Joe Biden's missed opportunity

Tuesday afternoon, Joe Biden had the opportunity to reclaim some credibility on fighting COVID. After reading this transcript of Biden's speech, it's obvious that Mr. Biden missed a perfect opportunity to boost his sagging approval ratings on COVID. Early in his speech, he asked "First, how concerned should you be about Omicron, which is now the dominant variant in this country and it happened so quickly?"

Then he replied
The answer is straightforward: If you are not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned. You’re at a high risk of getting sick. And if you get sick, you’re likely to spread it to others, including friends and family. And the unvaccinated have a significantly higher risk of ending up in a hospital or even dying. ... But if you’re among the majority of Americans who are fully vaccinated, and especially if you’ve gotten the booster shot — that third shot — you’re much — you have much, much less reason to worry. You have a high degree of protection against severe illness." According to Mr. Biden, you should worry if you aren't vaccinated. Again, according to Mr. Biden, an unvaccinated person has a high probability of getting infected and infecting others, including those that are fully vaccinated. Later, Mr. Biden said this:

We're prepared today for what's coming. In March of 2020, we were not ready. Today, we've stockpiled enough gowns, masks, and ventilators to deal with the surge of hospitalizations among the unvaccinated. Today, we're ready.

If the administration is ready, why is there such a shortage of rapid tests? Just 2 weeks ago, Jen Psaki was asked about testing. Ms. Psaki then asked in a dismissive voice if the administration should just send every household a testing kit:

Months before the vaccines had been developed, then-President Trump announced that the federal government would prepay Pfizer and Moderna for vaccines that hadn't been developed yet so adults would get vaccinated free-of-charge. COVID Testing kits certainly don't cost as much as vaccines.

Later, Mr. Biden criticized Fox News, albeit in a veiled way:

Look, the unvaccinated are responsible for their own choices. But those choices have been fueled by dangerous misinformation on cable TV and social media.

You know, these companies and personalities are making money by peddling lies and allowing misinformation that can kill their own customers and their own supporters. It’s wrong, it’s immoral, and I call on the purveyors of these lies and misinformation to stop it. Stop it now.

It's obvious that Mr. Biden either doesn't know what he's talking about or is intentionally lying. Every FNC personality talking about COVID vaccinations has the same response: check with your physician on what's best for you and your family. If that's Biden's definition of misinformation, he needs a new dictionary.

Caught napping again

One of the other things that we know that has to be done is more testing. Because Omicron spreads easily, especially among the unvaccinated, it’s critically important that we know who’s infected. That means we need more testing. And on that score, we are now [not] where we should be. Yes, we have over 20,000 free testing sites. Yes, we’ve used the Defense Production Act and spent $3 billion to greatly expand the number of at-home tests available for purchase online and at your local pharmacy. And, yes, we’ve made sure insurance covers the PCR tests you get in a hospital or at your doctor’s office.

Joe Biden has been reactive throughout. President Trump was proactive throughout. When COVID first hit, Trump gathered captains of industry to push them into mobile testing centers. Walgreens, Walmart, CVS and others opened up their parking lots as testing centers. Later, those same parking lots were used as vaccination centers.

Finally, it's essential to note that the FDA hasn't approved Paxlovid. This is how it's been described:

What if there was a pill you could take as soon as you test positive for Covid, that stopped the virus in its tracks? A pill that reduced the viral number of copies in your upper airway (known as viral load) by more than tenfold, markedly reducing contagiousness to others? And that reduced the chance of hospitalization by nearly 90%?

There is such a pill, called Paxlovid, which was developed specifically for the Sars-CoV-2 virus, derived from a molecule that was effective in the lab against the original SARS virus, and is a potent inhibitor of the main protease of the virus, called Mpro. It’s the chokepoint for preventing the virus from replicating. It has been tested in two randomized clinical trials compared with a placebo, and not only was its potency established, but it proved to be as safe as the placebo.

It's long past time to get this approved and into robust production. It's time this administration got ahead of things instead of just reacting to things.