by Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden is getting mixed reviews during his first month in office, on issues from vaccine distribution to school reopening to foreign policy.
Biden stepped into office a month ago, nearly a year after the nation has been ravaged by the pandemic and draconian lockdowns. With the coronavirus and all the related fallout, experts said the president has his hands full.
PANDEMIC TOP PRIORITY
"Biden's top priority has been COVID relief, both in terms of economic recovery and public health improvements," Darrell West, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, told Xinhua.
The U.S. COVID-19 deaths surpassed the saddening milestone of 500,000 Monday. Yet it is encouraging that key indicators of virus transmission in the country have continued to fall recently.
COVID-19 cases have been falling sharply for five weeks, hospitalizations for four, and deaths for two, according to The COVID Tracking Project.
The sharp drop in these key indicators is partly attributed to more effective vaccine rollout across the United States, experts said.
"He (Biden) has boosted the daily inoculations to over 1.7 million and plans to increase that number substantially in coming weeks," said West, adding "that will help business return to normal and reduce the number of fatalities."
The vaccine distribution got off to a rocky start under former President Donald Trump's administration, whose handling of the pandemic was seen as a failure by public health experts.
But Biden has tweaked his predecessor's plan and the White House maintains the administration is on track to deliver 100 million jabs in the president's first 100 days.
More than 75 million doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been distributed, with more than 64 million doses administered. That's 13 percent of Americans, and the program continues to ramp up.
"The vaccines could provide some protection against the variants," said Zhang Zuofeng, professor of epidemiology and associate dean for research with the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, in an interview with Xinhua.
"If we can complete mass vaccination to reach general immunity before the variants take hold, the situation could get in control," Zhang said, predicting that about 75 percent of the U.S. population will be vaccinated by July or August based on the current vaccination speed.
SCHOOL REOPENINGS MAJOR TEST
Lockdowns have forced schools to shutter nationwide, and millions of students have been learning online for nearly a year, which has caused kids to fall behind, sparked an increase in depression and even suicide among teens, and especially impacted minorities and low-income families.
Biden, who pledged last December to reopen the majority of the country's schools in his first 100 days after taking office, is being harshly criticized by parents, GOP lawmakers, and local and national media for what they say is being in the pocket of teachers' unions, and prioritizing teachers over students.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unveiled new guidance on safely reopening schools, requiring masks, physical distancing, handwashing, maintaining clean facilities and contact tracing.
The guidance advises schools to phase in their reopening plans in accordance with the severity of the outbreak in their areas. It offers a color-coded chart that divides schools' reopening options into four zones: blue, yellow, orange and red.
While there has been progress, around 60 percent of students are not learning full-time.
According to Burbio, a website that tracks school reopenings, nearly 42 percent of Kindergarten through twelfth grade students are in the classroom five days a week, an increase from 35 percent when Biden began his term on Jan. 19. Kids are learning online in nearly 32 percent of schools, a decrease from 42.6 percent when Biden took office.
Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the center for international and security studies at the University of Maryland, told Xinhua that seeing schools reopen "in a big way" would be "proof-of-concept for the (Biden) administration's overall project."
But to do that, the government must pass Biden's COVID-19 relief package, Ramsay noted, which has well more than 100 billion U.S. dollars in it for school systems to deal with the pandemic, and get that aid out and functioning.
ECONOMY MAIN CHALLENGE
For Biden, the main challenge for this year and next will be the economy, experts agree.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers Tuesday that U.S. economic recovery remains uneven and far from complete, and the path ahead is highly uncertain.
Noting that the weakness concentrated in sectors most adversely affected by the resurgence of the virus, Powell said at a virtual hearing before the Senate Banking Committee that ongoing vaccinations "offer hope for a return to more normal conditions" later this year.
However, the economy remains "a long way" from the central bank's employment and inflation goals, and it is likely to "take some time" for substantial further progress to be achieved, said the Fed chief.
Powell also said that the United States could get through the pandemic much more quickly than people had feared, but "the job is not done."
It is entirely possible that the pandemic will be mastered enough that in late summer "we'll feel normality is returning by degrees," said Ramsay.
"Then ... we'll be facing what economists call a K-shaped recovery," Ramsay said, using a term that means some people are doing well and others are doing worse.
Infrastructure investment will be another major priority.
"Biden wants to put a lot of money into repairing highways, bridges, dams, and digital networks. That will propel the economy on a longterm basis," West noted.
On foreign policy, experts say Biden has a preference for multilateralism, as opposed to Trump's emphasis on unilateralism, and the president is rebuilding ties with several U.S. allies.
But Biden has not yet tackled more difficult issues, from relations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to those with Iran as well as climate change.
"I think he is off to a fine start ... while I welcome very much his administration and consider it a huge improvement, the honeymoon period is already soon to end," Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon told Xinhua. Enditem
(Xinhua reporters Yang Shilong, Tan Jingjing, Gao Pan, and Xu Yuan in Washington contributed to the story.)
