3 years ago
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A new study from the Commonwealth Fund estimates that President Biden and Democrats saved 279,000 lives with a rapid vaccination plan that Republicans voted against funding.
- Without a vaccination program, by the end of June 2021, there would have been approximately 279,000 additional deaths and up to 1.25 million additional hospitalizations.
- If the U.S. had achieved only half the actual pace of vaccination, there would have been nearly 121,000 additional deaths and more than 450,000 additional hospitalizations.
- If there had been no vaccination program, daily deaths from COVID-19 potentially would have jumped to nearly 4,500 deaths per day during a second “2021 spring surge” — eclipsing the observed daily peak of 4,000 during the first 2021 winter surge.
The funding for the expansion of the vaccination program was in the CARES Act that Republicans voted against. Unlike the previous administration, President Biden had a plan to get shots in arms, as he called it.
Republicans in the House, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, even tried to block the package from passing.
There is scant evidence that the Trump administration had any sort of plan that would have been different from their failed approach to PPE, which was to make states and localities fight each other for limited supply.
The Trump administration did not want to take responsibility for the pandemic, so they created a federal leadership vacuum that allowed the pandemic to spread while sickening and killing Americans.
The contrast between Biden and the Democratic Party with Trump and the GOP is as simple as it is stark. Trump and the Republicans killed 600,000 Americans. Biden and the Democrats saved 279,000 lives.
That message should appear relentlessly in campaign ads from coast to coast every day between now and November 2022.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are alive today because Joe Biden is in the White House and Democrats control Congress.
Mr. Easley is the managing editor, who is White House Press Pool, and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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