Now that President Biden has taken aggressive action to get shots in arms and provide direct relief to Americans, Republicans like Mitch McConnell are trying to downplay his aggressive action to defeat the virus. But the truth is that Biden inherited a disastrous vaccine distribution program — and within eight weeks of taking office has transformed it into the best system in the world.
Republicans are only making these dubious attacks to distract from their politically toxic vote against more money for vaccine distribution now — and they were silent when the previous administration dragged its feet on vaccine distribution, only to never fully implement a national vaccination strategy.
Unlike Republicans, The Numbers Don’t Lie
Under President Biden, the federal government “has taken a greater role in distributing COVID-19 vaccines,” by invoking the Defense Production Act, fully activating FEMA, deploying thousands of troops, creating mass vaccination sites, authorizing more vaccine administrators, and negotiating deals to secure more coronavirus vaccine doses. These decisive actions have dramatically improved the status of America’s coronavirus response as illustrated by the figures below.
Then: When President Biden took office on January 20th, less than 17 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine had been administered in the United States.
- Now: Over 109 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine have been administered.
Then: When President Biden took office, the United States was administering 900,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccines a day on average.
- Now: Under President Biden the United States is administering over 2.4 million doses a day on average, an increase of over 266 percent.
Then: When President Biden took office, the United States had only had three days where over one million vaccine doses were administered and one day of over two million doses.
- Now: There have been 51 days where over one million doses were administered and 18 days where over two million doses have been administered.
Then: When President Biden took office, about eight percent of Americans over 65 had been vaccinated.
- Now: Today, 60 percent of Americans over 65 have been vaccinated.
Then: The week before President Biden took office, the Trump administration distributed under 8.3 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine to the states.
- Now: The Biden administration distributed over 16.2 million doses of the vaccine to the states this week.
Then: When President Biden took office, less than 36 million coronavirus vaccine doses had been distributed to the states.
- Now: Today, the federal government has distributed nearly 143 million vaccine doses to the states.