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Joe Biden, the presumptive president, should be given the chance to be a good president that Democrats never gave Donald Trump, advises Andrew McCarthy in NRO.
For Biden’s sake, and especially for the country’s, the departments and agencies of government should prepare for a smooth transition of power.
After a bitter U.S. election battle that took place primarily within what has so far been a nine-month pandemic, Pfizer announced a potential solution for ending our suffering from the Coronavirus. The announcement can’t come soon enough with new dismal reports of the U.S. and Europe both setting records for new confirmed cases, while South America, North Africa, India, and other regions are coping with serious outbreaks, as reported by the NYT.
The Pfizer vaccine, according to the drug company, is 90% effective and “offers hope that an end could be sight. The reaction should be cautious optimism and cooperation, not partisan scare tactics,” offers the WSJ.
After Pfizer’s vaccine announcement, Joe Biden offered the names of 13 members of an advisory committee on the virus. Included are highly partisan members who support government mandates and slow drug approvals. For example, amongst members, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel has advocated extreme lockdowns during the pandemic, regardless of the economic or public-health harm.
On June 30 (Emanuel) told MSNBC: “You have to actually have people at home, close nonessential businesses, stop bars, stop indoor dining, have everyone wearing face masks. These are the things we need to do. And, by the way, just doing it in isolated places is not going to solve it either. You need to do it nationwide.”
As recently as July 29, (Dr. Emanuel) wrote in the New York Times that “schools should open only in places that have fewer than 75 confirmed cases per 100,000 people cumulatively over the previous seven days, and that have a test positivity rate below 5 percent.” Even countries in Europe that are locking down again are keeping schools open as the evidence is clear that children are largely not vulnerable.
According to Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s public health school:
We all need to keep two seemingly contradictory facts in mind:
- We are entering the hardest days of the pandemic. The next two months will see a lot of infections and deaths.
- There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Today, that light got a bit brighter.
On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was quoted, it’s “bad news” that the Trump Administration will be distributing the vaccine because it will use traditional health-care channels. The election may be over, but not the partisan hype.
