The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: July 2nd

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

President Biden did not meet his goal of 70% of Americans having one shot of the vaccine by July 4th, and some hot spots are flaring up in red states with a new variant looming. But there are signs across the nation that the country has radically curbed the spread of the virus. Plus economists are now predicting an ever quicker recovery for the economy.This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, science reporter Pien Huang, and senior economic correspondent Scott Horsley.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 Emily in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and today is the day of my daughter's bone marrow transplant after being diagnosed with aplastic anemia earlier this year. This podcast was recorded at 1010 a.m. on Friday, July 2nd. Things may have changed by the time you heard this, but we'll still be so grateful for all the life-changing bone marrow donors helping patients like my daughter. Okay, here's the show. Oh, Emily, we are pulling for your daughter. Yeah, and sending strength in your direction. Hey there, it is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

And we have Ping Wong here from NPR Science Desk back with us again today. Hey, Ping. Hey, Sue. Hey, Tam. Hello, hello. So several months ago, President Biden set a deadline for the July 4th holiday. He wanted to have the population reach a 70% vaccination rate. So we're going to talk today about where we're at and where we're going to go. So Tam, we didn't make the goal. Yeah, so the goal was 70% of adults with their first dose of the vaccine. So it was already a slightly narrower goal than the full population. And the U.S. is at just about 67% of adults with their first dose.

But underlying that, there are massive disparities between states. So you have some states in the Northeast that are well beyond that 70% goal. And you have some states in the South that are just really lagging. And what that means is that there are now outbreaks happening in some states, including Missouri, where there were sort of localized outbreaks, even though, as the White House would say, yes, they missed their goal, but they met the other goal, which was life returning more or less to normal. You know, most people aren't wearing masks. Parties are happening. Backyard barbecues seem kind of quaint because some big parties are happening, including at the

White House, where they're going to have a thousand people on the South Lawn on Sunday. Ping, we have enough vaccine. So what accounts for why we didn't hit that 70 percent threshold? I mean, there's a lot of reasons that contribute to vaccine hesitancy and the reasons that people aren't getting these vaccines. But a lot of it is, as we've seen, regional. And a lot of it is based on, you know, accessibility factors. It's lower in rural areas than in than in urban areas. Some of it is political as well. So there's there's different reasons for demand and they appear to be playing out differently across the country.

If you overlay it with an election map, you know, the Biden states have higher vaccination rates and the Trump states have lower vaccination rates. But some of that also overlays with underlying health disparities. A state like Mississippi that has, you know, a lot of pre-existing conditions, if you will, in terms of access to health care and also, you know, pre-existing conditions and poverty and other challenges happens to also be the state with the lowest vaccination rates. And I would say also how that's playing out in our country is that vaccinations are basically now our only strategy for dealing with the pandemic. So a lot of the things that restrictions that states had in place earlier, things like social distancing and limits on movie theaters

and limits on indoor dining and restrictions like that are all being lifted. And so basically, the message from health officials is you're protected if you're vaccinated, you're not protected if you're not. And there are a lot of vaccines available, so go get one. But that does mean that places with low vaccination rates are now seeing surges and people who aren't vaccinated or who can't get vaccinated yet are in more danger. Is there a concern that the people who aren't vaccinated or who can't get vaccinated yet are in more danger. Is there a concern that the people who aren't vaccinated yet aren't going to get vaccinated? I mean, how much more can public health officials or the government do to encourage the unvaccinated to get it? I actually asked White House officials and health officials about this yesterday.

And they said they're going to keep trying. They're going to keep pushing. But one PSA isn't going to do this. One more speech from the president isn't going to do it. At this point, they really have made vaccines readily available. They've made it easy. And this is going to be the long, hard, slow slog of reaching more people. And those people will be reached through one-on-one conversations with their medical providers. In some cases, employers or airlines or schools will begin requiring vaccination. The federal government doesn't intend to put any requirements in place, but they've talked about teaming up with schools or workplaces to make sure that vaccines are available right there on site.

