Analysis: Biden must balance the horror of Covid-19 with the hope to come
Article summary
On Monday, it emerged publicly that three companies — Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson — will deliver sufficient doses to fully vaccinate 130 million people — one-third of the population — by the end of March. Signs of optimism meanwhile in nations such as Israel and the United Kingdom, which are ahead of this country in their vaccination drives, are only fueling hopes that America could be celebrating more than one kind of freedom come July 4. But tempering this wonderful prospect, one of the Biden administration’s top public health experts delivered a blunt warning on Monday that a recent tumble in new infections had leveled out and more misery could be looming. […] Recent polling has shown that more and more people are willing to get the dose but still short of numbers that would theoretically trigger herd immunity — the moment at which the virus will find it impossible to multiply. […] That figure is up from 47% in mid-January and 34% in early December.
