How Successful Was The Biden Administration In Battling COVID This Year?

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Biden administration laid out his main priorities as he took office: tackling the pandemic, responding to the climate crisis, addressing racial inequality, and rejuvenating the economy. Over the next few weeks, the NPR Politics Podcast will check in on how those goals are going.

Building on President Trump's Operation Warp Speed, the Biden administration managed to make vaccines widely-available across the country within a few months of taking office. Convincing everyone to take the vaccine proved a bigger challenge, and now the country is facing another surge of the virus,

This episode: White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and health correspondent Allison Aubrey.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House.
0:09.0	And I'm Tamer Keith. And I also cover the White House.
0:12.0	We're doing some podcast to close out the year and we're focused on what President Biden
0:18.0	said would be his four main priorities during his first year in office.
0:24.0	Those priorities are racial equity, fighting COVID, climate change and building the economy.
0:31.0	Today we're going to talk about the pandemic and we have here with us in PR's Allison Aubrey
0:37.0	who covers the pandemic for our health team. Welcome Allison.
0:42.0	Great to be here. Thanks for being here and thanks for being here throughout the pandemic
0:47.0	to help explain all of these things to us.
0:50.0	It has been my pleasure though I wish you know the topic were a little cheerier.
0:55.0	Yeah, yeah. I'd like to retire this topic but we can't.
0:59.0	Well I think we all would but we're not there yet.
1:02.0	So let's start at the beginning of Biden's term though. It's January and obviously the coronavirus
1:11.0	pandemic is his biggest challenge and the administration did hit the ground running.
1:20.0	The first thing or big thing was the pandemic.
1:23.0	A like they did get a lot of money out of the door right.
1:26.0	They did get money out the door working with Democrats in Congress.
1:30.0	It was it was not bipartisan but they got it done quickly.
1:33.0	They passed a massive COVID relief bill that sent $1,400 direct payment checks to people.
1:40.0	And there was a lot of money directly aimed at fighting the pandemic.
1:45.0	Things like helping businesses and purchasing more rapid tests for instance.
1:49.0	And today Biden actually announced that the government is purchasing another 500 million,
	...

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