The NPR Politics Podcast - Top Biden Science Adviser Who Was Accused Of Toxic Management Resigns

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

The White House, which has known about Eric Lander's behavior for weeks following an internal investigation, faces questions about why Biden failed to fire the Cabinet-level official sooner. Also: 900,000 Americans have died of COVID. As states give up on mitigation efforts, what does the future of the pandemic look like?This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, and health reporter Will Stone.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.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 Sarah from Baltimore, Maryland. I'm currently baking blueberry muffins to send with my daughter to daycare tomorrow in celebration of her birthday. This podcast was recorded at... It is Tuesday, 2.52 p.m. on February 8th. Things may have changed by the time you heard this, but we will officially have a one-year-old on our hands. Okay, here's the show. Oh my goodness, And bacon muffins. That is so cute. What a great mom. I like to buy. I am with you, Aisha. Buy. Yeah, I can buy some blueberry muffins. Yeah, I can buy them really well. Hey,, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. So we're going to do a check-in about COVID and where things stand with the pandemic. But before that, we want to talk quickly about Eric Lander. He is the top science advisor to President Biden, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and he abruptly announced that he would resign today.

The decision came hours after Politico reported that an internal White House investigation had concluded that Lander bullied and demeaned his subordinates. Aisha, you've been reporting on this. What exactly was Lander accused of? He was accused of cutting off, sometimes yelling at, and just really just generally being extremely disrespectful to subordinates. And that he just made it a very toxic work environment. But part of this came up because there was concern from, and some complaints about the fact, the treatment of women. Now, in his apology and resignation letter, I will say that Lander said that he was disrespectful and demeaning to men and women. So it's clear that he was trying to make the case that this wasn't about sexism.

And he says it was unintentional that he crossed the line at some points. And the other thing worth noting is Biden made this pretty big pledge on Inauguration Day. If you're ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot. No ifs, ands, or buts. Now he's talking about right there on the spot, but it took some time. Why did the White House not fire Lander Sooner? Well, you know, there were a lot of questions about this at the White House press briefing yesterday. And basically what White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was saying was that out of

that statement that Biden made, which didn't really leave him much wiggle room. But she says that out of that statement, the White House developed this process and this policy of having a safe and respectful workplace. And through developing that policy, that's how they were able to do the internal investigation into what happened with Eric Lander. And that's how they were able to come to the conclusion that he had been disrespectful and they kind of called him to the carpet and had demanded corrective actions and that they said this was unacceptable,

couldn't happen again. Of course, all of this does raise the question, if this had not come out in Politico and if this had not been, if this had not come out in Politico, and if this had not been made public, would Lander still be around? And we don't have a good answer for that. Yeah, it's pretty striking that in less than 24 hours after this story breaks, then Lander, you know, announces this resignation. He was supposed to testify here on Capitol Hill today. That did not happen. So really striking how quickly they did move when the story did come out. That all said, this is kind of a routine that we got used to under the last administration. And this

is kind of the first time we see such a senior ranking official resign after a report like this. Yeah, absolutely. And he was a cabinet level official. But we're going to move on. And because we want to talk about COVID and get a bit of a check in on where things stand right now in the pandemic that has taken over all of our lives. We've got Will Stone here from NPR's health team. Hi, Will. Hey there. So, Will, the U.S. has now passed 900,000 deaths from COVID. Like, that's a huge number of lives lost. You know, that's the size of Columbus, Ohio or Indianapolis. And it's more than twice the 400,000 deaths that had taken place when Biden took office. How did the U.S. get to this point of these kind of just unimaginable numbers? Yeah, it's an astonishing number. I remember doing the stories of hitting 200,000 and 300,000 deaths,

and that was hard to wrap my head around at the time. Now we're at 900,000. That's more recorded deaths than we've seen in any country in the world. I will say that when Biden took office, we were coming off of a big winter surge. So there were a lot of deaths resulting from that. And when you look at the past year, outside of that, it really does come down to our country's troubled relationship with vaccines. We had some stumbles in the rollout in the early days of the vaccine rollout. So we lost some valuable time there and obviously could have done better with getting the vaccines to people more quickly. But really, after that, it was all about the resistance to vaccines in the U.S. and just how entrenched and political this issue became.

