Tipsheet

CNN Wakes Up to Biden's Failure on Covid-19

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  December 29, 2021 7:00 AM

CNN is waking up to the realization that President Biden is not delivering on his promise to crush Covid-19.

In a piece published Tuesday, White House reporter Stephen Collinson criticized the Biden administration’s handling of Covid-19 at-home testing—the need for which should have been predictable as winter approached.

“President Joe Biden and his team repeatedly promised more Covid-19 testing, including at-home kits that deliver rapid results, but they are now admitting a virus that is more adaptable than the politicians who fight it has outpaced them again,” he writes. 

The president admitted his administration’s failure during a phone call with governors this week, saying more should have been done to make testing kits available as the holidays approached. 

Last week, he pledged to distribute 500 million kits, but distribution won’t begin until January—“which will be too late to help this week’s holiday crunch.” 

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The President said he wished he had thought about ordering 500 million at-home tests "two months ago."

Such comments by the President, while candid, are unlikely to improve public confidence in a White House that vowed to shut Covid-19 down but sometimes seems to have underestimated the staying power of the virus and the scale of the challenge. […]

The frustrating search for tests endured by many Americans may also have a political consequence for Biden as he searches for a bounce back after a grim few months that saw his approval ratings tumble. He is, after all, on the record promising to fix a dearth of testing that has been laid bare by the recent viral surge. […]

Running on competence, he put the issue at the center of his 2020 campaign, which was partly rooted in highlighting ex-President Donald Trump's failures during the first year of the pandemic. And in an address to the nation last March, for instance, the President said: "We continue to work on making at-home testing available."

More than nine months later, he is now admitting not enough has been done. Such comments make it hard to accept arguments that the White House was taken off guard by the Omicron variant. Many experts have said for months that rapid testing needs to be more available to the public. It's hardly a secret that new variants of the virus were inevitable. And a recent episode in which White House press secretary Jen Psaki mocked the idea of sending a test to all Americans -- a goal Biden has now embraced -- further muddled the administration's stance on this new phase of the pandemic. (CNN)

Many observed that CNN is finally starting to come around.