President-elect Joe Biden painted a grim picture of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the worst was yet to come.
Biden also chided his predecessor for the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations, setting up what figures to be months if not years of haggling over who will deserve the credit once the inoculations begin to deliver some sense of normalcy to the public.
“We need to be honest,” Biden said in remarks delivered from Wilmington, Delaware. “The next few weeks and months are going to be very tough, a very tough period for our nation, maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic. I know it’s hard to hear, but it’s the truth.”
“So, we need to steel our spines for what’s ahead,” Biden added. “We need to follow even more closely the recommendations to slow the spread of the virus.”
The tone was a sharp contrast with President Trump, who was frequently criticized for offering happy talk about the pandemic. Trump regularly predicted that there was “light at the end of the tunnel,” that the country had put out the worst raging fires and need only contend with smoldering “embers.”
Trump also prioritized economic reopening and pushed for a return to normal as early as Easter, but caseloads and deaths continued to climb. “I can see a return to normalcy in the next year,” Biden said, renewing his pledge to deliver 100 million vaccinations during his first 100 days in office.
Biden urged Trump to “clearly and unambiguously” promote both mask-wearing and the vaccine during his final weeks as president. Left unspoken was the fact that Trump has spent much of his time continuing to contest the results of the election, which he has maintained was stolen from him through voter fraud in multiple battleground states. Trump did sign into law a new COVID-19 stimulus bill after complaining about its contents, and congressional Democrats have taken up his call to increase individual payments to $2,000 from $600.
While Biden praised “companies, doctors, scientists, researchers, and clinical trial participants, and Operation Warp Speed for developing the vaccines quickly,” he also said the effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should.
“A few weeks ago, the Trump administration suggested that 20 million Americans could be vaccinated by the end of December,” Biden continued. “With only a few days left in December, we have only vaccinated a few million so far.”
During the campaign, Trump said that Biden’s solution to COVID-19 was more lockdowns and the cancellations of holidays. Biden instead took credit for his prescience about the virus. “Critics said I was being too alarmist and negative,” the president-elect declared. “But as I’ve said all along, I will tell it like it is when it comes to COVID. … We just crossed 330,000 deaths.”
Biden made Trump’s management of the pandemic central to his campaign. According to exit polls, he won voters who considered the outbreak their top issue by 66 percentage points. He carried those who thought containing the virus was more important than reopening the economy by 60 points. Those who preferred rebuilding the economy went for Trump by 58 points.
“Things will get worse before they get better,” Biden said on Tuesday.
