US President Joe Biden on Wednesday night expressed pointed frustration over the slowing COVID-19 vaccination rate in the US, and pleaded that it is “gigantically important” for Americans to step up and be inoculated against the virus as it surges again.
Biden, speaking at a televised town hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, said the public health crisis has turned largely into a plight of the unvaccinated as the spread of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has led to a surge in infections around the country.
“We have a pandemic for those who haven’t gotten the vaccination — it’s that basic, that simple,” he said on the CNN town hall.
Photo: AP
The president also expressed optimism that children younger than 12 would be approved for vaccination in the coming months, but he displayed exasperation that so many eligible Americans are still reluctant to get a shot.
“If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC [intensive care] unit and you’re not going to die,” Biden said at the forum at Mount St Joseph University. “So it’s gigantically important that ... we all act like Americans who care about our fellow Americans.”
Over 80 minutes, Biden fielded questions on many of the pressing issues of the day, including his infrastructure package, voting rights and the makeup of the congressional commission that would investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. He also reflected on what it is like to be president, saying he is sometimes taken aback by the pomp that comes with the job and the weight of being “the last guy in the room” left to make the call on daunting decisions.
Six months into his presidency, taming COVID-19 remains his most pressing problem.
US hospitalizations and deaths are nearly all among the unvaccinated, but COVID-19 cases nearly tripled in the US over the past two weeks amid an onslaught of vaccine misinformation that is straining hospitals, exhausting doctors and pushing clergy into the fray.
Across the US, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose over the past two weeks to more than 37,000 on Tuesday, up from fewer than 13,700 on July 6, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Just 56.2 percent of Americans have had at least one dose of a vaccine, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The president said that the rise has become so concerning that even his critics are pushing back against vaccine disinformation.
Biden made an indirect reference to high-profile conservative personalities at Fox News who have “had an altar call” and are now more openly speaking to their skeptical guests about the benefits of being vaccinated.
“I believe in the science of vaccination,” Sean Hannity recently told viewers, urging them to take the disease seriously.
Steve Doocy, who cohosts Fox & Friends, this week told viewers that vaccination “will save your life.”
Before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington, Biden told reporters that he was “glad they had the courage to say what they’ve said.”
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