The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has said that, by the end of July, “all Americans who so wish may be vaccinated” against covid-19, as projected a week ago. By then, he said, there will be 600 million available doses of the different vaccines. In a chat with voters in Milwaukee (Wisconsin), organized by CNN, which has been Biden’s first official trip outside of Washington since he arrived at the White House on January 20, he has addressed numerous topics about the fight against the pandemic. He has not wanted to make a prediction of when the United States will return to normal, but he has said that he believes that “for next Christmas, the circumstances will be very different.” “I think that a year from now, there will be significantly fewer people who will have to maintain social distance or wear a mask,” he explained.
Biden has also referred to the reopening of schools, closed in part of the country due to the pandemic. The president has promised that most elementary schools will be open five days a week by the 100th day of his arrival at the White House. “I have said that most primary schools must be opened because they are the easiest to open, and the most urgent to open due to the impact on children and families forced to stay at home,” he explained. And he has argued that, although the definition of the order of the population groups to be vaccinated depends on the States, his opinion is that “you have to move teachers higher in the hierarchy.”
During the program, in which he responded for an hour to questions from voters of both parties and independents present in the auditorium, the president has defended the aid package against the effects of the pandemic, worth 1.9 trillion dollars, that his Administration is trying these days to move forward in Congress. “For the first time there is a consensus among economists that now you have to spend more,” he argued. “There is no such thing now as overspending, this is the time we have to spend, it is time to go big.”
Biden has shown how much he wants to distance himself from his predecessor, Donald Trump, whom he has avoided mentioning by name, even going so far as to call him “the extipo.” “For four years, all that was in the news was Trump,” the president has said. “In the next four years, I want to make sure that all the news is about the American people.”
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