US President Joe Biden on Sunday celebrated Independence Day with an upbeat assessment of a nation he said is roaring back to post-pandemic life, even if COVID-19 has yet to be fully “vanquished.”
Speaking before a festive crowd of 1,000 guests on the White House South Lawn, Biden drew a comparison between the declaration of independence from Britain in 1776 and today’s rapid recovery from the pandemic.
“Two-hundred-and-forty-five years ago, we declared our independence from a distant king. Today, we are closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus,” Biden told the crowd of invited military personnel and essential workers.
Photo: AFP
“We’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,” the president said, but added: “Don’t get me wrong: COVID-19 has not been vanquished. We all know powerful variants have emerged, like the Delta variant” of SARS-CoV-2.
Biden paid tribute to those who had lost their lives, with the number of deaths in the US at 605,526, but he struck an overwhelmingly optimistic note, suggesting that under his leadership the nation — bitterly and at times violently divided under the administration of former US president Donald Trump — is “coming back together.”
“Over the last year, we have lived through some of our darkest days,” Biden said. “We are about to see our brightest future.”
Large crowds packed the National Mall for a huge fireworks display in yet another sign that the US was looking to its July 4 holiday as a moment to put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror.
During last year’s holiday, with the pandemic near its summer peak and towns across the US reeling from protests against racism and the police, Washington and other big cities held only muted celebrations.
Despite the atmosphere of Sunday’s victory party, the Biden administration says it is concerned about the large numbers of people who have still not been vaccinated.
The heavily promoted White House goal of getting seven in 10 adults their first shot by Independence Day narrowly failed, and when it comes to full vaccinations, only 46 percent of Americans have received two doses.
That lag comes as the highly contagious Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread.
Hospitals are starting to fill up again, especially in Utah, Missouri, Arkansas and Wyoming. US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci on Sunday told NBC that unvaccinated people now account for 99.2 percent of COVID-19 deaths.
The fireworks smoke will have barely cleared before Biden has to return to a complex political fight for the survival of his legislative agenda this summer.
Negotiations continue on a bipartisan infrastructure deal and fractious debate within his Democratic Party looms on a much broader spending package that has no support from Republicans.
The president visited a cherry farm in Michigan on Saturday to tout a positive employment report hailed as a sign of economic resurgence.
In his speech on the White House South Lawn, Biden said that the US was on the move again.
“We’re seeing record job creation and record economic growth — the best in four decades and, I might add, the best in the world.”
The Biden administration also sent Cabinet secretaries and other officials to sports events, cookouts and festivals nationwide as part of its “America’s Back Together” celebration, while the White House — at least outwardly — continues to brim with confidence. Six in 10 respondents in a poll by the Washington Post and ABC News gave Biden positive ratings for his handling of the pandemic.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS