US president-elect Joe Biden on Thursday said that he would ask Americans to commit to 100 days of wearing masks as one of his first acts as president, stopping just short of a nationwide mandate he has pushed before to stop the spread of COVID-19.
The move marks a notable shift from US President Donald Trump, whose own skepticism of mask-wearing has contributed to a politicization of the issue.
That has made many Americans reticent to embrace a practice that public health experts say is one of the easiest ways to manage the pandemic, which has killed more than 275,000 people in the US.
Photo: AP
Biden has frequently emphasized mask-wearing as a “patriotic duty” and during the campaign floated the idea of instituting a nationwide mask mandate, which he later acknowledged would be beyond the ability of the president to enforce.
Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Biden said that he would make the request to Americans on his first day in office, Jan. 20.
“On the first day I’m inaugurated, I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask. Just 100 days to mask — not forever, just 100 days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction,” the president-elect said.
Biden reiterated his call for US lawmakers to pass a COVID-19 aid bill and expressed support for a US$900 billion compromise bill that a bipartisan group of legislators introduced this week.
“That would be a good start. It’s not enough,” Biden said. “I’m going to need to ask for more help.”
Biden has said that his transition team is working on its own COVID-19 relief package, and his aides have signaled that they plan for that to be their first legislative push.
Biden also said that he asked US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci to stay on in his administration, “in the exact same role he’s had for the past several presidents.”
Biden said he has asked Fauci to be the “chief medical adviser” on his COVID-19 team.
Regarding a COVID-19 vaccine, Biden offered begrudging credit for the work the Trump administration has done in expediting the development of a vaccine, but said that planning the distribution properly would be “critically important.”
“It’s a really difficult but doable project, but it has to be well planned,” Biden said.
Part of the challenge the Biden administration would face in distributing the vaccine would be instilling public confidence in it.
Biden said that he would be happy to get inoculated in public to assuage any concerns about its efficacy and safety.
Three former US presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — have said that they would also get vaccinated publicly to show that it is safe.
“People have lost faith in the ability of the vaccine to work,” Biden said, adding that “it matters what a president and the vice president do.”
In the same interview, Biden also weighed in on reports that Trump is considering pardons of himself and his allies.
“It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets, and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice,” he said.
Biden committed that the US Department of Justice would under his administration “operate independently” and that whoever he chooses to lead it would have the “independent capacity to decide who gets investigated.”
“You’re not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons, nor are you going to see in our administration the approach to making policy by tweets,” he said.
In addition to considering pre-emptive pardons, Trump has spent much of his time in the past few months trying to raise questions about the US presidential election he lost by millions of votes while his lawyers pursue baseless lawsuits alleging voter fraud in multiple states.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the US Congress have largely given Trump cover, with many defending the lawsuits and few publicly congratulating Biden on his win.
However, Biden said that he has received private calls of congratulations from “more than several sitting Republican senators” and that he has confidence in his ability to cut bipartisan deals with despite the rancor that has characterized the past four years in Washington.
Trump aides have expressed skepticism that the president would attend Biden’s inauguration.
Biden on Thursday night said he believes that it is important that Trump attends, largely to demonstrate the nation’s commitment to peaceful transfer of power between political rivals.
“It is totally his decision,” Biden said. “It is of no personal consequence to me, but I think it is to the country.”
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