‘If the pandemic unfolded in stages so too must it be contained that way. During the campaign, Biden promised swift action on such steps as testing, vaccine manufacture and distribution, and preventive measures like mask mandates. That, he’s said, will be followed by other steps like improving surveillance of emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2, extending unemployment benefits to people whose jobs were lost as a result of quarantining and lockdowns, extending the moratorium on evictions, and ensuring that people who contract COVID-19 and survive don’t face discrimination in insurance benefits. It would, the candidate promised, be nothing short of a stepwise, war-like mobilization...
‘If there’s a certainty in exactly how the Biden plan will unfold over the next 24 or 12 or even three months, it’s that there’s no certainty at all. Viruses are at once both mindless and clever—infecting and eluding, spreading and shape-shifting. It takes a set of policies that are equally adaptable, equally nimble to defeat them. The new president’s plan is an ambitious first step. A lot of sure-footed steps remain before the pandemic is defeated.’
Read here (Time magazine, Jan 20, 2021)
