Joe Biden Made Lots of Covid-19 Promises. Can He Keep Them?
From antiviral pills to new-variant vaccines, the president made a lot of pandemic promises in his State of the Union. Some are a stretch.
There were not a lot of masks at the speech.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergCovid-19 has been pushed off front pages by falling case counts and other news stories, though the pandemic’s threat hasn’t really changed — we’re just in the trough of the last wave. Nonetheless, it was strange to hear President Joe Biden talk in his State of the Union address as if the pandemic were just another item on a laundry list of issues from the inflation to infrastructure.
Biden’s most notable comment on the virus was the promise to make testing widely available at pharmacies and allow those who test positive to get free access to antiviral pills. That makes sense because in clinical trials, Pfizer’s drug Paxlovid showed close to 90% efficacy at reducing hospitalizations when given to people who test positive for Covid-19 within five days of reporting symptoms.