“Science will always be at the forefront of my administration,” President Biden tweeted in December, one of many such statements promising that he’d put science first.
It turns out that his promise came with a huge asterisk attached. That is, Biden is willing to trust the science so long as it doesn’t offend the teachers unions.
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This week, a bewildering sequence of events took place in the White House that likely would have led to a media firestorm had it occurred under Biden’s predecessor.
On Wednesday, Biden’s chosen Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky stated an obvious point during a White House coronavirus briefing that has been evident for months and backed up by a growing body of evidence: “Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools.”
But Biden, despite his campaign vow to reopen schools within his first 100 days, has been reluctant to confront teachers unions, which are the biggest obstacle to reopening schools.
So later in the day, White House press secretary Jen Psaki took the podium and walked back Walensky’s remarks. She said, “They have not released their official guidance yet from the CDC on the vaccination of teachers and what would be needed to ensure the safe reopening of schools.”
That evening, when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked Walensky about vaccinating teachers, she once again clarified the science.
She talked about how she supported giving priority vaccination to teachers and did endorse Biden’s plans to provide more funding to schools to implement various safety measures. But she reiterated that “the science tells us that if we can do the proper mitigation measures … that we can reopen schools safely even if all of the teachers are not vaccinated.”
Asked about this in Thursday’s press briefing, Psaki said, “Dr. Walensky spoke to this in her personal capacity. Obviously, she’s the head of the CDC, but we’re going to wait for the final guidance to come out so we can use that as a guide for schools around the country.”
This is absurd.
When he appointed her to be one of the top public health officers, Biden touted her as a “world-class physician” who was “one of the nation’s foremost experts on the testing, treatment, and eradication of viruses.”
He said that “she’s uniquely qualified to restore morale and public trust.”
Given those credentials, it’s odd to pretend as if Walensky was just riffing on her opinion about school reopenings. She was stating what has been clear based on the overwhelming data from many schools that have safely reopened and remained open even through the peak of the pandemic.
The country just went through a campaign in which one of the primary arguments Biden made was that unlike former President Donald Trump, he would trust the science and rely on experts to determine his policy response to COVID-19.
Now that he is actually in office, however, he is playing politics because he is too afraid of alienating a key Democratic constituency.
