Joe Biden Missed His Golden Opportunity to Attack the Pandemic
One of the best ways Joe Biden could have attacked the pandemic and boosted the US's vaccination rate would have been to fight for Medicare for All, or at least a public option. He refused to do so.
President Joe Biden pauses as he starts to give remarks on his administration’s response to the surge in COVID-19 cases across the country in Washington, DC, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
Last Thursday, the Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden’s vaccine-or-test mandate for businesses with more than a hundred employees. The ruling was a blow for the Biden administration — particularly to its efforts to get Americans vaccinated, which have been sluggish in recent months amid widespread hesitancy and skepticism of the jabs.
Despite the fact that the vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe infections, hospitalizations, and death from COVID-19, just 36 percent of Americans today are fully vaccinated with a booster and about a quarter have not even gotten a single dose. A poll from September found that more than 80 percent of the unvaccinated did not plan on getting the shots.
The court’s ruling comes at a particularly bad time for the White House. The Omicron variant is surging across the country, bringing with it record-high COVID hospitalizations and case numbers, and new lows for the president’s approval numbers.
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