Civil Liberties Lost Under COVID

WHEN JOE BIDEN was sworn in as president in January 2021, he had good reason to be optimistic about the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic.

- ROBBY SOAVE

Despite being widely criticized for-and arguably losing his first reelection because of-the perceived insufficiencies of his coronavirus response, President Donald Trump had successfully overseen Operation Warp Speed. As a result of this public-private partnership, federal health officials were able to grant emergency authorization for COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2020, a much faster than expected timetable. In the first few months of Biden's presidency, millions of Americans got vaccinated and COVID-19 cases dropped rapidly.

The fantastic news was short-lived.

Infection numbers began to climb again in the summer of 2021 with the rise of the delta variant. While health officials had initially suggested that the vaccines would prevent infection-a claim also repeated by Biden himself-it turned out that they offered limited protection in this regard. More Americans died of COVID-19 during Biden's first year in office than Trump's last.