True to a promise in his Saturday night address to Americans, President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced a 13-member coronavirus task force, his first step on the election’s most crucial issue. That act is intended to reassure Americans that his administration will ensure a science-based response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 238,000 Americans and upended the lives of countless others.
The announcement, presented just days after his election, refutes the peevish suggestion that Biden emerged from the election without a mandate. In fact, one definition of that word is “an authorization to act given to a representative; [an acceptance of] the mandate of the people.”
Think of the millions of Americans traumatized by the pandemic – and insistent on its defeat.
There is no denying the crucial importance of a task force, not after President Trump’s uninformed denigration of efforts to combat the virus with science. Add to that Trump’s dishonest claims, many floated at those pandemic-friendly campaign rallies, that America was “turning the corner” in the pandemic.
The nation is currently posting more than 100,000 infections a day.