Tim, I'm glad you brought up schools because there's people that are choosing not to get vaccinated, but we still have a big population who aren't yet eligible for vaccination. I'm thinking mainly of kids and school kids. And Ping, I don't know if we have any guidance yet on when there's an anticipation that everyone in the country will have access to these vaccines. Right. I mean, they are doing it, you know, step by step. You know, we started with all adults and those 16 and older. Now we're down to those 12 and older. But it is going to be a while before we actually have the safety data on making it eligible for kids who are younger than that. So there was a symposium on kids and the vaccine this week. It was put on by the University of

Washington and Johns Hopkins University. We got updates from Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson on their plans. And what they all said was that they're currently working on safety and making sure that their vaccines are safe and the right dose for kids down to six months old. And later this year, like in the fall, Pfizer and Moderna will both be presenting data. So if all goes well, health officials are expecting vaccines for kids five to 11 to be authorized by the end of the year. Johnson & Johnson studies are a little bit behind that. But one of the reasons that it's taking longer is that kids have different immune systems from adults. They're more active. They're probably going to need less vaccine to get that strong

response. So it's really figuring out the right dose that's taking a while. At this point, people with young kids, the best thing they can do to keep their kids safe is to be vaccinated themselves and to hang around people who are vaccinated. That keeps the younger people and people with immune problems, it keeps them safer. Yeah. And to Tam's point, you know, we heard from the health secretary of Arkansas, Jose Romero, this week, and he said that, you know, in his state, which is one of those southern states with lower vaccination rates, they're actually seeing outbreaks of the coronavirus in summer camps and daycare centers right now. So it is making it less safe for kids in those places. Right. And at the same time, the World Health

Organization right now is raising the alarm about the new Delta variant that's spreading around the world. Ping, can you explain what this variant is and how big of a threat it could be? Sure. So the Delta variant that I think a lot of people have sort of heard about, it's a strain that was first identified in India. And the main reason that it's so concerning for people is that it appears to be more transmissible countries in West and Southern Africa. And here in the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci has said it's the greatest threat in our fight to eliminate COVID. According to the CDC, it accounts for about 10% of the cases that are currently reported, and that amount is growing. Now, the good news is that it does look like the vaccines are working against them. You know, people who are vaccinated do appear to be largely protected from the Delta variant. And it's true for all three vaccines that are available, the Pfizer, the Moderna and the Johnson and Johnson one.

My colleague, Rob Stein, just reported on some new results showing that the J&J vaccine works against the variant and actually even seems to get stronger in its protection over time. So, you know, again, it's sort of the case for getting vaccinated is getting stronger when you look at the Delta variant in particular and how it's spreading more rapidly, especially among people who are unvaccinated. Ping, thank you so much for joining us today and talking us through all this. Yeah, thanks for having me. And can I just also insert here, this is not COVID related, but because it is the 4th of July, I did also just want to do a little bit of a public service announcement to say that it's very hot in a lot of places. So I hope that people remember to hydrate. And also, I know this is a very obvious point, but heavy drinking and setting off fireworks are really, really not a good combination.

So just putting that out there. You've heard it directly from NPR's science desk. And sunscreen. Your future self will thank you. Tam, I'm going to let you go, too, but you're going to be back later in the pod for a very special appearance. We'll be back. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about how the economy is recovering from the pandemic.

Capitalism touches every part of our lives. Capitalism is a giant force that I don't understand. I feel that it's a very safe system. I'm constantly in fear of losing my job. It is our biggest success and our biggest failure. On this special series from ThruLine, capitalism. Listen now to the ThruLine podcast from NPR. And we're back and we have Ayesha Roscoe and Scott Horsley here with us. Hey, y'all. Hey, good to be with you. Hey.

So we just spent some time talking about the science of the pandemic and where we're at right now. So let's talk about the math. Scott, we've got a new jobs report out this morning. The economy added something like 850,000 jobs in June. Give us some context for this. Is this a great number? Is it a good number? Is it a bad number? Where are we at? It's certainly a good number, if not a great number. It's the strongest job growth we've seen since last summer. And it's an acceleration of what we saw in May and certainly a big improvement over what we saw in April. That said,

when you look at the really robust demand from consumers who are newly liberated and traveling and eating out and doing all the things they couldn't do for much of the last year, we could be adding even more jobs. You know, there was talk a few months ago that we could be looking at a million jobs a month. Recall, we're still down about 6.8 million jobs from where we were before the pandemic. So the job market is certainly healing, but it's a slower process than some of us would like. Aisha, I'm going to guess with my reporter's intuition that the White House is pretty happy with the best job numbers since last summer. Oh, absolutely. You had President Biden tweeting 3 million jobs since he took office, quote, our economic plan is working. And this is something that, you know,

following a lot of White House officials on Twitter, because that's my job. And what they're tweeting about is, you know, this idea that this is working. They're adding a bunch of jobs. Now, they don't necessarily mention that. Yes, they're creating a lot of jobs and certainly presidents get credit for whatever happens under their watch. But there are a lot of jobs to be created because a lot of jobs were lost. So they're not exactly, you know, providing that context, but, you know, to the fact that there were so many jobs created, there are a lot of jobs that were lost. And as Scott said, there's still a long way to go. Well, as y'all talked about earlier, certainly the administration has been pretty successful in getting vaccines out, bringing the pandemic death toll way, way down. Pandemic fears have receded, and that's enabled consumers to do all the kinds of things that they weren't able to do during the dark winter months. But the jobs have not come back as quickly as the roaring demand has.

