‘America is coming back together,’ Biden says, but COVID not finished
WASHINGTON — After nearly six months in office, grappling with a pandemic every step of that way, President Joe Biden was determined to party.
“Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence: America is coming back together,” Biden declared Sunday as he hosted more than 1,000 guests for a July 4th celebration on the South Lawn of the White House.
Biden wanted all Americans to celebrate, too, after enduring 16 months of disruption in the pandemic and more than 605,000 deaths. The White House encouraged gatherings and fireworks displays all around the country to mark — as though ripped from a Hollywood script — the nation’s “independence” from the virus.
And there is much to cheer: Cases and deaths from COVID-19 are at or near record lows since the outbreak began, thanks to the robust U.S. vaccination program. Businesses and restaurants are open, hiring is picking up and travel is getting closer to pre-pandemic levels.
Still, it’s hardly a “Mission Accomplished” moment. More than 200 Americans still die each day from COVID-19, a more infectious variant of the virus is spreading rapidly at home and abroad, and tens of millions of Americans have chosen not to get the lifesaving vaccines.
“If you’ve had the vaccine, you’re doing great,” said Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, an infectious disease physician at the John Cochran VA Medical Center and St. Louis Board of Health. “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you should be alarmed and that’s just the bottom line, there’s no easy way to cut it.”
“But that doesn’t take away from the fact that this country is in a significantly better place,” she said.
For Biden, it was a long-awaited opportunity to highlight the success of the vaccination campaign he championed. Sunday’s South Lawn event was the largest yet of his presidency, the clearest indication yet that the U.S. has moved into a new phase of virus response.