Dr. Anthony Fauci’s words and demeanor last week spoke volumes about the dramatic change in the federal government’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic under President Biden. Gone were the days when Fauci would need to calibrate his words so as not to offend a mercurial president. Gone were the days when he would be kept away from White House briefings for long stretches out of fear he would speak an uncomfortable truth.
And gone were the days when scientific rigor would be undercut by Donald Trump’s peddling unsanctioned miracle cures, his mocking of masks and hectoring governors about lockdowns, or his issuing unfounded and ultimately disproven proclamations that the virus was about to disappear as if by magic.
The quackery, neglect, bravado and blame gaming have been replaced with a seriousness about a crisis that has cost more than 400,000 American lives.
The nation’s leading infectious disease expert could not conceal his relief, even through the disciplined diplomacy that was seriously tested in the past year.
Fauci acknowledged to having “somewhat of a liberating feeling” with the arrival of a Biden administration that would “let the science speak.”
Americans who have felt the effects of the pandemic — on their health, on their pocketbooks, on their everyday lives — can rejoice that the White House briefings, which sometimes degenerated into propaganda sessions with Trump holding court and the scientists sidelined, will regain their relevance and credibility.
“One of the new things in this administration is, if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess,” Fauci told reporters Thursday. “Just say you don’t know the answer.”
As it should be.
The difference won’t be just about style. Biden signed a series of executive orders that suggested he would establish a level of centralized authority — and accountability — that the Trump administration resisted.
The Biden plan includes activating the Defense Production Act to bolster the supply of COVID-19 vaccines, calling for new guidelines for reopening schools and businesses, providing reimbursement for states struggling with costs and logistics of vaccine distribution and requiring masks on planes, on interstate trains and buses, in airports and on all federal property. What the new president describes as a “full-scale wartime effort” includes a goal of injecting 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days — a target that many experts regard as inadequate in light of the public health urgency. Asked about the criticism, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed that the administration would try to exceed that baseline.
Biden also introduced a $1.9 trillion plan to combat the virus and to steady an economy that has been reeling from the resulting shutdowns and costs. It would include $1,400 payments for most Americans.
Perhaps the most significant change from the denial and deflection Trump White House — so ready to blame states for all that went wrong — Biden has stated, “History is going to measure whether we are up to the task.”
At last, a pandemic that is killing thousands of Americans each day is being approached by the nation’s leader with the science and the seriousness it deserves.