But you have employers saying they just cannot find workers and there's millions of people still out of work. So what's the disconnect there? If everyone still needs jobs and employers need to hire people, what's not connecting? Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on, but part of it is what some economists have called a timing disconnect or an urgency mismatch. You've got a lot of employers who struggled to survive the pandemic and they've held on and now they've got customers lined up ready to take advantage of their businesses. And they can't take full advantage. They can't fully capitalize on that robust demand because they don't have enough workers. They need workers yesterday.

They would hire all the people they could right away. And then you have this army of millions of people who lost jobs during the pandemic and who've not yet returned to work. Many of them do plan to return to work in the near future, but they're not in an enormous rush. There was a survey by the job search website Indeed, which found that most job seekers do plan to go back to work in the next three months or so, but a lot of them are waiting either for schools to reopen or for more people to get vaccinated, or in some cases, they're waiting for their personal savings to run out. You know, they might have stockpiled some money over the last year, partly thanks to those three rounds of federal relief payments, in some cases, thanks to more generous unemployment insurance. And so they don't have to necessarily grab the very first job that comes along. They

can wait a little while to maybe find a better job. And in some cases, would-be workers who've also been under lockdown for much of the last year say, you know, I don't want to spend my first few months of freedom, pandemic freedom, behind the counter at the fast food place. Back at work, yeah. I'm going to take some time to see my friends, see my family, meet some new people perhaps. So there's all kinds of factors going on. Most forecasters think this will work itself out in a few months, especially in the fall as more schools reopen and as the last of the pandemic on insurance benefits run out. But that's cool comfort for employers trying to get through the summer and deal with the very strong demand they have right now. Scott, is it too soon to know, or do we not have enough data yet to know whether we're going to see a wage increase for workers out of this?

Because I will tell you anecdotally, we drove up to central Pennsylvania a couple weekends ago, and it was amazing to us to see the highways lined with billboards looking for workers and a lot of them boasting of the highest starting wages ever or signing bonuses. I mean, it seems like employers are being forced to pay workers more money as an incentive to try to get them back into the workforce. Yes. I mean, workers have more bargaining power now, which is a little counterintuitive because there are millions who are out of work. But workers' bargaining power has certainly improved. And you are seeing more employers putting a little more money on the table to try to get people back to jobs. In many cases, those incentives are taking the form of hiring bonuses or retention bonuses, sort of one-time costs for an employer.

Employers are a little more reluctant to raise wages since that's harder to take back. But we are seeing some uptick in wages, not a really huge uptick that would signal a real labor shortage, but there's certainly some labor friction. And so we are seeing some increase in wages for sure, especially at the lower end of the scale, which is good, which is positive. Aisha, we have a new NPR PBS Marist pullout. I admit that I haven't looked through the data yet, but I imagine that one of the big driving questions here is how does the country feel about Joe Biden in this moment? I mean, the pandemic was arguably the main reason why the country elected him last year. Yeah, so right now he has a 50% job approval rating.

That's mostly unchanged from last month. Right now, people really approve of Joe Biden's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And that's not unexpected because the administration has been successful at getting people their shots, their vaccinations. Their checks. Their checks. You know, waiting for that July check on child tax credit. That's right. They've gotten people the help they need and the economy, the world is opening up again. On the economy, though, his marks are at 50%. So the coronavirus

approval is at 64%, his handling of that. But the economy is at 50%. And I think that is because of likely because of what we're talking about, how the results are mixed. And sometimes the jobs numbers haven't been as high as people expected. And there are still millions of people out of work and there are employers who are saying they can't find people to work. And even though, as Scott said, there are a multitude of reasons for that, you know, you have employers saying it's because there's too generous, the benefits that people are receiving are too generous, and so they don't want to work. And so that plays into ideological arguments. And so that seems to be some of what's happening there.

Does the economic picture right now, I mean, it's not obviously where the country wants to be, but we're recovering. The numbers are pretty good. People are feeling more confident. Life's getting back to normal. Does that reality make it harder for the White House to continue this push for trillions upon trillions in more spending and more government to what they say is necessary to help the country. But do you think that politically it's going to be a harder sell? I think it does make it a bit harder to sell because the economy is not in a free fall. It is not an absolute disaster where people feel like something has to be done. And there have been already trillions and trillions of dollars spent.

