When it comes to COVID, President-elect Biden has his work cut out for him

125K daily COVID-19 infections recorded in the US today.

President Biden is really going to have his work cut out for him in getting this pandemic under control in the US. And, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. There’s still 2.5 months until he takes office.

Also, who does he even put in charge of communication and leading the COVID-19 response efforts?

The #1 thing you have to do in leading a crises like this is put an expert in charge who’s not a politician. If a politician is in charge, roughly half of the country won’t trust or listen to them.

Having a non-partisan expert leading the way is key. The US of course knows this — it’s right there in the CERC guidelines: https://emergency.cdc.gov/cerc/

This is what Taiwan did. They quickly spun up a task force in January, the Central Epidemic Command Center, and put Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) in charge. He has and still does lead all of the daily press conferences on the COVID situation. The president, Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has non said much about the pandemic response at all really. She’s not at the press conferences. She stays out of the way and lets the CECC and Chen Shih-chung handle it all.

This is what New Zealand did. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was/is at the daily press conferences there, but always handing off to the expert, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield, and then just getting out of the way.

This type of expert-lead response was never possible in the US. I mean, it is possible under a normal president of course, but never with Trump. Trump isn’t a guy to hand it over to an expert and get out of the way. He’s too big of an egotist. Too much of an attention whore. It all has to be about him. Any crises response with him in charge was always doomed to fail.

When there were daily press conferences, Trump still mostly led them. He let the experts, Fauci and Dr. Birx, talk a little bit, but then undermined everything they said every chance he got. Now, that he’s bored with the pandemic, he isn’t even having daily briefings anymore even though cases are at all time highs.

He completely screwed the pooch on this from day one and 70 million Americans still voted for him. It’s insane.

And to make matters worse, he undermined Fauci so much that he politicized his base against Fauci. Steve Bannon wants to behead Fauci, and I’m sure plenty of Trump’s followers do too. So, now in Biden’s pandemic plan, there really isn’t a feasible way Fauci can lead it. In a normal scenario, he’s the non-political expert in charge. But, now Trump politicized Fauci so much that half of the country hates him and won’t listen to anything he says. So, I don’t know who leads the response now. Do you find a new expert? Are these Trump fans even going to listen to anybody who tells them to wear a mask at this point?

I don’t know. President Biden has his work cut out for him, that’s for sure.

The pandemic in the US is going to get worse before it gets better.