This would be impressive if it were true. Biden inherited a robust program from his predecessor, whose Operation Warp Speed initiative put the U.S. on track to achieve the to-date total of 158 million inoculations even before Biden was sworn into office.
“I know you’re tired of hearing me say this,” the president said Friday, “but, I mean, there’s nothing the American people can not do if we give them a chance.”
He continued, boasting of the “progress we’ve made on my other key priority, getting the American people vaccinated.”
“We’ve turned around a slow-moving vaccination program into being the envy of the world,” Biden said. “Yesterday, we set an all-time record for Thursday vaccinations, and in a seven-day period, that was the first-ever where we administered 20 million shots in seven days. That’s 20 million shots in a week. No other country has come close to doing that. So we made significant progress on that front, but the fight’s far from over.”
A good Catholic would know you shouldn’t lie or steal, especially on Good Friday.
As noted earlier, the first coronavirus vaccine shots were administered in the U.S. on Dec. 14, 2020. By Jan. 20, 2021, the day of Biden’s inauguration, 15.6 million people had already been dosed. On Inauguration Day alone, nearly 1.5 million inoculations were administered. Biden, who, by the way, was himself vaccinated at the point, had nothing to do with this.
Put more simply, even before the president had taken the oath, the men and women of Operation Warp Speed, who worked hand in hand with private biomedical companies to develop and distribute vaccines within a matter of months, had already put the country on track to surpass Biden’s campaign promise of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days.
Yet, here he is anyway, claiming again he inherited a poorly managed program when he came into office and that he, and he alone, is responsible for the current pace of vaccine distribution.
It’s even more galling when one remembers Biden himself repeatedly undermined public faith in Operation Warp Speed during the 2020 presidential election.
On Sept. 29, for example, during the first presidential debate, Biden said the public would be wise to view any vaccine developed during the Trump administration with suspicion, saying, “In terms of the whole notion of a vaccine, we’re for a vaccine, but I don’t trust [former President Donald Trump] at all. … What we trust is a scientist.”
On Oct. 15, during a town hall hosted by ABC News, Biden cast doubt on the White House and Operation Warp Speed’s estimates showing a vaccine would be available by the end of the year, saying, “Allegedly, it’s happening, but I have not seen it yet, nor the docs that I talk to have seen it.”
Later, at the second presidential debate, moderator Kristen Welker noted, “Just 40% of Americans say they would definitely agree to take a coronavirus vaccine if it was approved by the government.”
“What steps,” she added, “would you take to give Americans confidence in a vaccine if it were approved?”
Biden again undercut the men and women tasked with developing and approving such a cure, saying he’d “make sure it’s totally transparent. Have the scientists of the world see it, know it, look at it, go through all the processes.”
He added for good measure, “There’s no prospect that there’s going to be a vaccine available for the majority of the American people before the middle of next year.”
Now, Biden wants you to believe the program that made all of this possible, the program he constantly challenged during the election, played little, if any, role in the current pace of vaccine distribution.
There’s that “decency” we were all promised during the 2020 campaign.