That sailed through Congress last year, right? Like the country felt the fear last year, but I don't know if you could do another six trillion when people are terrified. Well, you know, eventually the trillions add up. But what the administration will say is that there are still a lot of people hurting and that this is about making the country competitive on a global scale in a way that it has not been. And that this is about helping families and helping that would be legacy defining for Biden and also for the country. So that's the bet that they're making, that this is the time for a once in a generation type of investment. Now, of course, Republicans are saying that the country cannot afford this and that there could be big consequences in inflation and things like that if there's too

much spending. I will say, Sue, the Congressional Budget Office came out with a revised economic forecast this week, and they're now projecting the U.S. economy is going to grow twice as fast in 2021 as they were saying back in February. And one of the big things that's changed in the meantime is the passage of that $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. That was one factor that's definitely helped to grow the economy more quickly. Other factors are the greatly improved public health outlook, so there's less need for social distancing now. And a third factor that CBO pointed to is the savings that people have piled up that can fuel consumer spending for some time to come. CBO now projects we're going to get back to pre-pandemic levels of employment by the middle of next year. That's two years earlier than they were forecasting

back in February. On the flip side, they did say the federal deficit this year is going to be about $3 trillion. All right. That's a wrap on politics for today. Thank you so much for joining us, Scott. Great to be with you. Ayesha, you stick around. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for a very special holiday edition of Can't Let It Go. This message comes from NPR sponsor Literati. Empower your inner reader with Literati book clubs where you can read alongside the world's most inspiring authors and leaders. Join Malala, Stephen Curry, Richard Branson, and more on their next reading adventure. Literati delivers their monthly book picks straight to your door, so you can spend less

time finding a good book and more time actually reading one. Redeem your 30-day trial for only 99 cents at literati.com slash NPR politics. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Hint, fruit-infused water with no calories or sweeteners. Hint water comes in over 25 flavors. The watermelon water actually tastes like watermelon. The blackberry water tastes like blackberries. Hint is water with a touch of true fruit flavor. You can get Hint water at stores, or you can have it delivered directly to your door. And we're back and Tam is back with us. Hey, Tam. Hello. Glad to be back again. So right now we're all just working for the weekend. It's obviously going to be the 4th of

July. And here on the podcast, we have a little tradition of celebrating this holiday in our very own special way. Right, Tam? This is true. So on Morning Edition, the radio show, they read the Declaration of Independence every year on the 4th of July. A great tradition. Yes. It is a glorious tradition. Everyone should go listen to that. But I think this is an equally glorious tradition.

So in the early days of the podcast, Scott Detrow got the idea that we should do our own dramatic reading of by far the greatest 4th of July speech of all times. I mean, like, the best. A speech delivered by President Thomas J. Whitmore. Of Independence Day, that's why you may not have heard of him, but this was right before aliens, well, aliens had already wiped out a lot of people in the movie, but this was the last stand of the humans against those evil aliens. They were preparing to take their last stand. This year's reading is, I think for me, particularly poignant because the actor who played the president, Bill Pullman, just came out with a new commercial with Budweiser that

they're doing ahead of the 4th of July that's part of the public push for vaccine access. And he did a take on his favorite movie speech. Got to say, the guy's gotten a lot of mileage out of this that's part of the public push for vaccine access. And he did a take on his favorite movie speech. Got to say, the guy's gotten a lot of mileage out of this speech over the years. And I thought it was pretty funny. And it ties this podcast together so perfectly because it's about the vaccine and Independence Day, which is basically what this podcast has been about today. So let's hear a little bit of it. The time has come for us to get fresh, gather the crew, and eat veggie and meat burgers till we sweat. And then let's work together towards a future where everyone can come to the party. Take that, COVID.

Yes. Yes. Take that, not showering. Take that, isolation. Take that, sourdough sweatpants not the sourdough no special shout out to scott detrow who this is one of his favorite podcast traditions but he is taking some much needed time off but scott this annual reading part of this is for you so without further ado the annual NPR Politics podcast reading of President Whitmore's speech in the 1996 film classic, Independence Day.

Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world, and you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. Mankind. That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the 4th of July and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night.

We will not vanish without a fight. We're going to live on. We're going to survive. Today, we celebrate our Independence Day! Woo! That is a wrap for us today. Our executive producer

is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathoni Matori and Eric McDaniel. Our producer is Barton for us today. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathoni Mottori and Eric McDaniel. Our producer is Barton Girdwood. Thanks to Lexi Schapittle and Brandon Carter. Our intern is Maya Sel Spotted Elk. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Aisha Roscoe.

I cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keith. I also cover the White House. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast and happy Fourth of July.