Why Biden Struggles with COVID-19

“[W]e’re making sure that COVID-19 no longer closes businesses or schools.”

This is not a remark by former President Donald Trump. It comes from a White House speech about responding to COVID-19 in December 2021 by President Joe Biden, who ironically criticized Trump’s hasty easing of lockdown measures.

Biden’s COVID-19 strategy is, to put it in two words, “Science First.” He won the presidential election by attacking Trump’s “unscientific” claims that the coronavirus disappears on its own under sunlight or could be cured by drinking bleach. But Biden’s response to COVID-19 these days seems like an exact copy of Trump’s.

The Biden administration initially seemed to do well with increasing COVID-19 vaccination rates. He showed the utmost confidence, going so far as to say that “we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus” in his Independence Day speech in 2021. But the COVID-19 pandemic was prolonged by the delta and omicron variants. Biden’s leadership has been shaken as a result and is now facing a strong public backlash.

In a December 2021 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “We didn’t see omicron coming. And that’s the nature of what this … awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants.” The public interpreted the statement to mean that Biden had failed to anticipate and respond to the emergence of variant strains.

Democratic state governors, who enforced strict lockdown policies in response to Trump in 2020, are now encouraging others to “open up” in support of Biden. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot withheld teachers’ pay after they voted against in-person classes because of omicron, and New York Mayor Eric Adams urged Wall Street to “learn to live with COVID” when companies asked their staff to work from home.

The shortage of face masks led to a supply crisis that hurt Trump’s presidential campaign in 2020. Now, diagnostic kits are as hard to get as masks were two years ago. Biden has yet to live up to his promise to distribute 500 million home diagnostic kits for free.* Consequently, diagnostic kits are being sold online at nearly three times the regular price.

The White House asserts that the current situation is different from the situation early on in the pandemic. It argues that we have more scientific data about COVID-19, and that 74% of the U.S. population has been vaccinated at least once as compared to 1% before Biden took office. But for a statement intended to emphasize herd immunity, the numbers are rather embarrassing. Despite being one of the countries to develop vaccines, only 62% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, which puts it at 61st place among 197 countries.

Biden’s leadership is being undermined as the White House denies the failures and releases hollow statements. It appears that people think Biden’s COVID-19 strategy is not based on science, but is being carried out in his own political interest, not unlike Trump. According to a poll by RealClearPolitics, Biden’s job disapproval rate reached 54.8% on Jan. 9, the highest it has been since he took office.

The COVID-19 policy under Biden may have originally been based on science, but it has long since turned into a political issue as it did during the Trump administration. When Biden advocates against the “spreading of false information” and targets anti-vaccine arguments from the far right, his opponents think of it as political rhetoric meant to strip them of their freedom and oppress small business owners.

Perhaps it is because they see the Biden administration’s call for science as a political pretense to invalidate the work Trump did. The new South Korean president should learn from Biden’s example when she deals with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. While “canceling” previous administrations may appease supporters for a while, encouraging divisiveness on a scientific issue will ultimately prove detrimental to their leadership.

*Editor’s note: The Biden administration authorized government distribution of free COVID-19 tests online this month, and tests became available for order on Jan. 19