The Three Groups of People Biden Must Reach Out to if He Wants to End the Pandemic, According to Dr. Leana Wen

When the long history of the COVID-19 pandemic is finally written, Dr. Leana Wen will be remembered as one of the most reassuring faces and reliable voices in this period of hardship. A former health commissioner of Baltimore and current visiting professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health, Wen has provided both encouragement and tough-love truths for a public hungry for information and counsel. In a Nov. 19 conversation with TIME’s Alice Park, she offered her candid thoughts about what is very much an inflection point in the pandemic—with two new vaccines (one from Moderna and one from Pfizer) having proven effective and a changeover of presidential administrations coming in January. “President Trump has essentially surrendered this response,” she said. “There are so many steps that could have been taken that were not. President-elect Biden has already laid out a very good plan that’s based on evidence. He has enlisted top public health experts and has made it clear he is going to be listening to them and that public health is finally going to be driving this public health crisis.” The problem, she said, is that even the best public health policy goes nowhere if people don’t follow it. With a country both exhausted by the seemingly never-ending pandemic and riven by politicization of issues like mask-wearing and lockdowns, it’s possible Biden will have what she calls “a Herculean task̶...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news