As the country passes 78 million COVID cases and approaches one million COVID-19 related deaths, Americans are divided over the Biden Administrations leadership during the pandemic, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist Poll. To discuss how the Biden administration has handled the pandemic in its first year, PBS NewsHour Digital Anchor Nicole Ellis spoke with PBS NewsHour Correspondent William Brangham ahead of President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address on March 1.
The omicron variant revealed that testing is still lagging, in part, due to “one of the original sins of this pandemic from the Trump administration. Even through the Biden administration, our failure to do a better job of getting testing out there has been a huge problem, and it has really hampered our ability to respond,” Brangham said in the conversation.
The omicron variant went from less than 1 percent of cases in the U.S. to just over 70 in two weeks this winter. The emergence of so-called “breakthrough” cases– where vaccinated people caught COVID-19– showed the strength and transmissibility of the omicron variant and not that vaccines don’t work, Brangham said. However, the emergence of those cases, coupled with misinformation about the pandemic, only exacerbated the challenge of getting unvaccinated Americans vaccinated. Despite the Biden administration’s hope that the variant would encourage more people to get the vaccine, “that effort has largely plateaued. Seemingly, the people who want to be vaccinated have been vaccinated, and it's very difficult to move those remaining people,” Brangham said.
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