TOPLINE
President Joe Biden on Tuesday gave himself a firm deadline on vaccine availability, stating during a CNN town hall that vaccines will be available to all Americans by the end of July of this year.
KEY FACTS
At the start of the town hall, Biden told moderator Anderson Cooper that the U.S. will have “over 600 million doses” of coronavirus vaccine by the end of July, which he said would be “enough to vaccinate every single American.”
Biden emphasized that his deadline refers to vaccine availability, not the number of vaccines administered, a key distinction considering the logistical pitfalls that have hampered some states’ vaccine rollouts.
Later in the event, Biden revealed that his public health experts, particularly Dr. Anthony Fauci, told him to “be careful not to predict things that you don’t know for certain what’s going to happen” because he will “be held accountable.”
However, Biden made several more predictions during the town hall, including that by Christmas “there will be significantly fewer people having to be socially distanced, have to wear masks.”
Biden expressed a desire to move teachers up in the vaccination hierarchy, though when asked about vaccine prioritization by a Wisconsin resident whose son has lung disease, he conceded that he lacks the power to overrule states on the issue.
BIG NUMBER
200 million. That’s how many doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines the Biden administration bought in a deal announced last week – though these doses will not be administered until well into the summer.
TANGENT
When pressed on vaccines, Biden was quick to bring up his predecessor. “There was no backlog… there was nothing in the refrigerator figuratively or literally speaking,” he said of the vaccine supply left over by the Trump administration. He also chalked up difficulties in administering the vaccine to the fact that “we wasted so much time,” lamenting, “look at what we inherited.”
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“For four years, all that's been in the news is Trump,” Biden said when asked about the former president’s impeachment. "I'm tired of talking about Trump. It's done."
Source: Forbes
