sharing some of the precious supply<\/a> with the world, as the White House announced Monday it would do with roughly 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced in the U.S. but not yet authorized for use there. At the same time, the White House was instrumental in an agreement reached with drugmaker Sanofi on Monday to help scale up production through next year of Moderna\u2019s two-dose shot, which makes up more than 40 percent of doses administered in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBelieving most Americans who have yet to get a shot would do so if it were easier, the White House has deployed billions of dollars toward ads encouraging shots, community programs to bring doses to the hardest to reach Americans, and tax credits to encourage employers to give their workers paid time off to get protected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn this next phase we\u2019ll focus on increasing accessibility, building confidence, continuing to put equity at the center of everything we do,\u201d Zients said of the push to maximize the number of Americans vaccinated in coming months. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be easy, but neither was getting to 200 million shots in less than 100 days, and we did that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To date Biden and his advisers have hewed to caution, even overcaution. Officials expressed reluctance about loosening travel guidance for vaccinated individuals not because of concerns about their risk \u2014 but because they worried unvaccinated individuals would travel with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe president\u2019s been very clear that he\u2019ll shoot straight with the American people at all times and that\u2019s consistent with the wartime effort in his leadership,\u201d said Zients, who echoed Biden\u2019s call that the administration would be \u201cleading with science and facts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In March, Biden predicted a return to small, in-person gatherings of vaccinated people for the July Fourth holiday, and aides later clarified that he believed that would be possible without masks. To many, it was viewed as an overly conservative reflection of what much of the nation was already doing. But it also reflected the lingering unknowns about how to reboot a nation that for a year has been living in a state of partial hibernation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe country has gotten tired of lockdowns,\u201d said Robert Blendon, a Harvard professor of health policy and political analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s tension within the administration,\u201d Blendon said. \u201cAnybody tracking public mood knows that the more you could lay out a firm road map, the better people in this country will feel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that while experts are telling Biden \u201cwe can\u2019t predict it\u2019s going to play out exactly that way,\u201d people\u2019s lives would be better if the administration \u201ccould lay out, by September you\u2019ll do this, by November you\u2019ll do this. But there are these unknowns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s those variables that keep White House officials up at night \u2014 the spread of \u201cmutant\u201d strains of the virus, dropping demand for the vaccines and the public\u2019s growing eagerness to return to normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In March, Biden predicted a return to small, in-person gatherings of vaccinated people for the July Fourth holiday, and aides later clarified that he believed that would be possible without masks. To many, it was viewed as an overly conservative reflection of what much of the nation was already doing. But it also reflected the lingering unknowns about how to reboot a nation that for a year has been living in a state of partial hibernation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe country has gotten tired of lockdowns,\u201d said Robert Blendon, a Harvard professor of health policy and political analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s tension within the administration,\u201d Blendon said. \u201cAnybody tracking public mood knows that the more you could lay out a firm road map, the better people in this country will feel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that while experts are telling Biden \u201cwe can\u2019t predict it\u2019s going to play out exactly that way,\u201d people\u2019s lives would be better if the administration \u201ccould lay out, by September you\u2019ll do this, by November you\u2019ll do this. But there are these unknowns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s those variables that keep White House officials up at night \u2014 the spread of \u201cmutant\u201d strains of the virus, dropping demand for the vaccines and the public\u2019s growing eagerness to return to normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Biden, who was elected to bring an end to the pandemic but has a far broader legislative agenda, the politics of getting the virus response right can\u2019t be ignored. \u201cIf the president\u2019s able to get people back to some normal life, the relief will be unbelievable,\u201d Blendon said. \u201cAnd he\u2019ll get enormous credit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Joe Biden spent his first 1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}