There’s not a lot that President-elect Joe Biden can do to quell the rising swell of coronavirus cases now crashing across much of the United States, but he is already planning his response for what will surely be a tough winter.
In his victory speech on Saturday, Biden pledged to name a coronavirus advisory group on Monday. The group, he said, would consist of scientists and other experts, and would take a COVID plan formulated during the campaign and convert it into a “blueprint” that can be immediately implemented when he takes office Jan. 20.
“Our work begins with getting COVID under control,” Biden told the cheering crowd in Wilmington, Del.
Many public health experts said Biden should also reach out right away to governors and local leaders across the country to encourage universal masking. Ideally he could get a few Republican governors to back him up, especially in hard-hit states where residents have resisted wearing masks.
Biden also needs to confront the spread of misinformation and devaluation of science that has driven much of the previous administration’s response to the pandemic, public health experts said. He can do that by speaking often and plainly from his new position of pending authority about the threat of the virus and the simple measures everyone can do to prevent spread of disease.
“I think the pandemic is his No. 1 priority right out of the gate. He’s got to get control of this virus,” said Dr. Warner Greene, an infectious disease expert with the Gladstone Institutes, an independent research group in San Francisco.
“He does have one hand tied behind his back because he’s not president yet, and this President (Trump) is not going to retire easily,” Greene said. “Biden has ideas for things to do, but those were campaign promises. He needs to move away from campaigning and toward governing. This is his first opportunity to show the country how he wants to change things.”
Biden outlined his plans for attacking the pandemic during his campaign, including ramping up testing and increasing national stockpiles of resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment. He has said he would rejoin the World Health Organization immediately.
Much of Biden’s plan can’t be put into effect until he’s in the White House — nearly three months from now. Meanwhile, the pandemic is raging across the country, with more than 100,000 new cases and 1,000 deaths reported a day. The winter months, when everyone is driven inside and the holidays make it hard to socially isolate, may be even worse.
Biden can’t afford to wait until Inauguration Day to take action, public health experts said.
“You want to hit the ground running on Jan. 20,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He spoke during a UCSF virtual meeting on the next president’s pandemic response on Thursday.
Biden needs to spend the coming months lining up staff and getting detailed surveillance on the pandemic in the U.S., Emanuel said. He needs to understand the current state of testing, contact tracing, and equipment supply chains, as well as what plans have been made to distribute vaccines.
“And there’s also the issue of rebuilding the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the scientific integrity of the public health response,” Emanuel said. “All of those are going to be top of his agenda.”
Several experts Biden would be well-adviced to start witha call to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert whom Biden has already said he would lean on heavily in his pandemic response.
Another priority should be masks, UCSF infectious disease expert George Rutherford and others said. Biden has said he would consider a national mask mandate, though it’s not clear what authority he would have as president to make that happen. And many public health experts say they wouldn’t recommend that approach.
Rather, he should continue to wear masks himself in public spaces, and also try to get local “influencers,” such as church leaders and young activists, to back him up, they say.
“A mandate may not work well, but we could have clear guidelines instead of all this mushiness. The current leadership isn’t coming out clearly and saying you should wear a mask,” said Shannon Bennett, chief of science with the California Academy of Sciences.
Biden would be wise to connect with all 50 governors and other state and local leaders over the next two-and-a-half months, both to encourage them to embrace universal mask recommendations, but also to take stock of their regional concerns, whether it’s a collapsing local economy or pressure to keep schools open or lack of hospital supplies.
Even California, which largely has been spared the worst effects of a disjointed national strategy so far, could benefit from a steadier supply of federal resources, public health experts said.
Biden needs to go on a national, virtual listening tour, said Andy Slavitt, former director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid under the Obama administration, who also spoke during Thursday’s UCSF meeting.
“I would probably lean in hard to this, even during the transition, if I were him,” Slavitt said. “We’ve lost a sense of unity, we’ve got this fetish with freedom and rights now. How do you as a president come in and start to calm the waters and get people on the same page?”
Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the UCSF Department of Medicine, said Biden surely is aware that his powers to change minds and get people to embrace science and public health guidance will be limited somewhat, even after he’s president.
This election and Biden’s narrow win are demonstration enough of how divided the country is, Wachter and others noted. That polarity has deeply influenced people’s attitudes toward the pandemic. To win widespread support, a national pandemic plan will require buy-in from neighborhood Republicans on up.
“He knows and his people know that this can’t all be done from the bully pulpit of the White House,” Wachter said. “It has to be owned locally.”
Nonetheless, Biden can start nudging Americans toward a safer, healthier response to the pandemic, Wachter and others said. His best approach is the one he’s already embraced: modeling good behavior.
With that in mind, one of his first acts as president-elect may come as a disappointment to his supporters.
“First thing, he should discourage big celebrations and big parties of his constituents,” Bennett said. “Everyone’s going to want to get together and celebrate his win. It will be so hard to have to ask people to keep it safe, but I think that’s the tough call he’s got to make. That’s his first big opportunity to show his leadership.”
Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday
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