President Joe Biden’s light at the end of the tunnel
When campaigning, Joe Biden promised to have 100 million vaccinations given within the first 100 days of his presidency. Despite inheriting a crisis where fewer vaccines were available than what the outgoing Trump administration claimed to have, President Biden has now managed to exceed that promise. This past weekend alone, over 2 million doses of the vaccine were given per day, which means that the Biden administration has managed to vaccinate 1.4 million people per day, so far. The number is likely to increase as new vaccines are approved and distributed.
Instead of bragging about the numbers, however, President Biden has vowed to set the bar higher – pledging to deliver 1.5 million doses per day for the first 100 days of his presidency. This is how a president should act – putting the well-being of the American people ahead of themselves, while not being afraid of setting higher standards.
During the 2020 debates, Donald Trump vowed to administer 200,000 doses of vaccine per day once the vaccine became available – an initiative that would take over nine years to successfully vaccinate the entire U.S. population. Trump later promised to administer over 20 million vaccines in 2020, something that his administration fell far short of and was not prepared to deliver on. Right now, over 30 million Americans have been given at least one dose of the vaccine, and the number of people vaccinated is higher than the total number of COVID cases. We’re not fully out of the woods yet, but there’s clearly light at the end of the tunnel. President Biden treating this as the global crisis it is should be yet another reminder of why elections matter.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making