On the plan for both vaccines and reopening of schools, President Joe Biden said one thing and the voice of his administration, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, sometimes said another thing and set the bar so that the administration can do it easily exceed.
As part of their “100 Days” brand, the Biden government has set the target of reopening most schools in its first hundred days.
“It should be a national priority to get our children back in school and keep them in school,” Biden said on December 8, announcing the goal of “opening up the majority of our schools … against the end of my first 100 days. “
The purpose was then changed to include only K-8, and ‘reopening’ was redefined by Psaki as’ personally ‘teaching at least one day a week’. A week later, Biden tried to fix the record in a CNN town hall, causing confusion about what the government is actually doing.
“His goal is to keep the majority of schools – more than 50% – open by day 100 of his presidency,” Psaki said on February 9. ‘And that means a little teaching in classrooms. at least one day a week. Hopefully it’s more. ‘
The reopening as Psaki defined it has already been accomplished in the US. According to several estimates, the majority of schools already meet in person at least once a week.
Burbio, a private data tracking company that tracks 1,200 school districts representing more than 35,000 public schools in 50 states, reported on February 13 that 33.6% of K-12 students in the U.S. are ‘virtual’ schools only. visit. The majority of students go to schools that achieve Biden’s goal, with 40.8% of students attending each school day in person and 25.6% attending ‘hybrid’ schools that alternate between online and personal learning during the week.
Another analysis by the Center for Reinventing Public Education found that 687 percent of the 477 school districts sampled offered some personal education and that 44 percent of the school districts offered full personal education. . ‘
The relocation of the administration has been widely criticized as inadequate and a reversal of the original implication of reopening schools in the first 100 days.
Asked about his administration’s stance on the reopening of a CNN City Hall on February 16, a week after Psaki’s rally, Biden explained that for K-8 students, “the goal would be five days a week.” of personal tuition or near the end of his first 100 days.
He said it was ‘not true’ that reopening would involve only one day a week in person, calling Psaki’s statements on reopening a ‘communication error’.
Vaccines
Errors in communication caused problems to the Biden government on more than one front.
In terms of vaccines, Biden has been criticized for not aiming high enough with its initial goal of reaching a total of 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine within their first 100 days, averaging 1 million doses per day. But when he proposed to cultivate 1.5 million doses a day, Psaki insisted that their goal was to achieve the original goal and hopefully exceed it, and not shift the goal posts.
While early media coverage expressed skepticism about the feasibility of the Biden government’s initial target of 1 million doses per day, it appeared that the country was already on track to reach the desired level of daily vaccinations without any further action by the government. . According to data published by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the US administered an average of 914,000 doses per day in the week leading up to the inauguration. The day after Biden took office, the 7-day moving average daily doses reached the 1 million mark.
Five days after his first term, Biden acknowledged that the US was likely to reach the initial target of 1 million doses per day in less than a month. Despite the fact that Biden himself suggested that the country could reach about 1.5 million doses per day within about three weeks, the government insisted that its target would remain 100 million vaccine shots in its first 100 days in office.
A day after Biden raised the 1.5 million aspiration, Psaki explained that this was not a ‘new goal’ for the government, and made it clear that they intended to measure themselves against the initial measure. .
“The president did not actually say, ‘the new goal is. “The president said, ‘I hope we can do more than that,’ and that, of course, is his hope. “He continues to push our team to get as many Americans vaccinated as quickly as possible,” Psaki said.
As of February 20, the 7-day average number of vaccine doses administered to the CDC per day was 1.2 million and approximately 64.2 million vaccine doses were administered. Earlier that month, the 7-day average on several occasions exceeded 1.5 million.
On the vaccination target of the Biden government, Harry Enten, CNN data analyst, remarked that ” a look at the statistics shows that it could very well be too modest, but that’s probably good politics.
“Biden’s team wants, if anything, to do the exact opposite of what Trump did. They do not want to set a partner that can be easily impossible to beat. They want a partner who can be reached and who can possibly exceed can be, “Either writes. “In other words, they may be under-promising and delivering too much.”
