At noon on January 20, 2021, almost a full year after the first coronavirus case was reported in the US, Covid-19 will no longer be Donald Trump's problem to solve. It will be incoming US president Joe Biden's.
The pandemic's winter surge is raging, pushing the total death toll towards 400,000 (398,000 lives have already been lost to the virus), deaths are rising in nearly two-thirds of the country's 50 states even as a strong variant is taking hold. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, the new variant is about 50 per cent more contagious than the one that has ravaged the country so far.
California, where it all started, became the first state Monday to cross a grim milestone than 3 million coronavirus infections. The state took 292 days to get to 1 million infections on November 11 and just 44 days to sprint to 2 million. California alone accounts for more than 33,600 Covid-19 deaths.
The first wave never really ebbed, the baseline never came down to levels seen in Europe or Asia, US was struggling to hold down new infections even before the variants appeared, millions of Americans are out of work, the US has topped 24 million infections and counting.
"Almost a year later, we're still far from back to normal. The honest truth is this: Things will get worse before they get better," Biden said last week, in a nod to the massive challenge facing his "crisis tested" Covid-19 task force.
Biden has a stated goal of vaccinating 100 million people in the first 100 days. What we know so far is all the goals that haven't been reached. The US had a goal of reaching 20 million vaccinations by end December 2020, and less than 11 million have got shots in arms by Inauguration Day out of about 31.2 million doses of vaccine which have been distributed.
Biden wants to use the Defence Production Act to boost vaccine supplies and set up 100 vaccination centers around the country by the end of his first month in office. He plans to pour $50 billion to expand testing which is seen as a key to reopening K-8 classrooms. About $130 billion is the outlay to help schools reopen safely. A much touted predictive model used by the Trump White House projects a cumulative death toll of more than 550,000 deaths within 100 days from January 20.
Biden has vowed to "manage the hell out of this operation". There's a ton of managing to be done, starting with the simple act of masking up, which has gone from public health tool to culture war in the Trump era.
After 24 million infections and 398,000 deaths in America's deadliest year, Biden is pleading with Americans: "For God's sake, wear a mask for yourself, for your loved ones, for your country."
