Inflation soars, companies struggle to recruit, and President Joe Biden’s polls are in free fall. The White House sees a common culprit for everything: COVID-19.
Biden’s team views the pandemic as the leading cause of both the nation’s malaise and its own political problems. Final control of COVID-19 is key to rejuvenating the country and revitalizing Biden’s own reputation, the White House believes.
But the coronavirus challenge has proven exasperating for the White House as last summer’s premature victory claims were inundated by the more transmissible Delta variant, stubborn millions of unvaccinated Americans, and ongoing economic repercussions from the darkest days of the pandemic.
All of this when another variant of the virus, Omicron, appeared overseas. It worries public health officials, leads to new travel bans and panicked markets, while scientists try to understand how dangerous it can be.
While the economy has indeed returned, there are several signs that COVID-19 will leave its scars even as the pandemic subsides.
According to the government, a relentless minority opposition to vaccination is spoiling recovery for the rest of the country – forcing masks on those vaccinated and adding to lingering fear wherever you look.
When asked why Americans aren’t getting the news that the economy is improving, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week, “We’re still in the middle of a pandemic battle and people are fed up with it. We are too.”
The state of affairs, she said, affects everything from people’s attitudes towards sending their children out the door to the price of a gallon of gasoline.
The government sees vaccination orders as critical not only to preventing preventable diseases and deaths, but also to ensuring economic recovery – and saving Biden’s political position.
“We have the tools to accelerate the way out of this pandemic that are widely available,” said Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 coordinator, in a coronavirus briefing. While ruling out large-scale lockdowns such as the United States saw in 2020 and resurfacing across Europe, Zients renewed the government’s appeals to more Americans to get their shots.
But on Friday, the discovery of the new variant in southern Africa had much of the world cut off travel from the region and contain a threat that the World Health Organization believes could be worse than the devastating waves from the delta.
The White House and the president’s allies have been frustrated for weeks at the government’s slow move to approve booster vaccinations for all adults. They fear the regulatory process has added misinformation and confusion around the boosters and means the nation is not optimally protected for the holiday season.
Biden on Friday appealed to unvaccinated Americans to be “responsible” and get the vaccination, and those who qualify for a booster will also get it. “That’s the least everyone should do. … We always talk about whether this is about freedom, but I think it’s a patriotic responsibility to do that. “
Despite all the wrangling over Biden’s declining standing with the Americans, Democrats say a turnaround may be within reach.
“From Trump to Biden, people have gone from feeling like America is grieving again to feeling on the threshold of tomorrow in America,” said party strategist Jesse Ferguson.
“Overcoming the pandemic opens the door to the economy, to the way we live and to people who feel less divided,” he added.
However, it is a stretch for Biden’s critics to hold COVID-19 responsible for all of the nation’s problems or to believe that containing the virus will solve them.
A new variant with the name B.1.1.529 was designated by the World Health Organization as a “worrying variant” and was named “Omicron” after the letter of the Greek alphabet.
Kentucky Republican Senate Chairman Mitch McConnell, blaming Biden’s large pandemic relief package for the high prices, recently said, “There’s no question what keeps working Americans up at night. Inflation. The skyrocketing prices and unpredictability that fueled Democratic policies. “
The ongoing effects of the virus have weighed on the president’s approval ratings, even if his handling of the virus was viewed as a relative strength.
In an AP-NORC poll in October, 54% of Americans said they approve of Biden’s job related to the pandemic. At 48% and 41%, respectively, that was slightly higher than his overall approval rating and significantly higher than his approval of his dealings with the economy.
As recently as July, 66% of Biden had agreed to COVID-19 and 59% of his work performance overall.
In last month’s poll, only about a third of Americans said the nation was on the right track, up from about half in late February.
The outlook for the economy has also deteriorated, with only about a third saying conditions are good, compared to almost half in September.
For the White House, the blame for the pandemic is emerging as a modern version of the old mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid” from the Bill Clinton years.
When Psaki was pressured into what the government was doing to contain higher prices, she replied, “We know what is causing this, don’t we? Global supply chain problems. “
“The best we as a government can do is get the pandemic under control. That is the main focus of the President. “
The same message spreads throughout the administration.
“As long as the pandemic continues, there will be pandemic-related bottlenecks, so the best way to resolve this is to end the pandemic,” said Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently, stressing the need for vaccinations.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm spoke about the government’s response to soaring gasoline prices, saying vaccination is “the ultimate answer”.
Economists largely support sentiment but warn that the solution is not an easy one.
“The root of problems in business is the virus,” said Harvard economist James Stock, “and the best way to minimize the spread of the virus is to increase vaccinations. In my opinion, it is the number one economic policy. “
But as experts predict that COVID-19 will become endemic, Stock said, “You have to be realistic that it won’t go away.”
Even if the virus wears off, economists warn, there will be harmful aftereffects.
Goldman Sachs found in a recent analysis that around half of the 5 million people who left the workforce since the pandemic have retired, making it harder for companies to reclaim lost jobs. The work of Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom and others shows that companies expect more people to continue working from home and shopping online.
Only 5% of Americans’ total work days were home before the pandemic, a number that Bloom says is now 25%. More than three-quarters of the workers surveyed by his colleagues and himself would prefer to work from home at least one day a week, and almost a third would prefer to work from home every five days. This could make it difficult for employers to evaluate their employees and use office space efficiently.
Administration is also concerned with a global economy, so solving pandemic problems at home has its limits.
Coronavirus outbreaks in Asia are shutting down computer chip plants and worsening semiconductor shortages, a sign that vaccination could be as important globally as government efforts domestically. One of the reasons Biden is spending on infrastructure to strengthen its supply chain is to minimize the damage from these downtimes.
“When a factory in Malaysia closes due to a COVID outbreak – which they have – it creates a ripple effect that can slow auto production in Detroit,” Biden said in a recent speech. “Why that? You can’t get the computer chips you need.”
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Associate press writers Josh Boak and Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.
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