In what appears to be chapter 7 of the ways in which Trump screwed over America, new President Joe Biden learned that he won’t be inheriting a coronavirus vaccine distribution plan from the former administration because there isn’t one.
That’s right, the president of people who refused to wear masks and thusly continued to aid in the spreading of the virus left exactly nothing for the current president to use in trying to turn this pandemic around.
From CNN:
In the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.
“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source said.
Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from “square one” because there simply was no plan as: “Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence.”
So the incoming administration will have to work double-time to formulate a plan to distribute the vaccine because the former president and his staff couldn’t be bothered to formulate one. The hope for the Biden administration coming in was that they’d be tweaking a plan that Trump left behind not starting from the very beginning as if the entire pandemic didn’t happen on Trump’s watch.
CNN notes that before the inauguration, Biden’s transition team was walking on eggshells trying not to be overly critical of the Trump administration mishandling of the coronavirus from day one. Not to mention, the Trump team wasn’t being forthcoming with information, making the transfer of power as difficult as possible.
“Criticizing the ‘lack of cooperation’ from the Trump administration as an ‘impediment’ for the new administration, White House Covid coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters on Wednesday that he was still confident that the administration can meet its 100 million vaccine shots in 100 days target,” CNN reports.
“For almost a year now, Americans could not look to the federal government for any strategy, let alone a comprehensive approach to respond to Covid,” Zients said, adding, “And we’ve seen the tragic costs of that failure. As President Biden steps into office today ... that’ll change tomorrow.”