By the time Joe Biden would actually take the oath of office, the coronavirus pandemic will likely be dramatically different — if it hasn’t ended entirely.
But the Democratic presidential candidate still gave a speech and released a detailed plan on Thursday to combat the pandemic, drawing a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump and his administration’s floundering response to the outbreak.
The plan and speech gave Biden a chance to reiterate the core message of his campaign: a promise to return to more normal, competent policymaking after years of chaos and uncertainty under Trump. It’s a particularly effective contrast after Trump gave a speech on Wednesday night that almost immediately resulted in a slew of corrections by the administration and provided no ideas for how the administration will stop Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, from spreading within the US.
“The markets will respond to strong, steady, and capable leadership that addresses the root of the problem, not efforts to cover it up,” Biden said.
Biden’s plan takes a two-pronged approach to the coronavirus outbreak. First, he promises “a decisive public health response” focused on free testing, improved access to treatment, the development of a vaccine and treatments, and increased health care capacity. Second, he calls for “a decisive economic response” that prioritizes paid sick leave for anyone hit by the outbreak, as well as aid to hard-hit families and state and local governments.
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It’s largely in line with what experts have called for in response to the current coronavirus pandemic. That’s in some ways not too surprising: Ron Klain, who headed President Barack Obama’s response to the 2014-’15 Ebola outbreak, is a key adviser to Biden’s campaign.
But it’s also something Biden emphasized in his speech.
“We’ll lead with science. We’ll listen to the experts. We’ll heed their advice,” he said. “And we’ll build American leadership and rebuild it to rally the world to meet the global threats we’re likely to face again.”
By comparison, Trump has repeatedly whiffed attempts to address the coronavirus. His administration’s rollout of test kits has been botched, with the US testing a fraction of the people of countries with smaller outbreaks. He’s focused largely on border control policies, like a travel ban for Europe, which critics call both xenophobic and ineffective now that the virus is transmitting within communities in the US, not coming from outside the country. And he’s so far refused to support or act on measures that could help people stay at home and avoid spreading the disease, like paid sick leave.
“The virus is already in the United States,” Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “Trying for containment at our borders is not a very effective use of resources or a way to really stem the tide. Most public health experts believe we need to be focusing on mitigation, on social distancing, on testing, on creating the systems that will support people within the US to get what they need and be prepared for social disruption.”
Biden, at least, is using this moment to focus on those policies that experts have pushed for. And while he likely won’t be able to implement this plan before the current coronavirus pandemic recedes, the moment is letting him draw a huge contrast to Trump.
At the top of Biden’s plan is a promise to “establish and manage a permanent, professional, sufficiently resourced public health and first responder system that protects the American people.”
He’d do this, the plan states, by bringing back the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which Trump previously cut.
According to experts, this kind of agency is crucial to responding to any disease outbreak. It would focus on coordinating efforts between the many agencies in the sprawling federal government, helping ensure they’re doing the most they can and working toward a single goal.
But it’s important to have this kind of agency set up before an outbreak. Setting up an agency takes time; it requires hiring staff, handing out tasks and expected workloads, creating internal policies, and so on. A preexisting agency is also going to have plans worked out before an outbreak, with likely contingencies in place for what to do. So it’s important that Biden is promising that this type of groundwork will be permanent — in a contrast to Trump’s approach.
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“The basic systems need to be in place for global, state, and local responses,” Kates said. “When you don’t shore those up, you’re not starting from scratch, but you’re catching up every single time.”
Biden’s plan also calls for more free and widely available testing — ensuring that tests are free and available for everyone, establishing mobile test sites, providing public reports on how many tests have been done, and expanding government surveillance capabilities. This is crucial to stopping a pandemic: Through testing, public health officials and staff can detect who’s sick, isolate them, trace anyone the sick person has come in contact with, and make sure those people are taking steps, such as staying at home, to prevent spreading the disease, too. But without testing, none of this is possible.
The plan promises other public health steps, including building up health care capacity and equipment, boosting telemedicine capabilities, and accelerating research and development of treatments and vaccines for Covid-19. It also calls for a large boost in funding, directed for the most part to state and local governments, to help impacted areas. Along with all of this, the plan promises “timely information and medical advice and guidance” as part of a broader effort to “stop the political theater and willful misinformation that has heightened confusion and discrimination” around Covid-19.
