(Headline USA) Although most of the legwork in coronavirus vaccine development and distribution plans was completed before President Joe Biden took office, he nonetheless insisted that his already revised goal to have 70% of all Americans vaccinated by the July 4 holiday was an ambitious objective.
Regardless of whether it was ambitious or easily obtainable, the Democrat administration now appears poised to fall short of it.
That, in turn, has prompted some revisionism in the White House—which is desperate for a decisive victory as artificially bolstered favorability numbers begin to dip.
It comes amid other fiascos—including the border crisis, inflation, unemployment, and recent diplomatic failures in Iran and Russia—during which the administration likewise has sought to move the bar or redefine the underlying terms to make optics more favorable.
Biden’s supposed handling of the pandemic—largely due to the earlier efforts of his predecessor, former president Donald Trump—has been one of the few silver linings where he has continued to receive positive marks.
But with overall vaccination rates having plateaued around 65%, the White House was forced this week to deploy a bit of creative numbers-crunching. Instead, it hyped the fact that more than 70% of Americans age 30 or older had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
As hopes dimmed of persuading others in the adult population to partake of the vaccine, it also cast its sights on the few demographics where progress still seemed penetrable.
The administration released new data Tuesday showing it expected to reach 70% of Americans age 27 or older with at least one shot by the July 4 holiday.
And a White House official said it is now redoubling its focus on vaccinating younger Americans age 18-26, who have proved to be least likely to get a vaccine when it’s available for them.
Even so, it faces several major hurdles.
Evidence has shown that healthy individuals under age 65 have a low risk of suffering serious health consequences from the virus unless mitigating risk factors or conditions are present.
In fact, much of the early fearmongering that claimed the greatest danger was asymptomatic transmission now seems to be working against the scientific bureaucracy.
Some vaccine skeptics within the medical community argue that those who develop natural immunity may be better protected than those who allow pharmaceutical companies to reprogram their genetic material.
On the contrary, reports of younger vaccine recipients suffering heart inflammation and various adverse effects may be keeping away even some who might otherwise elect to be vaccinated.
Nonetheless, an emergency meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was set to review cases of myocarditis and pericarditis in vaccine recipients under 30, was delayed after the Biden administration unexpectedly signed into law a brand-new national holiday, Juneteenth.
In addition to repeatedly moving the goalposts, Biden administration officials also sought to downplay the idea that meeting any specific goal should be seen as a necessary metric for success.
The White House saidBiden’s vaccination goal was less important than the pace of the nation’s reopening, which was exceeding its own internal projections as the overwhelming majority of the nation’s most vulnerable people are fully vaccinated and cases and deaths were at their lowest rates since the earliest days of the pandemic.
That reopening effort is one area that Republicans and Democrats now seem poised to rally behind.
However, the administration’s proposed $6 trillion budget set a particularly low bar for projected economic growth, creating even more alarm that the skyrocketing inflation and cost-of-living increases could wind up further multiplying the national “misery index.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
