The NPR Politics Podcast - Here's Who Will Lead Biden's COVID Response

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Joe Biden has named his picks for top health posts as the nation faces a post-Thanksgiving pandemic surge. And Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for the coronavirus. A vaccine could receive emergency use authorization as soon as this week.This episode: White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, health correspondent Allison Aubrey, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Allison in Central Florida, and I'm watching my newly 11-year-old daughter play with her favorite birthday gift, a holiday Barbie she named Aisha the Fabulous. This podcast was recorded at... It is 2.05 p.m. on Monday, December 7th. Things may have changed by the time you hear them, but Aisha's namesake is still going to be running around in her pink Corvette. Okay, here's the show. Oh, that sounds awesome. And clearly your 11 year old has great taste in names and Barbies

and everything. So happy birthday to your 11 year old. That's so great. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ayesha Rostow and I cover the White House. I'm Alice Norbury. I cover health. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. As the pandemic surges, and right now we do appear to be in a pretty dark period, President-elect Joe Biden has announced the team that he would like to lead his coronavirus response. Mara, who stands out in these

announcements? Well, the first person who stands out is Javier Becerra, who is going to be the Health and Human Services Secretary. He is the Attorney General of California. He's been leading the legal fight to preserve the Affordable Care Act, leading the fight against President Trump's and some Republican governor's efforts to dismantle it. He would be the first Latino to head the department. He has had 25 years in Congress. He was in the leadership. He was chair of the Democratic caucus. So that really stands out. Joe Biden has also selected Jeff Zients to be the White House coordinator of the coronavirus response, kind of like a coronavirus czar.

Zients is a veteran of the Obama administration, and he's the guy who stepped in to fix the ACA website when it crashed. So he's a competent manager. And also Vivek Murthy is going to go back to his old job. He's going to be the Surgeon General. He's been that before, but he's also going to be working in the White House on COVID-19. And so really, this is, as with all the other appointments, it seems to be all about stability, all about, you know, competence, stability, experience. Yes, this is not about disrupting the system or draining the swamp, whatever that meant. This is about solving a gigantic problem. And you noted that Becerra would be the first Latino to lead HHS. And Biden has been facing a lot of pressure from various groups to have more people of color in top positions. So the

Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the NAACP, and others have just been pressing for more diversity among his cabinet picks. Right. And Becerra was in the mix for several jobs. He was discussed also as a potential AG, so a potential attorney general. Allison, can you talk to me about the pick for CDC? Because this is an agency that had, you know, for decades been kind of thought of as this agency gold standard around the world and really nonpartisan. But it's really been sidelined during this pandemic under Trump. So who did Biden pick to run the CDC? He has picked Rochelle Walensky. She is a really well regarded infectious diseases expert at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is an AIDS and HIV expert. She's been a leading voice during this pandemic

on issues ranging from, you know, the case for frequent testing, the importance of getting it right on vaccine distribution, the need to promote trust and immunization. She's very much of a scientist physician. She has published scientific papers. I have interviewed her several times, and she happens to be a very good communicator, which is a big, big plus here for the CDC. This is an agency that is translating or distilling very complicated science into consumer-friendly public health messages, which is not always, you know, an easy thing to do. We say that this this is a team that's all about competence and experience and science. But how will they be able to change things compared to what we've already

seen? Well, I think that Joe Biden believes that the what the president says, what his team says and does can have a huge impact, just like President Trump had a huge impact undermining people's faith in masks, kind of making masks into a political issue. Joe Biden thinks that his team can do the opposite. They can model behavior and clear, consistent guidance instead of mixed messages that will help people deal with the pandemic. He also has a health agenda beyond getting the coronavirus under control and getting people vaccinated. Remember, he wants to expand the Affordable Care Act and upgrade it. And Becerra at HHS will probably be fighting some rearguard action against people who want to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. But I would argue most Republicans in Congress have pretty much given up on that.

