As President Joe Biden begins his first full official day in office, there was always an expectation that his administration would be cleaning up significant messes left behind by Donald Trump. However, the size of those messes is already proving to be a bigger shock than anyone imagined. While immediately getting to work on the coronavirus pandemic, Biden’s team has learned that it will have to build an all-new vaccine distribution plan due to a complete lack of effort during the final months of the Trump administration. “There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” a source told CNN.
Considering the pandemic is a massive public health crisis with a death toll of over 400,000 Americans, learning that the Trump administration was basically asleep at the wheel when it comes to vital vaccine distribution is jarring, even for them. It also explains why the incoming Biden team was having trouble getting critical updates during the transition. Via CNN:
Prior to Inauguration Day, some of Biden’s Covid-19 advisers had wanted to be careful not to be overly critical in public of the Trump administration’s handling of the virus and vaccine, given that the Biden transition team was already having a hard time getting critical information and cooperation from the outgoing administration, the source said.
Now that the transition of power has taken place, the Biden administration is hoping that they can quickly start to get a clearer picture of where things actually stand with vaccine distribution.
Despite the setback, the Biden administration is still committed to getting 100 million shots in arms within the first 100 days.
(Via CNN)