eNewMexican

Delta variant poses threat to Biden’s agenda

By Annie Linskey, Tyler Pager and Dan Diamond

WASHINGTON — The rapid increase in coronavirus infections driven by the delta variant over the past month is turning the country’s attention back to the pandemic and threatening to subsume President Joe Biden’s agenda — just as the White House and its allies hoped to move on from the virus and focus on promoting the administration’s other accomplishments.

Inside the White House, top officials are growing increasingly anxious about the state of the pandemic and are gravely concerned about the situation spiraling out of control in some areas of the country with low vaccination rates, according to two people who work in the administration and two others in close contact with the White House.

Biden’s team had always expected to see additional coronavirus outbreaks, but the White House assumed the increases in infections would be “mounds” and not “peaks,” according to one top administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private discussions.

Officials are now looking at models that predict anywhere from a few thousand new COVID-19 cases to more than 200,000 every day in the fall. One new forecast also estimates the United States could see three times the number of daily deaths from the coronavirus by October compared to now.

The current seven-day average is about 250 deaths per day.

Stock markets have already shown jitters over the variant, with the Dow slumping more than 700 points Monday before rallying later in the week. Globally, hospitals are filling up — including in the United Kingdom, which is experiencing an outbreak so severe that the United States warned against traveling there.

“If you have hundreds of thousands of Americans getting sick, that’s problematic for any president,” said Cornell Belcher, who was one of former President Barack Obama’s pollsters. “It does become all consuming for the president — because he’s the president.”

More focus on COVID-19 leaves the president fewer opportunities to sell the stimulus package Congress approved earlier this year or travel the country pressuring lawmakers to back his infrastructure plan. Other priorities that risk being squeezed include shoring up voting rights, a policing overhaul, gun control and new immigration rules.

Biden’s CNN town hall last week was dominated by questions about the virus — a marked change from his first formal news conference, during which the pandemic did not come up at all.

Americans are growing more concerned about the state of the pandemic. In an Axios-Ipsos poll conducted July 16-19, 39 percent of Americans said that returning to their pre-coronavirus life right now would be a risk, up from 28 percent in late June.

The White House has sought to place blame elsewhere, with Biden accusing social media platforms of “killing people” by allowing misinformation to spread on their platforms. And allies have pointed out that the biggest infections increases are coming in Republican-led states — another way of deflecting from the administration.

NATION & WORLD

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2021-07-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://enewmexican.com/article/281633898266095

Santa Fe New Mexican