WASHINGTON: For U.S. President Joe Biden, this July 4, the U.S. Independence Day, serves as an occasion for his administration to declare Americans’ “independence” from COVID-19 and that “America’s back together.”
While the United States is making progress in immunization against the coronavirus, the rampant spread of the more contagious Delta variant indicates that it is yet too early for the White House to declare its complete victory against the pandemic.
As for Americans coming back together, it is even more of a wishful thinking — at least for the time being, given, among other polarizing factors, the racial divide that, despite the conviction and sentencing of a white former police officer who in bright daylight ruthlessly killed a black man gasping for air, still runs deep in so many aspects of society.
INDEPENDENCE FROM COVID?
Last month, the White House acknowledged it would not achieve its goal of getting 70 percent of Americans vaccinated when the country celebrated the Fourth of July. According to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 54.9 percent of American adults have received at least one dose of vaccines.
Some 1,000 largely unmasked people were invited by the first family to an Independence Day party on the White House South Lawn. The first large-scale public event hosted by the Biden White House intended to showcase life in the United States has returned to normal.
The plan, according to which attendees are not required to prove they are vaccinated, stands in stark contrast to remarks made by Biden himself in March in a televised address, where the president discouraged Americans from congregating in “large events with lots of people” on the Fourth of July.
Even worse, the White House barbecue party was arranged at a time that can hardly be deemed auspicious, as the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant raised the alarm of more infections and deaths.
The CDC said the Delta variant is now responsible for more than one in four U.S. infections, largely among not fully vaccinated people. Public health experts like Tom Frieden, former CDC director, expressed the fear that with the continuous circulation of the Delta variant, even those who have been fully vaccinated may become vulnerable in the face of new virus mutations.
Meanwhile, federal and local officials have been sending conflicting messages on masking vis-a-vis the threat posed by the Delta variant, with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky insisting that fully vaccinated people are safe and do not need to wear masks, while Los Angeles County officials suggesting otherwise, recommending that even vaccinated people wear face coverings indoors.
“I do think that we’re jumping the gun,” Ezekiel Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, was quoted by The Washington Post as saying when commenting on the White House’s July 4th celebration. “I think being cautious on that is really important, and focusing on what more we have to do is really important.”
“We’re not at victory. We can’t say ‘Mission Accomplished’ yet. We want to just forget everything and go back to pre-2019, and I think it’s going to be a mistake, and there are people who are going to pay with their lives for it,” added Emanuel, who served in Biden’s presidential transition team.
RACIAL DIVIDE RUNS DEEP
The Biden administration took office amid the rise in white supremacy that the president blamed his predecessor, Donald Trump, for encouraging, and a national reckoning of racial justice following the killing of black man George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police who is white.
Projecting himself as a sympathizer and healer, Biden themed his presidential campaign on national unity. After assuming presidency, he assembled what he boasted the most diverse administration.
Yet, how to move forward on racial justice has so far created considerable headache for the Biden administration, which has oftentimes found itself in a painstaking back-and-forth of making promises and giving compromises.
In April, for example, the Biden team quietly abandoned a campaign promise to establish a White House-led commission on policing, opting instead for solely focusing on the legislative path to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which nonetheless is still stalled in the Senate.
Just two weeks ago, the American people celebrated Juneteenth, which marks the eventual end of slavery in the country, for the first time as a federal holiday.
On June 1, Biden traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to mark the centenary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, becoming the first president to visit the city, commemorating the over 300 black people slaughtered in the horrible violence.
“As Americans celebrate July 4 in 2021, our racial and political divisions are so stark that many African Americans and other minority groups of color feel as (19th-century American social reformer Frederick) Douglass did when he bluntly stated that ‘the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker,'” wrote an opinion piece carried on Sunday by Athens Banner-Herald, a newspaper in Athens, Georgia.
“Our current struggles of voter suppression and police brutality, along with racial disparities in education, medical care and unemployment, still heavily weigh upon us,” the article read.
