I&I Editorial
During one of his presidential debates last year when about 220,000 people had died from COVID-19, Joe Biden said that “anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.” So should Joe be looking for another job, now that more than 100,000 have died in just the two months that he’s been president?
Biden said, after all, that he had a plan on “day one” as president to tackle the disease. He was going to move “heaven and earth” to save lives, etc., etc. But since Jan. 20, there have been 105,334 deaths attributed to the coronavirus as of Saturday, according to the COVID Tracking Project. That means that one-fifth of all the COVID-19 deaths have occurred just since Biden took office.
Now Biden is busy casting blame for why the disease continues to claim lives, while repeatedly lying about what he inherited from President Donald Trump in order to make his own efforts seem more heroic.
On Thursday, Biden again claimed that he inherited no vaccination plan when he came into office.
“Were moving in the right direction,” he said, “despite the mess we inherited from the previous administration, which left us with no real plan to vaccinate all Americans.”
It’s been a constant refrain of his administration.
Vice President Kamala Harris said in mid-February that “there was no national strategy, or plan, for vaccinations … and so, in many ways, we are starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year.”
What they all fail to mention is that while Trump supposedly had no vaccination plan, daily vaccinations were already above 1 million – candidate Biden’s stated goal – when Biden and Harris were sworn in.
What’s more, Biden has utterly failed to live up to his promise to dramatically ramp up vaccine distribution.
In fact, the daily vaccine rate is basically where it was when he took office. On inauguration day, 1.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. The daily average number of doses administered over the past week was – 1.6 million.
Why Biden is disparaging Trump should be obvious.
First, he knows the Trump-hating media won’t check his facts. They are happy to swallow Biden’s lie that Trump was responsible for every COVID-19 death that happened on his watch. They were happy to repeat his lie that he had a plan that would be far superior – when it mostly just promised to do things that the Trump administration was already doing. They’ve been eager to believe that Trump’s vaccination effort was, as Biden put it, “a dismal failure so far.”
Second, by making it seem as though he was starting from scratch in the fight against the virus, Biden hopes to claim all the credit when the disease makes its inevitable decline.
It’s smart politics, maybe. But it sure isn’t the “no malarky” Biden promised.
So here are the facts about COVID-19 you won’t get from Biden or the press.
- The number of daily new cases has been falling since the first week of January.
- The number of daily deaths peaked on Jan. 12.
- The rolling average of daily vaccinations was already at 1.3 million when Biden was still unpacking his belongings at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
In other words, Biden deserves none of the credit for the gains we’ve made against COVID-19 since he took office. But if he wants to blame Trump for every virus death that happened before Jan. 20, he should take the blame for every one that’s happened since.
Editor’s note: We goofed on the address of the White House in the original version of this editorial. It’s been corrected.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
“Biden lied…” as a headline does not grab you. It is banal. It is normal. It is expected.
We are open to suggestions!
How about “Biden Lied (Again)…”
I must disagree. I support turning the “Bush lied, people died” mis-meme back on the “liberals” whenever possible.
Aside: Why are they called “liberals” when they are opposed to liberty?
Because they’re not liberals. Vast majority are starkly authoritarian left-wingers.
There’s a few liberals spattered here and there – Richard Dawkins, Matt Taibibi, Glen Greenwald, and so on. But the modern Left hates them.
That’s just one of many good words that Leftists hijacked to pervert its meaning. Just like “progressive”, “gay”, “equity”, etc. They try to mutilate the language to impede intelligent conversation.
“The rolling average of daily vaccinations was already at 1.3 million when Biden was still unpacking his belongings at 1400 Pennsylvania Ave.”
I believe that you meant 1600 Pennsylvania Ave,
Thank you for catching that! It’s been corrected.
They had it right the first time. Biden was moving in at 1400 Pennsylvania Ave. To quote our newly elected president: “Funny, this place has changed a lot since the last time I was here..”
Correction, Editorial Board…
Xiden has not been in office for 2 months. He has been in office for 39 days. So the numbers are even worse for him.
For a clear view of the steady upward trend in COVID-19 vaccinations since mid-December 2020, see https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-trends.
Biden implied that there would be no vaccine until June or July. As such, he has no reason to complain about the lack of a distribution plan in January. According to Biden he still has 3 more months to perfect his distribution plan.
Where do you get that from? Biden said he expected to have 100 million vaccinations done in 100 days. I.e. before end of April. That is not the same as “no vaccine until June or July”.
Trump just played down the seriousness of the pandemic and said that vaccination programs were the state’s responsibility, not his. Then he got himself vaccinated and didn’t tell anybody. Don’t want people thinking that is a good thing to do. Vaccines for me but not for thee.
Isn’t it curious how the number of COVID cases started to drop the day Biden took office which was the same day they officially changed the testing protocols to reduce the cycle threshold for 35 (thus yielding up to a 98% false positive rate) to 15 or 20 (thus virtually eliminating the false positive rate)? Isn’t it curious that the definition was changed from “death with COVID” to “death by COVID” on this same date which also corresponds to the date the death rate started decreasing?
No surprise at all. Critically thinking people could see this coming about 100 miles off. Sadly the death rate is so squed it make me, a retired RN, angry. Institutions that once had integrity now seems to be a political arm of power hungry Marxists. Reporting and tracking criteria should never have been changed. In the end, now that we know what we know due to international researchers and peer reviewed papers, Presidemt Trump was correct in stating…. this may turn out to be no worse than a bad flu season. It just baffles me and sadens me how manipulated by all political factions world wide we have become.
Sorry, no right winger(s) are allowed to take, or fake, umbrage at alleged lies by anyone else. The entire existence of the Republican Party is based on lying, as proven by their embrace of a chronic, inveterate liar as their standard bearer. You know, The Former Guy.
