WASHINGTON (AP) – For almost a year it was the Trump program. Now President Joe Biden is convening the best scientists and public health experts in the country to regularly inform the American public about the pandemic that has caused more than 425,000 lives in the US.
Starting Wednesday, management experts will hold briefings three times a week on the state of the outbreak, efforts to control it, and the race to deliver vaccines and therapeutic products to end it.
Expect a stark contrast to the last administration’s briefings, when public health officials were repeatedly undermined by a president who shared his ideas without trying without hesitation.
“We’re getting professionals back to talking about COVID in an unpainted way,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. “Any questions you have, that’s how we’ll deal with it because we let science talk again.”
The new briefings, which begin just a week after Biden’s term, are understood as an explicit rejection of his predecessor’s approach to the coronavirus outbreak.
President Donald Trump vindicated prominence and confused the message of the nation’s top public health experts in the early critical days of the virus and eventually confused them as the pandemic’s deadly weight increased.
The new briefings are part of Biden’s attempt to rebuild public confidence in institutions, particularly the federal government, with a commitment to sharing the bad news with the good.
“I will always go with you on the state of affairs,” he said Tuesday, repeating a central promise from his inaugural speech.
It’s a message that helped bring Biden to the White House. As a candidate, he warned that the nation was facing an increase in coronavirus cases in what would be a “dark winter”; Trump, for his part, falsely claimed that the worst of the virus was over.
Dr. David Hamer, a professor of global health and medicine at Boston University’s School of Public Health, said having briefings of “serious science-based” health officials would go a long way in improving public perceptions of the vaccine. .
“There is some hesitation, so it is important to educate people about the vaccine, how it works, its safety and its protection against the disease, but also its slow transmission,” he said.
Biden’s bet, whose presidency depends on his treatment of the pandemic and the largest vaccination campaign in world history, could hardly be bigger.
Biden pushes a tired population to re-adopt measures of social distancing and the use of masks, pointing to scientific models that suggest the practices could save 50,000 lives over the coming months. He has insisted that members of his administration model the best behaviors in the country.
These messages found few champions in the former administration, as Trump openly ignored the science-based guidelines of his own administration. Facial coverage was scarce at re-election meetings and social distancing almost non-existent.
In the weeks leading up to Biden’s takeover, the United States set records in new cases and reported deaths almost daily, as many states imposed costly restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. Still, Trump restricted media appearances by his top scientists and public health officials and continued to spread misinformation.
Asked by CNN last week if the Trump administration’s lack of frankness about the virus had cost him his life, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said: “You know, he probably did. ”
The Trump administration ended the practice of regular scientific reporting at the beginning of the pandemic, after Trump expressed his anger at the disastrous warnings from the Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, about the threat of the virus .
Trump later told reporter Bob Woodward that he had been “minimizing” to avoid panic about the virus. Aides said he was also trying to protect the economy to increase his re-election prospects.
When the pandemic consolidated in the United States last spring, Trump took on the position of “war president,” giving briefings at the White House, where he, not science, was the star. Trump noted the strong television ratings for his first appearances and scheduled the sessions to surpass the national news of the night.
From the newsroom, Trump shared his skepticism about facial coverage, despite widespread findings from scientists that wearing a mask helps prevent the virus from spreading. He wondered out loud if Americans could ingest toxic bleach to kill the virus like cleaning a surface. He encouraged governors to “reopen” their states, even as cases escalated.
Wednesday’s briefing will be held virtually, rather than in person at the White House, to allow for questions from health journalists and to keep a fixed schedule regardless of the Western wing’s schedule. It will feature Jeff Zients, the Biden administration coordinator for the pandemic response; his deputy, Andy Slavitt; Fauci; Dra. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of Biden’s COVID-19 equality working group; and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of CDC.
It comes when government scientists, led by Fauci, have been making regular appearances in the media to share their experience in TV interviews and podcasts. Last week, Fauci called his current circumstances “liberating” and offered that “one of the new things in this administration is that if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess.”
Hamer said the Trump administration had created enough confusion and mistrust around the coronavirus and vaccine that the Biden administration has a long way to go to rebuild public confidence, adding that some Americans could never get there. .
“It simply came to our notice then. It is difficult to say exactly how much damage has been done, ”he said. “I think there may be pockets in the country that may be more resistant to listening to evidence, because maybe they have decided what they have heard from the past. But others can still be influenced and educated.
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Associated Press writer Alexandra Jaffe contributed to this report.