The NPR Politics Podcast - How Much Credit, Blame Does Biden Deserve For The State Of The Pandemic?

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Vaccination rates are trending up and deaths are trending down since President Biden took office—but another hundred thousand Americans have died since he was sworn in. Public health experts suggest it was probably too late to prevent them. Biden's nearly two trillion dollar relief bill is set to be voted on later this week. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, health correspondent Allison Aubrey, and congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell.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

Hello, NPR politics team. This is Luther calling from Kansas City. I'm currently sitting in my car after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. After I record this message, I'll be headed to work where I test COVID samples for the Moderna vaccine trials. This podcast was recorded at 2.04 p.m. on Wednesday, the 24th of February. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be testing COVID samples, and hopefully my Pfizer antibodies don't get called into HR for having a conflict of interest. Anyway, enjoy the show. Well, thank you for doing all that you do to keep us all safe. This is a great timestamp. He deserves a vaccine. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And health correspondent Allison Aubrey is here with us too.

Hey. Hey, great to be here. Glad to have you with us. Now, we invited you here to mark what is yet another grim milestone. Earlier this week, the U.S. crossed the 500,000 mark. 500,000 Americans have now died from the coronavirus. And these are just absolutely awful numbers. Allison, and you have been here every step of the way with us. Is this by chance going to be the last really big, ugly milestone that we have to talk about?

You know, I think there's a lot to suggest that we are nearing the tail end. Cases are falling pretty substantially. Just today, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said over the past week, the average daily cases have, new cases have declined 25%. Over two weeks, it's more like 40%. Deaths are declining too. 35% reduction this week to just under 2,000 deaths a day. So that is a lot of progress. But I'll remind folks that when you hear 35% drop, that's great. But the reality, 2,000 a day, that's still about a person every minute. So the virus is still circulating. That's why there's such a focus on getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible.

Mara, President Biden made a speech early this week, addressed the nation, memorializing the suffering that the country has been through during the pandemic, the loss of life. There are people we knew. There are people we feel like we knew. Read the obituaries and remembrances. The son who called his mom every night just to check in. The father's daughter who lit up his world. The best friend who was always there, the nurse, the nurse and nurses, but the nurse who made her patients want to live. And he spoke specifically to family members who have lost people to COVID-19. I know what it's like to not be there when it happens.

I know what it's like when you are there holding their hands. There's a look in your eye and they slip away. That black hole in your chest, you feel like you're being sucked into it. The survivor's remorse, the anger, the questions of faith in your soul. You know, Biden has made it a priority to honor the COVID dead. This is the second memorial service like this he's had. One was around the inauguration, and this time he was on the South Lawn of the White House with candles around him. And he said in those remarks that the reason why these rituals are important, he said, the rituals help us cope and help us honor those we loved. And as a nation,

we can't let this go on. But I think that what he was saying was this kind of ceremony actually helps people get over their loss. But it's important for him to mark these deaths and to acknowledge the incredible toll that COVID has taken, which is a huge contrast to his predecessor. Allison, I'm thinking back, Mara mentioned that on the eve of his inauguration, Biden held this memorial for the 400,000 Americans who at that point had died from COVID. And that night he said, to heal, we must remember. Barely more than a month later, and 100,000 more people had died. Is there any way of knowing whether something could have been done differently or better in the first month of his presidency to reduce that toll?

You know, I don't think so. I think the die was cast. I mean, if you look back to what a lot of infectious disease folks were saying when we were beginning to see these fall surges, you started to hear lots of folks say, look, we're seeing an increase in cases, the reproduction rate is high. This is climbing fast, it's going to be a tough winter, you know. And that's exactly what we saw. The virus just was just circulating too widely for anybody to be able to put the brakes on that quickly. So conversely, now President Biden has been in office for a month. The cases peaked right around inauguration and have been declining ever since. And it's been a very dramatic drop.

Can he take any credit for that? I think the administration can take some credit for strong messaging, for strong transparency, just on vaccine distribution, how it's going, where the snags are, what we needed to do to ramp it up, and for doing as much as possible to ramp it up in an equitable way. Right now, about 13% of the population is vaccinated. We're up to about 1.4 million shots a day, somewhere between 1.4 and 1.7. So yeah, I think they can take credit for accelerating the pace, looking at where the snags were, but I don't think they can take credit for the drop in cases we're seeing now.

But Allison, what is responsible for the drop? It's been actually pretty dramatic. Well, I think two things, seasonality and behavior, right? So there is a seasonal ebb and flow to the virus. I don't think we're fully feeling the effects of vaccination yet. But if you look at areas that have had a lot of infections, so counties in New Jersey or New York, where 40% of people now have some protection, because either they were infected with the virus leading up to this or vaccinated, you now see at 40, 45%, transmission starts to slow down, right? Reproduction goes down.

