WASHINGTON — After nearly six months in office, grappling with a pandemic every step of the way, President Joe Biden was determined to party.
»Watch a replay of fireworks from the National Mall
“This is a holiday weekend,” Biden declared Friday as he parried journalists’ “negative” questions about the ongoing U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, “I’m going to be celebrating it.”
Biden wants Americans to celebrate, too, after enduring 16 months of disruption in the pandemic and more than 605,000 deaths. The White House encouraged gatherings and fireworks displays all around the country to mark — as though ripped from a Hollywood script — the nation’s “independence” from the virus.
And there is much to cheer: Cases and deaths from COVID-19 are at or near record lows since the outbreak began, thanks to the robust U.S. vaccination program. Businesses and restaurants are open, hiring is picking up and travel is getting closer to pre-pandemic levels.
Still, it’s hardly a “Mission Accomplished” moment. More than 200 Americans still die each day from COVID-19, a more infectious variant of the virus is spreading rapidly at home and abroad, and tens of millions of Americans have chosen not to get the lifesaving vaccines.
“If you’ve had the vaccine, you’re doing great,” said Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, an infectious disease physician at the John Cochran VA Medical Center and St. Louis Board of Health. “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you should be alarmed and that’s just the bottom line, there’s no easy way to cut it.”
“But that doesn’t take away from the fact that this country is in a significantly better place,” she said.
Biden, who is set to host the largest event yet of his presidency on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday, sees this as a long-awaited opportunity to highlight the success of the vaccination campaign he championed. It will be the clearest indication yet the U.S. has moved into a new phase of virus response, shifting from a national emergency to a localized crisis of individual responsibility and from vaccinating Americans to promoting global health.
“The Fourth of July this year is different than the Fourth of July of last year,” Biden said Friday. “And it’s going to be better next year.”
Top officials in the Biden administration fanned out across the country over the weekend to promote the vastly improved virus situation under the banner, “America’s Back Together.”
Never mind that the president has come up short of the vaccination goal he had set for the Fourth with great fanfare.
Biden had hoped to have 70% of the adult population vaccinated by Sunday but clocked in at about 67%, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials insisted the miss would have little practical effect on Americans’ ability to mark the holiday.
What concerns them more is the emergence of two disparate realities in the U.S.: the gap between heavily vaccinated communities where the virus is dying out and lesser-vaccinated ones where the new delta variant is already taking hold.
About 1,000 counties have a vaccination rate below 30%, and the federal government is warning that they could become the next hot spots as virus restrictions ease.
The administration is sending “surge” teams to Colorado and Missouri. Additional squads of infectious disease experts, public health professionals and doctors and nurses are getting ready to assist in additional locations with a combination of low vaccination rates and rising cases.
Overall, the vastly improved American landscape stands in stark contrast with much of the rest of the world, where there remain vast vaccine deserts and wide community spread that could open the door to even more dangerous variants. The Biden administration is increasingly turning the federal response to the complicated logistics of sending excess U.S. vaccines abroad in an effort to assist other nations in beating back the pandemic.
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