Joe Biden’s pandemic response has been a true disaster. When Joe Biden ran for president, he promised to “shut down” COVID, and was so eager to be a national hero that he gave a speech celebrating our “independence from COVID-19” in July of his first year in office. Soon after, COVID cases and deaths returned in waves, reaching their highest level on record. Biden blamed unvaccinated Americans for his failure to “shut down” the virus.
For him, beating the virus was all about getting everyone vaccinated rather than pushing therapeutics. He had hoped to have 70 percent of eligible Americans vaccinated by Independence Day 2021 but fell far short. He was so desperate he even pushed for mandates, and those efforts failed, too. Now, he’s making another vaccine push, and it doesn’t look good.
Flashback: By His Own Definition, Joe Biden Lost the War on COVID
According to a new poll, only 23% of U.S. adults are “definitely” planning to get the updated COVID shot, while 33% say they will “definitely not” get it. A plurality of adults, 43%, are on the fence, with 23% saying they will “probably” get it and 19% saying they will “probably not” get it. A majority of parents also say they won’t give the new shots to their children.
This is a stunning failure on Biden’s part. He’s the one who wanted to get every American vaccinated, even though most Americans didn’t need one, particularly young people and children, who are largely unaffected by the disease. This is why Biden pushed for vaccine mandates and is reportedly interested in trying a mandate again.
This poll, and the fact that Biden is still flirting with a vaccine mandate, is a testament to the failure of his COVID-19 strategy and his ability to convince the public to get vaccinated.
Related: 5 Ways Joe Biden Made the COVID Pandemic Worse
Biden was his own worst enemy in his vaccine push by pausing distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine over a one-in-a-million risk of severe blood clots. It was a silly decision since the risk of severe blood clots was actually smaller than the risk of catching COVID and dying from it. I’ve long suspected that Biden was attempting to tank the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in favor of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines because the J&J vaccine was not an mRNA vaccine.
But if promoting the vaccines was Biden’s goal, pausing the J&J vaccine had a huge unintended consequence. Instead of tanking the J&J vaccine, the pause ultimately caused distrust in all three vaccines.
Not that it particularly mattered. Earlier this year, the FDA finally admitted that the COVID vaccines didn’t prevent infection or transmission. Heck, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Biden’s chief medical advisor, even admitted last year that the COVID-19 vaccines “don’t protect overly well” against infection.
Still, it was the vaccines that Biden pushed. He made the gamble, put all his chips on it, and as his record and this new poll show, he lost.