Instead, it'll be interesting to see what he and Joe Biden can do to expand the Affordable Care Act without legislation, because that's unlikely to pass to pass Congress. One thing I think it means very different messaging, right? I mean, getting through this pandemic means all of us doing the things that experts know work. And so it's as much of a cheerleading exercise in national leadership as anything else, or cheerleading is a big part of it. As Zeke Emanuel, one of Biden's coronavirus advisors put it to me, look, the goal here is to have everyone singing from the same hymnal. You know, you don't want competing messages from state and local leaders and the federal government. In terms of Becerra as the pick for HHS secretary, I think there is some criticism saying, you know, hey, is this the right person for this job? He is

not a medical doctor. We are in the middle of a pandemic. And I think, you know, scientists and doctors probably would have liked to have seen a doctor in that position. I think you need to think about the main goal here. His job is to, his job has been to fend off the attacks on the Affordable Care Act. And this is a big priority for the incoming president. He wants to strengthen Obamacare. So in many ways, it makes sense to have Becerra in that job and to look to fill these other positions such as CDC chief with high, you know, with very well regarded medical doctors,

which Biden has indeed done with this pick of Rochelle Walensky. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk a little bit more about the vaccine when we get back. Support for NPR and the following message come from UStudio. Use UStudio to host, manage, and distribute your company's public and private podcasts. Train remotely, improve communication, share product updates, and more. Plus, UStudio's SSO integrations and advanced analytics allow you to control user access and monitor engagement. No wonder companies like Nike, AT&T, and Dell trust UStudio. Get started now for as little as $1 per user.

Visit theletterustudio.com today for your personalized demo. The news moves fast. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast to keep up. We update stories as they evolve every hour. So no matter when you listen, you get the news as close to live as possible on your schedule. Subscribe to or follow the NPR News Now podcast. And we're back. Mara, before we get to the vaccine, we should talk about Rudy Giuliani. He has tested positive for the coronavirus, which is serious. Yes, there have been over 50 people who have been close to the president,

met with the president, been in these small maskless meetings at the White House with the president. Rudy Giuliani is one of them. And there's a tremendous number of people who have tested positive and some of them have gotten sick. So this is quite serious. It shows you what will happen when people gather in close quarters indoors without masks. And Rudy Giuliani has been traveling around the country going to these hearings, not wearing masks, you know, trying to overturn the election. So he's been around a lot of people. Yes, he's been around a lot of people.

Allison, we're all hoping for or waiting for the vaccine to come out. So we have to worry less about the kind of risk that, you know, Rudy Giuliani is facing right now. Where are we at right now with the vaccine? There's a big meeting coming up this Thursday. There's an advisory committee to the FDA that will meet in an open session to discuss emergency use authorization. This is for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. And if this committee likes what it hears, this vaccine could be authorized right away. But I should point out that supplies are going to be very limited at first. We've talked about distribution a number of times, and we know that it's not going to

just be at the CVS, you know, on the corner, you know, when the emergency authorization comes out, that it's going to go to the people who need it first. So can you talk a bit about that, especially since supplies are going to be so limited? Yeah, so healthcare workers and people in long-term care facilities, so nursing homes, are the top priority. They're the first group. But remember, everyone will need two doses, two shots, about a month apart. So Pfizer will have about 20 million doses or so available in the U.S. to start. That's enough to inoculate about 10 million people. We have 20 million health care workers or near that in the United States. So

it's going to take time to get these high priority groups vaccinated. I think for most of us, we're looking at, you know, mid 2021 before we can get our shots. And like everything else in this country right now, the public is divided on the vaccine and whether they'll take it. And there are all these concerns. We've had, you know, some former presidents like Barack Obama, I think George W. Bush, Bill Clinton have said that they would take it publicly to help with public trust. And maybe Biden will do that as well. Mara, what do you think about Trump's role in maybe assuaging some of his followers about the vaccine? That is a really good question, because Donald Trump has been focused almost exclusively on the vaccine. He really hasn't been focused on the pandemic itself.

He's taking credit for the fact that the vaccine has been developed so quickly. And it'll be interesting to see if he joins the other ex-presidents and Joe Biden, for that matter, who have said they will take the vaccine in public, get their injection on camera to show people that it's safe and that they should take it too. There's a lot of vaccine skepticism. A lot of it is among Trump supporters. And we'll see if he is willing or interested in doing anything to push back on that. I'm kind of thinking that people are going to jump in and be pushing and elbowing each other out of the way. I mean, I know we have a vaccine hesitancy issue in this country. But I think after what we've been through and all of the promising results that have come out about

the science of the safety and efficacy, I think people are ready for it. I mean, that's just a hunch. I know people are ready to get out of the House. I sure am. All right. Let's leave it there for now. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House.

I'm Alison Aubrey. I cover health. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.