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Analysis: Biden must balance the horror of Covid-19 with the hope to come

Analysis: Biden must balance the horror of Covid-19 with the hope to come

Analysis: Biden must balance the horror of Covid-19 with the hope to come
Mar 02, 2021 3 mins, 2 secs

The tantalizing promise borne by the quickening rollout of new vaccines, however, is tempered by warnings from President Joe Biden's team that a new cycle of sickness, death and isolation may loom if the country tries to grab its freedom too fast.

On Monday, it emerged publicly that three companies -- Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson -- will deliver sufficient doses to fully vaccinate 130 million people -- one-third of the population -- by the end of March.

The firms told a key House committee last week that they expect to provide enough vaccine for more than 400 million people -- way more than the US population -- by the end of July.

Signs of optimism meanwhile in nations such as Israel and the United Kingdom, which are ahead of this country in their vaccination drives, are only fueling hopes that America could be celebrating more than one kind of freedom come July 4.

But tempering this wonderful prospect, one of the Biden administration's top public health experts delivered a blunt warning on Monday that a recent tumble in new infections had leveled out and more misery could be looming.

"Please hear me clearly.

With these new statistics, I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from Covid-19," Walensky said.

Irreconcilable tension

Tension between an understandable desire of citizens to break out of the grim and grueling purgatory of social distancing and the grave concern of public health professionals that relaxing restrictions will fuel variants of Covid-19 that could make vaccines less effective will define the coming weeks.

Human nature and dire economic need may well drown out yet more warnings from scientists and health professionals.

Yet tens of thousands more deaths from Covid-19, when the end seems to be within sight, would be even more poignant than the loss of half a million Americans so far.

This duality between hope and fear is shaping the politics of the pandemic, potentially forcing Biden to call on state and local leaders to slow down to buy time for vaccines to drive down rates of new infection and protect hundreds of millions of people.

The President is due to address the current state of the crisis at the White House on Tuesday, and will be expected to leaven his pledge of better days to come with a sober warning of hard times that must be endured in the interim.

Already, some state and local leaders are reacting to a fast ebbing of the holiday season spike in new infections and deaths by easing restrictions.

Early data from Israel shows that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is also currently being offered in the United States, is effective at preventing serious illness and death and is helping to ease fears of health systems being swamped.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told CNN's "New Day" on Monday that more than 20 million people in the UK -- nearly one-third of the population -- had already had at least a first vaccine dose.

"We're getting schools open this time next week, then we'll be opening up things like grassroots sport and a little bit more opening up of the mixing that can be done outdoors socially," Raab said.

"Then in April, we've got a further step and in May and June, we'll hopefully progress towards a more substantial opening up of the restrictions."

Britain -- which has generally handled the pandemic poorly, although its vaccine effort has been a success -- appears to have learned a bitter lesson that premature openings will cause more unnecessary sickness and death before the pandemic ends.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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