Biden also calls for several measures to help mitigate the impact the coronavirus is already having on the economy. That includes paid sick leave — both in an emergency program funded by the federal government and a longer-term proposal primarily implemented by employers. It also includes several steps to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for health care, including by making it easier to enroll in Medicaid. And Biden backs other efforts to provide relief to hard-hit workers, including expanded unemployment insurance benefits, assistance for schools, and increased food relief for low-income families and children.
These kinds of efforts are crucial not just to fight a recession, experts say, but to actually get people to follow safe practices that can help stop the spread of any disease. For instance, a person who’s sick might not be willing to stay home and avoid going to work if they need all their income to keep food on the table or a roof over their head. Paid sick leave eliminates that risk, letting the sick person stay home and not contaminate any of their coworkers.
Biden also points to some of his previous policy proposals, such as his plan to create a public option and expand access to health care, to “increase the resilience of all Americans in the face of a crisis.”
Finally, Biden calls on the US to play a role as a global leader, including by providing aid to countries to help them contain their own epidemics (and keep them from spreading to the US).
Some of the proposals could be implemented through executive action, but at least some parts would require Congress.
Hopefully, though, this isn’t something Biden will need to fully implement — because the Covid-19 pandemic should recede before he potentially takes office in January 2021. But Biden’s plan is a helpful guide for how the former vice president would handle a crisis like the one America is facing today, particularly compared to the current administration’s fumbled response.
In many ways, Trump’s botched response to the coronavirus pandemic began years before the current crisis, when his administration dismantled the White House agency in charge of coordinating a response to disease outbreaks.
That move can explain why the administration has been so slow to respond, even with what experts call “low-hanging fruit” like testing. As of March 11, the US had tested a little more than 7,000 people, according to the Atlantic. In comparison, South Korea tested more than 66,000 people within a week of its first case of community transmission — a target the US completely missed, despite a much larger population.
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The Trump administration promised to massively expand testing, but it’s run into problems time and time again, from the technical to the more practical. So the country has continued to lag.
“These kinds of things are what you prepare for, why you do preparedness planning, so this kind of thing doesn’t happen,” Kates said. “Right now everyone’s playing catch-up to try to address these gaps, and every day matters. A good preparedness plan would be addressing that from the outset.”
Trump, however, has defended the elimination of the White House agency, saying at a press briefing that the administration can simply scale up staff for these kinds of crises whenever it needs to. As Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security director Tom Inglesby told the Washington Post, that’s not how this works: “You build a fire department ahead of time. You don’t wait for a fire.”
Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly tried to downplay the coronavirus pandemic. He’s tweeted comparisons to the common flu, which in fact appears to be less deadly and spread less easily. He suggested, based on a self-admitted “hunch,” that the death rate is much lower than public health officials have projected. His administration requested $2.5 billion for the crisis — a fraction of what both Democrats and Republicans said is needed and ultimately passed.
The overall response has led even some conservatives to question Trump’s approach. The National Review editorial board wrote:
[Trump] resisted making the response to the epidemic a priority for as long as he could — refusing briefings, downplaying the problem, and wasting precious time. He has failed to properly empower his subordinates and refused to trust the information they provided him — often offering up unsubstantiated claims and figures from cable television instead. He has spoken about the crisis in crude political and personal terms. He has stood in the way of public understanding of the plausible course of the epidemic, trafficking instead in dismissive clichés. He has denied his administration’s missteps, making it more difficult to address them.
On Wednesday night, Trump appeared to finally confront the reality of the crisis in a televised statement from the Oval Office — acknowledging that the outbreak is now a pandemic. But even then, he only promised a limited travel ban for most of Europe, which won’t address the spread of the disease within the US, and some economic relief measures.
This is exactly what Biden, as a presidential candidate, is now trying to draw a contrast with, trying to present an image of competent, serious leadership that Trump has for years failed to project.
The Trump presidential campaign, at least, appears to be taking the contrast seriously. Even before Biden’s speech, the campaign sent out an email blast titled “Joe Biden’s Incompetence and Misinformation Risks American Lives.” In a statement released after the speech, spokesperson Tim Murtaugh argued, “President Trump acted early and decisively and has put the United States on stronger footing than other nations. His every move has been aimed at keeping Americans safe, while Joe Biden has sought to capitalize politically and stoke citizens’ fears.”
So far, though, those kinds of assurances have done little to calm the criticism toward Trump.
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