US President-elect Joe Biden on Monday gave clear signals that his administration will take a completely different approach to the coronavirus pandemic and warned that the US might face a "very dark winter".
He unveiled a new Covid-19 advisory group stacked with veteran public health experts, lowering expectations for a rapidly available vaccine and making an urgent plea for Americans to cover their faces.
According to Politico news outlet, Biden, flanked by a masked Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in Wilmington, made early reference to the "positive news" that drugmaker Pfizer had found its vaccine candidate to be more than 90 percent effective.
But he said the shot, if approved, "will not be widely available for many months yet to come."
Pfizer announced on Monday that the company is aiming to have just 100 million doses ready to distribute in the US by March — enough for only 15 percent of the population since each recipient requires two doses a few weeks apart.
With US Covid-19 cases about to climb above 10 million and hospitalisations set to reach a record high, Biden took a sober tone, citing projections of a “dark winter” ahead and stressing that if the public does nothing but wait for the vaccine, hundreds of thousands of lives could be lost before the shots become widely available.
The 10-minute speech offered the best glimpse yet at how Biden will guide the country through a health crisis that's likely to peak as he prepares to assume office.
He struck a tone resembling that of a wartime president, speaking of the pandemic’s threat in dire terms and setting public expectations for a drawn-out, months-long campaign to crush the outbreak in the US.
Americans living through the pandemic are now “called to do the same thing that generations of proud Americans have done in the face of a crisis throughout our history,” Biden said. “Rise above our differences to defend the strength and vitality of our nation.”
Breaking from President Donald Trump’s framing of public health measures as a threat to a still-limping economy, Biden also described mask-wearing, social distancing and contact tracing as the tools needed to reopen businesses and get the economy moving again.
Masks are the “most potent weapon against the virus,” he said, and the goal of wearing one “is not to make your life less comfortable or to take something away from you. It’s to give something back to all of us: A normal life.”
An overwhelming majority of the public is behind Biden on mask-wearing and other public health measures. In a Harris-Harvard poll released on Sunday, 80 percent of respondents said they support a national mask mandate, and 65 percent said they were more worried about the country opening up too soon than staying closed too long.
Still, many Republican officials and much of the public are staunchly opposed, and are likely to resist, Biden's calls to mandate masks even as cases climb.
