Biden Warns 'More People May Die' if Trump Refuses to Coordinate

By Yuval Rosenberg

Biden Warns 'More People May Die' if Trump Refuses to
Coordinate on Coronavirus

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday called for greater
cooperation from the Trump White House in the effort to plan the
distribution of vaccines for Covid-19 in the coming weeks and
months.

“They say they have this Warp Speed program that not only dealt
with getting vaccines but also how to distribute this,” Biden

said at a press event, referring to the Trump
administration’s coronavirus treatment and vaccine program. “If we
have to wait until January 20 to start that planning, it puts us
behind over a month, month and a half. So it's important there be
coordination now, now or as rapidly as we can get that done.”

“More people may die if we don't coordinate," Biden warned.

Biden has announced the formation of his own
coronavirus advisory board that is expected to
work with Trump administration health officials as it devises plans
for the incoming president to deal with the pandemic. But Biden
transition officials have been unable to coordinate with the White
House’s Covid-19 task force as Trump continues to deny the election
results and the General Services Administration refuses to sign-off
on the initiation of the formal transition process.

Fauci expresses concern: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s
top infectious disease expert who also serves on the current White
House Coronavirus Task Force, said Monday that the Trump
administration’s refusal to cooperate with the incoming Biden
administration could impair the nation’s response to the Covid-19
pandemic.

The comments from the director of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases came after news that a second
vaccine candidate showed enormous promise in early testing (see
below). But Fauci expressed concerns that the lack of cooperation
from the Trump White House could hamper the rapid progress, making
it harder to “pass the baton” to the Biden team without slowing
stride.

“The virus is not going to stop and call a time out while things
change. The virus is just going to keep going. The process is just
going to keep going,” Fauci said in an interview on NBC’s “Today”
show.

Asked if he was worried about the lack of cooperation from the
Trump team so far, Fauci said, “Obviously, it's something that
we're concerned about. I mean, as you know, I've served in six
administrations, so I've seen a number of transitions and I know
that transitions are very important. Hopefully, we'll see that
soon.”

Trump largely absent: President Trump has not attended
meetings of his coronavirus task force for months, and he has
reportedly stopped being involved in the management of the federal
response to the crisis, even as he ignores or criticizes his own
officials for their efforts to encourage social distancing and mask
wearing. Critics charge that the president is failing to perform
one of his most basic duties.

“The duty of a president is to protect the national security of
the United States, and this is the most prominent disease of mass
destruction America’s ever faced, and we have a commander in chief
who has run away from the problem and has made it worse,” Jack
Chow, a U.S. ambassador for global HIV/AIDS during the George W.
Bush administration,
told The Washington Post. “We had an opportunity
twice over the past eight months to bring it down to safer levels,
and we failed. We are on the verge of losing control of this
pandemic.”

While Trump officials deny the charge — “President Trump and his
entire administration remain intensely focused on defeating this
virus and saving lives as Operation Warp Speed continues to fast
track lifesaving treatments and vaccines in record time,” White
House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said — at least one former
administration official is more critical.

“The numbers are going to get very big in terms of
hospitalizations and deaths,” said Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s former
FDA commissioner. “We are just going to have a lot of death and
disease.”

Biden Calls on Congress to Quickly Pass Large Stimulus

Biden also called for Congress to quickly pass a major
coronavirus-relief bill along the lines of the $3.4 trillion HEROES
Act passed by the Democratic-led House in May — and he emphasized
the need to provide more help to state and local governments facing
a budget crunch as a result of the pandemic. That aid has been a
major sticking point in negotiations on another stimulus package,
with Trump and other Republicans objecting to what they describe as
bailing out badly run Democratic states.

“We’re going into a very dark winter. Things are going to get
much tougher before they get easier. That requires sparing no
effort to fight Covid,” Biden said. “There’s a reason why the
federal government is able to run a deficit, because the states
must, must balance their budgets, and they’re in real trouble.
You’re going to see hundreds of thousands of police officers,
firefighters, first responders, mental health clinics – you’re
going to see them going out of business. Right now, Congress should
come together and pass a Covid-relief package like the HEROES Act
that the House passed six months ago. Once we shut down the virus
and deliver economic relief to workers and businesses, then we can
start to build back better than before.”

Biden’s newly appointed chief of staff, Ron Klain, told NBC’s
“Meet the Press” on Sunday that the president-elect wants a relief
package during the lame-duck session of Congress that begins this
week. “We need action during the lame-duck. There are a lot of
things that are going to have to wait until Joe Biden is
president,” Klain said. “This is not one of them.”

Trump calls for ‘big and focused’ stimulus: President
Trump on Saturday called on Congress to pass another stimulus bill,
but whereas before the election he had urged lawmakers to “go big”
on a relief deal — at times suggesting that he would support a
package larger than the $2-plus trillion Democrats wanted — his
weekend tweet seemed to combine Democrats’ calls for a big bill
with the GOP’s desire for more “targeted” relief.

"Congress must now do a Covid Relief Bill," Trump
wrote on Twitter. "Needs Democrats support. Make it big
and focused. Get it done!"

Biden on Monday criticized Trump for not doing more about the
crisis. “The idea that the president is still playing golf and not
doing anything about it is beyond my comprehension. You’d at least
think he’d want to go off on a positive note." The president-elect
also called on Republicans senators who might object to any
additional coronavirus relief package to “stand up and save lives
and jobs now.”

What it all means: Republicans and Democrats are still
sharply divided over a relief package, and lawmakers are also
dealing with a December 11 deadline to pass another bill to fund
the government and avert a shutdown. Biden’s call for a major
stimulus aren’t likely to get Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-KY) or other GOP members to suddenly drop their
objections to spending another $2 trillion or more on an aid
bill.

“The mostly likely outcome is another stopgap spending
bill, perhaps into late February or early March, with some limited
bipartisan COVID-19 aid attached. That’s the view of Capitol Hill
officials in both parties and other legislative experts,” Roll
Call’s Paul M. Krawzak
reported Monday morning, before Biden’s
speech.

Moderna’s Covid-19 Vaccine Nearly 95% Effective, Early Data
Show

Biotech company Moderna announced Monday that its experimental
coronavirus vaccine was 94.5% effective, according to preliminary
trial data. It’s the second announcement of a promising vaccine
candidate this month, after Pfizer said last week that its own
vaccine was more than 90% effective in trials. Both vaccines use
mRNA, meaning that they use a string of genetic code rather than
the coronavirus itself to prompt an immune response.

The studies are continuing and it’s not clear yet how long any
vaccine protection may last, but the results raised hopes that
multiple vaccines will be available on a limited basis before the
end of the year and more widely available by April, helping to meet
U.S. and global demand. The news also raised hopes that the
pandemic, which has now seen more than 11 million cases in the
United States, could be brought under control next year.

“Once we get these vaccines in sufficient qualities heading in
2021, the combination of the fact that a lot of the population will
have already had Covid, combined with the fact that we’ll be
vaccinating the public with a highly effective vaccine, we could
effectively end this pandemic in 2021,” former FDA chief Dr. Scott
Gottlieb told
CNBC.

Moderna was part of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump
administration’s vaccine development program. It received nearly $1
billion from the U.S. government to support its Covid vaccine
research.

What’s next: As Politico’s Zachary
Brennan and Sarah Owermohle
write, “Governments and vaccine developers are
still figuring out how to distribute limited early stocks of the
shots, whether they can pump up production to meet intense global
demand, and — at least in the United States — how to overcome a
rising tide of vaccine hesitancy.”

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