First came Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with an update on the number of patients inoculated, rate of adverse reactions, and a dire warning that some 90,000 people will die from COVID-19 in the next four weeks.
Then it was the familiar voice of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease official, on the Zoom call with journalists delivering a rundown on the effects of new variants of the virus on treatments and vaccines.
It was only after the scientists had spoken that Andy Slavitt, the administration’s deputy coordinator for pandemic response, chimed in, explaining that it was appropriate for him to speak after the experts.
“It’s important to send the message to the public that the White House respects and will follow the science, and the scientists will speak independently,” he said. “And that our core values of science, public health, and equity are going to drive our actions here at the White House.”
This is no longer the Trump show, he might as well have said.
Members of the White House coronavirus response team spoke to journalists for an hour on Wednesday in what is expected to be a three-times-per-week occurrence, designed to draw a line under the previous administration’s strategy.
“So we’re bringing back the pros to talk about COVID in an unvarnished way,” President Biden said a day earlier. “Any questions you have, that’s how we’ll handle them because we’re letting science speak again.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious diseases specialist and author of Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science, welcomed the commitment but warned that a revamped communications effort would only go so far.
“There’s no question things are better now, in terms of implementing the science, creating a national strategy, and communicating,” he said. “But there’s still going to be a lot of bumps in the road, and it’s really important they are not too inward-looking, that they are not subject to groupthink in government but listening to scientists in research universities.”
The pandemic is the biggest challenge facing the new president, who has already warned the national death toll is likely to pass 500,000 next month.
The new briefings represent a shift from the way former President Donald Trump’s freewheeling style dominated the message. He took a place at the center of the White House briefing room, operating as master of ceremonies for task force appearances.
He would often think aloud, musing whether it might be possible to treat COVID-19 with detergent, much to the obvious horror of scientists such as Dr. Deborah Birx alongside him, and repeatedly advocated the use of unproven treatments such as hydroxychloroquine.
On one occasion, he undermined his own messaging, saying he would be unlikely to wear a mask, moments after he appeared in front of reporters to recommend that everyone wear masks.
“I just don’t want to be doing it,” he said. “Somehow sitting in the Oval Office, behind that beautiful Resolute Desk, the great Resolute Desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens … I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself.”
And his rosy view that the pandemic would soon be over was frequently at odds with the assessment of his own experts.
Biden said the new briefings were designed to rebuild confidence in the federal government by presenting the unvarnished facts.
“I’ll always level with you about the state of affairs,” he said.
The president also issued a memo designed to reverse what the White House said was the spread of political meddling in scientific research.
“Improper political interference in the work of Federal scientists or other scientists who support the work of the Federal Government and in the communication of scientific facts undermines the welfare of the Nation, contributes to systemic inequities and injustices, and violates the trust that the public places in government to best serve its collective interests,” the memo said.
Just a week before Biden was sworn in, it emerged that Trump appointees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were reassigned after it emerged they were involved in publishing memos questioning the severity of climate change without proper scientific approval.