What drivel.
Everyone – everyone – feels better with Biden in charge of this.
Trump was an utter disaster.
You mean all your buddies who never read our constitution? Funny how you all Trump hater dismiss over half the entire US population when posting such things. I’m always fascinated with comments like yours, they have no substance or references to facts just inuendo focussed on your icon of hatred. You do know that hurts you more than those with a real objective critical thinking ability. What a pity.
If you’re not convinced of Biden’s dementia, just listen to his remarks about Covid. There were no vaccinations available when he came into office? He himself publicly, on tape, got his vaccinations to help convince others to take them!
ChinaJoeBama’s pronouncements are supplied by his Keepers. He is simply a figurehead for Obama’s Third Term.
It would be really great to have some entity track all of Biden’s lies the way the WaPo allegedly tracked all of Trump’s. The comparison would be really interesting – I bet it would show that there’s not much difference between the two in that regard.
To suggest that an incoming president is immediately to blame for the mess he inherited is intellectually disingenuous, at best.
I don’t think there are many baseball fans here. To blame Biden for the deaths that have occurred since 20 January is like assigning earned runs scored subsequent of entry to a relief pitcher who was sent in with 0 outs and bases loaded. Issues and Insights indeed.
It’s the state and local governments that needed to make their own plan once they got the vaccine shipments. What did they want Trump to do? Hold their hand? Is that what Biden is doing? Hold the hand of governors?
What a stupid, childish waste of an article. By your logic if a fire crew arrives at a house that in engulfed in flames the fact that the house burns down is their fault because it is their responsibility to put the fire out. When Biden took office the fire was burning all over the country. The fire that Trump and Republican officials chose to ignore because it was politically inconvenient.
Biden is working hard to put out the fire. But he did not start it, he did not ignore it and it was not him that let it burn out of control.
You should be ashamed of yourself for writing such a stupid article.
Thank you. We were wondering what you call passing four COVID stimulus bills, implementing Operation Warp Speed, invoking the Defense Production Act, or 70 some odd actions the administration took in the first weeks of the outbreak that are included on this handy list. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/list-74-actions-taken-by-trump-to-fight-virus-bolster-economy. Now we know what to call it: “chose to ignore.”
I haven’t read the article you’ve linked, but perhaps you can enlighten us as to if the list includes advocating the Chloroquines, internal light & disinfectants, refusal to allow ships to port so that the numbers aren’t credited to him and… miracles. Your 70 odd could easily be 80 odd if you count all the things he did.
Sadly those who are plainly emotionally invested in their hatred of Trump never deal in facts nor do they really want to. I applaud you for giving fact references though, something they nae sayer’s never do. My husband keeps asking me why I bother to argue on line. Well probably just like you, truth sometimes actually gets through to a person. One man plants a seed, one waters it. Keep up the good work, keyboard warrior.
“So should Joe be looking for another job, now that more than 100,000 have died in just the two months that he’s been president?”
Actually, he’s only been president for 40 days. Makes it even worse.
Joe Biden inherited one helluva mess, when it comes to fighting COVID. A corollary topic might be, how many people would have died during this same period if Donald Trump had been re-elected?
If you actually do a deep five into all the research and how CDC changed criteria for counting deaths with Covid or you had a medical background you would not see this as such a helluva mess. It really, in many states, no more horrible than many bad flu seasons that put great strain on ED’s and ICU’s. The mess was created by not following normal standards of practice for infectious diseases in many cases, best example is NY. When you look at Florida, who has a huge number of elderly up in the 90’s and compare the handling, it’s a no brainer. They followed standards of practice. If you do a deep dive, run the numbers, of actual Covid, take out those with multiple conditions, it will make more sense. Every year in our country we have over @ 1.3 million Death’s for all sorts of reasons. They are normally reported like this, cancer who had a cold or flu at the time is not counted as flu as that was not primary disease. Maybe a catalyst but not the cause. I have friends being counted as Covid deaths who were in hospice for cancer and knew they had weeks or days left. Understand the slight of hand here? So, this is a media mess not a real heeluva medical one. Ask yourself…..if this us 98%+ recoverable without immunization…..why the craziness? Think man think, put aside the emotion brought to, you 24/7.
That fool Biden is going to kill a lot more of us before it’s all over.
Trump, it will magically disappear?
Ah Trump? It’s going to magically disappear?
Very well written article. This admin. and the media are already starting the coverup. I just hope he don,t send this ship onto the shoals to bad. Still hope but its waning fast. godspeed America.
And, every vaccine delivered before 20 Mar was ordered and paid for on trump’s last day in office. The vaccines take 60 days from starting a batch to rolling out the door.
I think we are fortunate that the killer plague virus, covid19, is imaginary. If this was a real pandemic, the death rate would be devastating worldwide, given the responses of governments and bureaucracies. I can’t think of a single mandate issued anywhere that addresses any aspect of an actual pandemic.
Every mandate by authorities here is aimed at control of the population and is disconnected from medical science. Quarantine of uninfected people is absurd, and so is the arbitrary shutdown of commercial enterprises.
Pointing out Biden’s words doesn’t really count for much with me because it seems that he is an Alzheimer’s patient who probably doesn’t remember for a even few minutes what he has been prompted to say through an earpiece, (remember “Salute the Marines”) or reads from a teleprompter. If he wasn’t demented, he might indeed hold the views his handlers are getting him to parrot, but it doesn’t seem that he is capable of expressing his own thoughts.
It is easy to believe anything if you refuse to believe whatever is inconvenient to your world view. Must be comforting knowing that no matter how bad Trump was or how much better Biden is you can continue believing whatever you want.
I find it funny that Trump spent all of last year playing down the virus and saying it would just go away and then secretly got himself vaccinated. Secretly. As in “Vaccine for me but not for thee.”