United States, Biden: ‘Mask for a hundred days’. Jaws in the working group

New York – “Wear the mask for a hundred days. Not forever. One hundred days, and I think we will see a significant drop in infection. ” Joe Biden makes this rare announcement about his first hundred days. He will ask everyone for a gesture, a sacrifice, a demonstration of discipline, in a country where there are still areas of denial or “reductionism”, and that some walk without a mask is a kind of libertarian gesture, of revolt against interference. of the State.

Perhaps the most important announcement, due to the impact it can have on the public, is that Biden will be inoculated in public as soon as the US health authority has given the green light to the first available vaccine (which in all probability will be from Pfizer). ). Significant gesture because it tends to counteract skepticism and distrust, widespread not only among non-vax militants but also among sectors of the population in general. “People have lost faith in the efficacy of vaccines, it is the moment when I have to take a clear position in front of the citizens.” Biden will say these things tonight at 9 p.m. on the east coast (3 a.m. Italian time) in an interview with CNN, the first in which he appears with Vice President Kamala Harris at his side.

Another news related to the pandemic is given in the same interview: Biden has already asked Dr. Anthony Fauci to be the head of his medical advisers and therefore an authorized member of the health working group that will address the covid-emergency later of the Opening Day. 2020. Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, already holds a similar position in the Trump administration, yet the outgoing president has denied and contradicted it many times, to the point of turning it into something of a “internal opposition”. , an uncomfortable voice from the scientific community.

The interview aims to underscore that Biden’s presidency will make a difference in the fight against the pandemic. It takes hold of the myth of the hundred days, born with the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt who became president in 1933 during the Great Depression. The first hundred days since then are seen as the initial concentrate of changes brought about by a presidency. Biden not only asks his compatriots for the modest sacrifice of the mask, he imposes it on them, at least within the limits of his powers. In federal public offices, in means of transportation, it will be mandatory to wear it. But on some ground Biden is cautious and does not announce any changes with respect to Trump: he does not want to talk about a generalized blockade, he does not intend to impose new restrictions at the federal level. The reason is twofold. On the one hand, Biden has always said he doesn’t want to impose further slowdowns on an already depleted economy; on the other, it knows that an attempted federal blockade would immediately enter a collision course with the powers of the individual states.