pelley as they walked through the Detroit Auto Show last week. “We still have a problem with Covid. We are still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”
He added, gesturing to the auto show floor: “If you notice, nobody is wearing masks. All appear to be in very good condition. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example.”
It’s a complicated view that Biden is taking because, as the CNN report points out, the US government is still calling Covid-19 a public health emergency and will continue to do so until at least October 13, when this statement is ready for possible renewal. .
Biden is right that there is more work to be done. His administration is seeking additional money from Congress to help develop vaccines, among other things, and Biden’s statement could remove any urgency that remains with lawmakers.
Republicans on Capitol Hill said Monday that Biden’s words would effectively close the door on approving new money.
“If it ends, then I wouldn’t suspect that any more money is needed,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas and a member of the party leadership, told CNN’s Manu Raju.
There is a clear lag among Americans receiving booster shots. Most of the country has been vaccinated, but fewer than half of those eligible have received a first booster, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Polls show that some parents of children younger than 5 who are eligible for the vaccine are skeptical about getting the vaccine for their children. Forty-three percent of those parents said they would definitely not vaccinate their child, according to a July Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
Vaccines, other than boosters, may not completely stop infection, but they are still the best way to prevent a serious outcome of Covid-19, such as hospitalization or death.
There are tens of thousands of documented cases of Covid-19 each month and hundreds of deaths each day, numbers the CDC expects will remain stable rather than fall or rise.
US officials have flirted with declaring a pandemic in the past. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser and the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in April that the country was “out of the pandemic phase.”
A day later, he told CNN that his comments had been mischaracterized and that he did not mean to say the pandemic was over.
Fauci and other experts have long said the US will have to live with the virus. That seems to be the case now as the intervening months have seen multiple developments.
Immunity wanes over time, but nearly every American now has some level of immunity, either through previous infection or vaccination.
The CDC ended recommendations for social distancing and quarantine as means of controlling the virus and eased mitigation recommendations for schools.
Treatments such as the antiviral Paxlovid, which Biden received when he contracted Covid-19 over the summer, have helped reduce deaths.
People are still dying: 425 a day, on average, and more than 13,000 last month, according to data kept by Johns Hopkins University. They are too many. But it’s a far cry from a year ago, when the daily average of deaths was well over 2,000.
Whether the pandemic is officially over or not, Americans continue to return to a more normal life. Most Americans, 57 percent, said in an Axios-Ipsos survey released this month that they are at least somewhat worried about the virus. However, a minority, 28%, said they had distanced themselves in the past week. A slightly larger minority, 37%, said they had worn a mask more than occasionally. And a strong majority, 64%, said they had gone out to eat.
Almost half, 46%, said they had returned to their pre-Covid-19 lifestyle.
Biden clearly sees ending the pandemic as key to his presidency, and at least partly blames that on how voters perceive him.
When Pelley asked Biden why his presidential approval rating was “well below 50%,” Biden almost immediately pointed to the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.
BIDEN: I think you’ll agree that the impact on the psyche of the American people as a result of the pandemic is profound. Think how that has changed everything. You know, people’s attitudes about themselves, their families, the state of the nation, the state of their communities. And so there’s a lot of uncertainty out there, a lot of uncertainty.
He added that America has surpassed 1 million deaths as a result of Covid-19.
“My point is that it takes time. We were left in a very difficult situation. it was a very difficult time. Very hard.”
