Joe Biden had it all worked out — until he didn’t. In August, he was asked by ABC News reporter David Muir if he would impose another lockdown to combat the coronavirus, the former vice president said he “would listen to The Scientists” (capital T, capital S), thinking that would put the matter to rest once and for all. When it didn’t and he he began taking flak for his opinion, he simply flip-flopped and said his plan to deal with the coronavirus “does not include a countrywide lockdown.”
Now that he has “won the election,” he is discovering that The Scientists don’t think in lockstep, which makes “listening to” them hard. (RELATED: Biden coronavirus adviser says distribute vaccine globally as priority over Americans)
In fact, a member of his new COVID task force, Michael Osterholm, was asked on MSNBC whether he would support a lockdown. His answer added a new wrinkle to Biden’s conundrum:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Well, first of all, if you interview 50 people, you can get 75 different definitions of what a lockdown is, OK? So let’s just be clear, I don’t think anybody knows what they’re talking about when they talk about a lockdown, myself included.
Osterholm went on to advocate for a type of lockdown in which the government would “pay people to lose their jobs.” (RELATED: Biden assembles COVID-19 advisory panel based on the politics of the ‘experts’)
In a separate interview back in March, Osterholm, affirmed the view that wearing masks and gloves is “largely” nonsense, explaining that “trying to stop influence, virus transmission, is like trying to stop the wind. … [W]e’ve never had anything successfully do that other than vaccine.”
At some point, Biden will discover that just saying or doing the opposite of what he thinks Donald Trump would is not enough — that a president must be able solve real problems in real time. It will be interesting to watch, though it doesn’t promise to be much fun.
