#On the most critical issue — vaccines — Biden has failed us

From the first moment of his presidency, Joe Biden has received rave reviews for his handling of the coronavirus response. Literally the day after he was sworn in, Dr. David Battinelli of Northwell Health swooned, “The plan put forward by President Biden and his team of experts is spot on.”

On Jan. 21, 1.5 million doses of the vaccines produced in record time — due in part to the Operation Warp Speed program developed and implemented by the Trump administration — were administered. Indeed, the seven-day average of vaccinations as Biden was being inaugurated then stood at just over 1 million.

On May 4, the number of vaccinations in the United States dipped under 1 million for only the second time since January 19. At this point, Biden has been president for almost four months. What happened to his greatness?

Before we answer that, let’s be real here: He was never that great.

When Biden announced on Jan. 26 that his goal was 100 million shots in 100 days, many of us scratched our heads in bewilderment. We were on pace to reach that goal before he became president. What was so ambitious about that?

It was clear to anyone with a brain that Biden was deliberately underpromising so he could overdeliver. And that is exactly what happened when he triumphantly announced on Day 59 that America had hit his 100-day goal.

What an achievement! Had a Baby Yoda doll been president on Day 59, America would have hit that goal, too.

Nor, under Biden, did the nationwide vaccine rollout get more orderly than it had been in mid-January. Many people who were desperate to get the vaccines couldn’t, as the general public-health consensus was that early shots had to be reserved for “front-facing” workers and the elderly.

The Biden administration did little or nothing to clarify the system or use its moral suasion to do the clarifying. Instead, Dr. Anthony Fauci went on six television shows a day to tell confused and exhausted Americans they needed to wear a second mask — while also informing us that vaccination would do very little to make anyone’s daily life easier.

And then came the J&J debacle — the decision by federal health agencies on April 13 to “pause” the use of the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine due to reports of blood clotting.

And here is where Biden and his people deserve the blame for their actual mishandling of the coronavirus response.

Of course the reports were worrisome. But they numbered six — SIX — out of 7 million administered doses. Was there no one at the table at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control when the pause was discussed who thought about gaming out the scenario they were about to impose and consider what the costs would be?

I’m sorry, but it should have been a no-brainer that the imperative to make vaccinations as easy, convenient and prevalent as possible should have been paramount in this case.

That there were sufficient doses of the other two approved vaccines was immaterial. The “vaccine hesitancy” that we saw in polls and heard about would not draw distinctions between good and bad vaccines. Being told by federal authorities that one vaccine might actually be killing people would be more than enough to turn that hesitancy into outright refusal.

These people work for Biden. They are not independent actors, even if they are “scientists” and we are to “trust the science.” What they did was default to their own pre-COVID comfort zone. And they felt comfortable doing so because they had no concern that the elected politician at the head of the executive branch might actually go ballistic at the threat their ill-considered, panicked decision was posing to the most important task facing his presidency and the nation.

On April 15, 3.5 million “first doses” were administered. Then came the J&J “pause.” Only twice since have daily first shots climbed above 3 million, and by the end of April — after the pause was lifted — they sunk to around 2 million a day.

The May numbers are simply calamitous; demand for the vaccines has fallen off a cliff. The seven-day average at the end of this week will be considerably below 1 million.

At the moment of truth, when Biden and his people needed to step up and make the tough call to keep the vaccines flowing so that the American confidence in their value would continue to grow, he didn’t.

He failed us.

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