It’s now nearly a year since the Trump administration learned that a deadly virus was making its way into our country. During that period, the White House and many governors have engaged in a political wrestling match over who was responsible for leading the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. While you may not like the conclusion, it is clear that President Trump never took this crisis seriously, and is even less concerned now that his tenure is about to end.
It may be an uphill battle, but President-elect Joe Biden has made it clear that he is willing to aggressively step into that battle on Jan. 20, because the next six to nine months will determine whether the pandemic is beaten. There are two good reasons why there has to be a field general leading the fight. America can’t afford for this dark cloud to linger indefinitely because of the economic damage we have experienced. Moreover, what if there is another pandemic, caused by one of our political enemies?
Prior to the election, the president predicted that there would be many millions of vaccinations before the end of the year. To date, fewer than three million people have been inoculated, and only 11 million doses have been distributed around the country. The slow rate of inoculations is due to the fact that many states are staggering under the weight of testing costs and the needs of responders. Local governments and health care institutions have been on their own for 10 months after being told by Washington that the virus was a state-by-state problem.
Biden has pledged to get inoculation numbers up to one million a day. That is comforting, but health care professionals estimate that even at that rate, it would take over a year to vaccinate every American. And to reach that pace, the federal government will have to take some draconian measures.
The Defense Production Act dates back to the Korean War. It gives the president the power to force companies to drop their private customers and produce what the country needs. Trump claimed he used the act to get General Motors to build more respirators, but GM claimed it came forward on its own to build them. The president didn’t aggressively use the act, for fear of offending his conservative base, which opposes government intervention.
Jerry Kremer was a state assemblyman for 23 years, and chaired the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. He now heads Empire Government Strategies, a business development and legislative strategy firm. Comments about this column? JKremer@liherald.com.