Biden's promise to control pandemic looks broken

 Joel Pollak:

Joe Biden promised to control the coronavirus pandemic, and he is failing.

Today, there are more new coronavirus cases than there were at this point in 2020. The economy is sputtering, and parents are starting to worry that schools will close once again. Moreover, FDA officials are resigning in protest at the White House’s effort to impose booster shots that they say are not yet supported by scientific evidence — breaking a central Biden campaign promise to “follow the science.”

Biden has repeatedly touted his administration’s success in distributing coronavirus vaccines. But Biden has followed the plans left for him by the Trump administration, which not only developed the vaccines — despite Biden’s public skepticism — but also prepared them for rollout.

The one difference Biden made on vaccines was his ill-fated decision to suspend the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a mistake that slowed the rollout and bolstered the skepticism of the vaccine-hesitant minority.

Biden’s main pitch on the coronavirus pandemic was that he was going to impose draconian federal government controls that Trump had avoided using, and which many Democrats, having talked themselves into a panic, favored.

Biden adopted masks as a kind of talismanic symbol, along with promises to impose the rule of “experts” like Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom the media and the left elevated into a mythical political hero despite his many failures and reversals of medical opinion.

The new president imposed a mask mandate on federal property — then violated it himself. In May, he suddenly dropped the mask requirements for vaccinated people, following an unexpected shift by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That decision, the Washington Post observed, left out “local and state health departments, labor unions, governors and numerous other public officials,” and may also have encouraged unvaccinated people to go maskless.

Earlier, Biden had mocked states like Texas and Florida for dropping their mask mandates: “Neanderthal thinking,” he said, revealing that he shared the condescending view among liberal coastal elites of their conservative compatriots.

But lifting the mask mandates also lifted the economy, without — at first — raising cases. Biden would later claim credit for the job creation and economic growth that was largely generated by states that chose to ignore his administration’s stern lectures.

By the time Biden was back to urging people to wear masks, far fewer people — even in Democrat-governed states — were inclined to listen. Much of blue America, like red America, has decided to ignore the pandemic and to go about their lives as best they can.

The Biden administration is now conducting “civil rights” investigations into states that prevent school districts from mandating masks for children. Such abuses of power only reinforce public will to disobey the administration.
...

If Trump were still President, Biden and the Democrats would be blaming him for the pandemic problems.  But Biden's screwups from the border to Afghanistan have dominated the news cycle of late giving him a break on pandemic news.