President Biden is discovering that candidate Biden was tragically wrong in saying government policy can control a pandemic.
While campaigning for president, Biden repeatedly said former President Donald Trump did not have a plan for the coronavirus response while Biden did. Well, if Biden did have a plan, it is not working, at least not anymore. On Sept. 20 last year, the seven-day fatality average was 773. As of Sept. 20, 2021, the seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths is 2,087. Biden’s seven-day average is nearly triple what Trump’s was a year ago and the highest level since February.
The reality is that numerous factors affect the fluctuating death rates in viral pandemics, most of which have nothing to do with public policy. Biden’s rank politicization of the coronavirus last fall was demagogic. Since he took office, Biden has benefited from the vaccines bequeathed to him by Trump, but Biden’s “death count” has suffered because of the rise of the delta variant. It would be as wrong to blame Biden for the variant as it was wrong for him to overstate the case against Trump.
The horrible death statistics in the past month occurred even though Biden enjoyed one advantage Trump didn’t have, that of hindsight. Biden had the benefit of a full year of research into COVID-19. Trump faced the pandemic when the entire world was uncertain what COVID-19 was and how to deal with it properly.
Biden defenders like to point out how many Republicans are against vaccinations so as to blame them for the rising death count. And yes, vaccine hesitancy has played a huge role in this summer’s new wave of deaths — but vaccine hesitancy has been strong in Democratic constituencies, too. And it is worth noting that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris themselves created a lot of skepticism of vaccines during last year’s campaign. Both, especially Harris, fearmongered their supporters into believing that vaccines under Trump were not to be trusted. Biden emphasized there were dangers if the vaccines were rolled out quickly. He has changed his tune since becoming president.
Biden is learning it is easier to criticize a president’s response during a pandemic than it is to implement one. As someone who has been involved in the government for nearly half a century, Biden should know this. If he knew, he did not care. He weaponized the fear of the pandemic into political votes. However, any objective evaluation will show that Biden’s plan is not more successful than Trump’s.
