A sign of the importance he attaches to the fight against the coronavirus, Joe Biden devoted his first full day to the White House, Thursday, January 21, confirming the anti-Covid-19 offensive initiated in the first hours of his mandate.
The day after his swearing-in, the president signed ten new decrees specifying measures to fight the pandemic. “Our strategy is based on science, not on politics, on truth, not on denial”, insisted the Democrat, in a thinly veiled criticism of the controversial methods of his predecessor.
At the forefront of this mobilization, which he deemed worthy “From a time of war”Mr. Biden also deployed one of the country’s most respected scientific figures to give credit to his health strategy. Doctor Anthony Fauci, who was a member of the task force set up by the previous administration before being removed from it because of his reservations about President Trump’s statements, has therefore found the White House.
Educational and cautious, the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases confirmed, Thursday, during his first press conference, the gloomy forecasts of Mr. Biden, who expects 500,000 deaths due to Covid-19 by the end of February. “Even if we note in recent days a decrease in the number of contaminations [195 000 cas quotidiens en moyenne sur la dernière semaine], the situation is very serious. “ Just one year after having detected the first carrier of the virus in the United States, the country has 409,000 dead and 25 million people infected.
Provide centralized responses
The voluntarism displayed by Joe Biden to distance himself from the policy of his predecessor on this subject was accompanied, Thursday, by repeated criticisms against the Trump administration. “Last year we could not count on the federal government to act with the urgency and coordination needed and we saw the cost of this failure. “ Contrary to the Republican choices, which left the responsibility for the management of the health crisis to the States, the strategy of the Democratic President therefore consists in providing centralized responses, within the limits of the prerogatives permitted by the country’s federalism. However, some of them will require the adoption by Congress of the $ 1.9 trillion (€ 1,560 billion) rescue plan promised before the inauguration, of which $ 400 billion should be devoted to the fight against the pandemic.
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