And so what happened then was when Delta came along, which was even more contagious, it led to another huge wave of deaths over the late summer and the early fall. And then when Omicron hit, that brought us to where we are today. So let's talk about this latest phase, Omicron. There was a lot of talk about this being a highly transmissible variant, but less severe than Delta. And we still saw all of these additional waves of deaths comparable to where we were in December of 2020 before the vaccine was really available to most people. Yeah, that's right. This is this kind of

relatively simple math, but it's really hard to communicate that something on a population level may lead to a lower rate of people going to the hospital. But when it is so contagious, that is a lot of people getting sick. And that is what we've seen with Omicron. It's not sending people to the hospital at the same rate as we saw with Delta. Generally, it's about 50% lower hospitalization for Omicron than with Delta. And that's true in the US. And it's even lower when it comes to ICUs and deaths, but this is still a very bad virus, right? And the chance of being in the ICU is lower, but I can't tell you how many doctors I've spoken to who say, when someone is in the ICU, when they're unvaccinated, this doesn't look any milder. It looks like just as bad a disease, and it has managed to find all the people who are very susceptible. And that's why we're seeing so many people die. And Will, when you talk about the U.S. having so many deaths, part of the reason it seems like that the U.S.

has had some issues, that's to put it mildly, has had some issues with the pandemic is because of like the very nature of our health care system right like there is no um like public health care delivery system everything is individualized and everything is you know or most things are individualized. And that has really played a big role in the response to the pandemic, right? There's no doubt about that. I mean, we've seen this right all along throughout the pandemic that the CDC or someone can say something, but it really is a local decision in so many different circumstances when it comes to public health. That is how the public health system is designed here in the U.S. And when you need a big, robust, comprehensive public health response to a crisis, it's hard to knit that together.

Hmm. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll talk about this more in a second. And we're back. Will, you mentioned before that there are differences in the way localities can handle the pandemic. And right now, there are states that seem to be moving away from restrictions. So Phil Murphy, he's the Democratic governor in New Jersey who really very narrowly held onto a seat in November, just announced that he's, you know, lifting mask mandates in school. And Virginia's new Republican governor actually just banned mask mandates in schools. You know, there is so much talk about people being over the pandemic and just fatigue around pandemic and public health measures. Like, how does that affect the ability to deal with the pandemic when people are just really tired? I think there is always this question of how challenging it is to change course. And once you remove one of these interventions, like a mask mandate or other restrictions, then how do you put it back if you need to?

Right. And we saw this in a big way earlier in 2021 when Biden came out and took his mask off and said, you know, get vaccinated and you don't you shouldn't have to wear a mask. And then Delta hit and suddenly the messaging had to change. And I think it was really hard to make people understand that the situation is fluid, and you may actually have to adjust things. So personally, the way I approach it is it's pretty simple. I just think of it like the weather. If it is raining a lot, I'm going to put on my raincoat. I live in Seattle. We don't believe in umbrellas.

So you put the raincoat on when it's raining. And then when the sun comes out, you know, you take it off. And I think that is how I approach it. And it should be the same with the virus. You know, maybe you can relax some of the restrictions and the masking when you're not in the middle Virginia area, who are fighting it, saying, no, we're going to keep the masks. We're not going through with this of lifting these mask mandates, updating parents saying we won the first round. Everything's looking good. We can keep the mask. So it's like a battle, if you will, over what the weather looks like and how to address it going forward. I do want to ask, Will, like, it seems since the very beginning of, you know, this pandemic, people have been asking, like, how is it going to end?

What will life look like? Two years in, it doesn't feel like it's ever going to end. And so that's probably not the right question to ask. But like, is there a point where the public will be able to operate and people will be able to operate without it being such a big part of their lives? Like, is that point possibly on the horizon? I think it's definitely possibly on the horizon. And we've had some good reporting from my colleague Michaeline Duclef this week, you know, that the immunity we are getting from getting infected by Omicron and earlier variants, you know, it's not going to stop you from getting infected

for all that long. It provides some short-term protection, but in the long term, you probably will get reinfected. But the good news is it looks pretty good at stopping severe disease for quite a long time. And this is kind of where Omicron comes in because there are estimates that, you know, by the end of this surge, by the end of this month, maybe, you know, somewhere like 80% of the US will have been infected by coronavirus at some point. And so if you put that all together, you start to see that there will be a way for us perhaps to go about our life and not think about it as much because

a lot of people aren't going to be dying and getting severely ill. And ultimately, what we're trying to stop is the health care system from being overwhelmed and causing all kinds of societal problems. And I do think this could be on the horizon with the caveat that we don't know what variant could come along at some point. Well, maybe there's a little light at the end of the tunnel, just a very just kind of blinking, very small flashlight. But I guess we'll hold on to what we can. Let's let's leave it there for today. Will Stone, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.