So it's a combination of those factors. I want to talk about one last thing, which is that we got some new information today about what could be the third approved vaccine in the U.S. This is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. It's up for FDA consideration later this week. What can you tell us about it? Well, FDA advisors are going to meet on Friday, so it could be approved within hours of that meeting.

Today, Jeff Zients, a White House COVID advisor, said that they anticipate three to four million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine being distributed next week if the authorization is made by the FDA. Johnson & Johnson vaccine being distributed next week if the authorization is made by the FDA. Johnson & Johnson has said it aims to deliver 20 million doses by the end of March. So we're not going to see this overnight big, big increase in the supply, but pretty quickly adding 20 million more doses is significant. And Zient said that they're working with the company to try to

accelerate the pace of this timeframe because the company, Johnson & Johnson, is under contract to deliver 100 million doses by June. I mean, bottom line, what Zients was saying is, look, we want everybody to know that as soon as authorization is given, they're not going to waste any time getting this vaccine into people's arms. Allison, we are going to let you get back to reporting. But thank you so much, as always, for coming on the pod. Thank you, Tam. It's great to be here. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, the latest on President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief proposal. In recent mass shootings, people have been targeted for who they are or who they worship. But on June 28, 2018, people were targeted for the job they do at a newspaper.

Listen to the new series from NPR's Embedded about the survivors at the Capital Gazette. And we are back. And Kelsey Snell, you have joined us. Hello. Hello. You cover Congress. I do. And we have been talking about this for weeks, which is a good thing because it is a lot of money. But just wanted to check in with you again about where things stand with President Biden's COVID relief proposal. From where we are on Wednesday, House leaders are promising that there will be a vote on the bill in the House on Friday, and then they will send it over to the Senate. We are still waiting to find out whether or not the Senate parliamentarian is going to allow the $15 minimum wage increase that is included in the House bill to go forward in the Senate. It's a question of

Senate budget rules. And it's not totally clear whether or not the $15 minimum wage fits into those budget rules. If the parliamentarian does rule it in, it opens up a whole different Pandora's box of arguments within the Democratic Party about whether or not they actually have unanimous agreement about pushing forward with a $15 minimum wage. But for now, that question is on the back burner as they wait for an answer. So over time, as we have talked about the elements of this $1.9 trillion proposal, there's sort of this short laundry list of items that we always talk about money for schools, money for state and local governments, money for vaccine distribution, and an extension of expanded unemployment benefits for people affected by the pandemic.

But that doesn't actually add up to $1.9 trillion. And Kelsey, you have been looking at some of the other items in this bill. And that is where it gets really interesting. Yeah. So I think some of the things that I'm following closely are these changes that Democrats have been promising for addressing poverty and addressing the needs of people who were at economic risk before the pandemic, who have slipped into extreme economic peril, or at least are nearing economic peril. There are billions of dollars in here for more food stamp money. There is money for rental assistance. There's money for utility

assistance. There are grants and programs for people looking for housing vouchers. The things that I'm watching really closely also are changes to the child tax credit. Now, this is where things get a little bit complicated, so bear with me for just one second. Bearing with, the child tax credit. Now, this is where things get a little bit complicated. So bear with me for just one second. Bearing with? The child tax credit already exists. It is something that people with children use to typically draw down their tax burden. So like a lower income family might get cash back. Right. Even if they don't owe taxes. Exactly. Now, the plan that Democrats have in this bill is it increases the amount of the credit. It makes it fully refundable. So no matter what, no matter if you owe federal taxes, you as a parent would have access to this money. And it makes it so it is paid on a monthly basis in advance.

The idea is that it becomes like a child advance. It becomes a child payment. It becomes, depending upon who you are, an experiment in universal basic income. And there was some thought that maybe there could be some bipartisanship and that ship sailed a while ago. But it now seems very clear that there is unanimous Republican opposition to this. You know, they're saying that this is a bill full of liberal wishlist items. Yeah. And Democrats don't deny that. They say that they ran on this stuff, that these are long term priorities. They say that a part of the promise that they made to voters when they were running for, you know, to have control of the House, the Senate and the

White House was that they were going to pass programs like this. They say that they were patently clear with voters about what it was they wanted to do if they had power in Washington. And they point to the polls, which show incredibly large majorities of voters backing this plan. 76% of voters in the latest morning consult poll, including 60% of Republicans. And that includes raising the minimum wage, sending $1,400 checks to people. So this is interesting. I mean, the Republicans don't have to answer to majority public opinion because they come from mostly safe districts and states. But still, that's a big disconnect between public opinion and the Republican Party in

Congress. All right. Before we let you go, timeline here. We know that they are planning to vote as early as the end of this week. What is the deadline? How, you know, where does this go from here? They say they want to get it done by Friday, March 12th, because federal unemployment benefits, that extra $300 a week that unemployed people have access to, that's running out on the 14th. So they need to get this done before that deadline if they want to ensure that people have continued coverage.

All right. Well, that is all we have time for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.