High-profile personnel appointments, flurry of executive orders in first week don’t focus on high-risk patients, saving lives Los Angeles, CA – After one week of the new Biden presidency, America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) today released the nonprofit group’s analysis of his administration’s COVID-19 response plan. AFLDS member-physicians gave the Biden coronavirus strategy failing marks for its appointing inexperienced and questionable personnel to key roles in the president’s task force, instituting non-scientific travel bans, shortchanging COVID response needs in a massive spending bill, failing to expand early treatment options for millions of Americans, and more. AFLDS released the following statement on its assessment: “As cases and deaths dropped over the last two to three weeks, Joe Biden was telling Americans to learn to live with COVID-19 for at least another eight months. In December, then-President-elect Biden publicly criticized the previous administration for ‘falling behind, far behind.’ Yet last week, following 10 executive orders related to his COVID-19 response, President Biden reversed himself, saying, ‘[T]here’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months,’ and offering the ‘brutal truth’ that the United States would not be able to return to a normal way of life for at least another eight months. “More and more Americans are frustrated with the medical establishment and Washington’s shifting responses to a virus with a 99.7% survival rage. AFLDS urges the president to listen to doctors who have successfully treated patients on the front lines of this pandemic and develop a rational, scientific approach to managing COVID that puts politics aside in the interest of saving lives. “The president has thus far missed an enormous opportunity to lead on the issue of preventive care and treatments that reduce the severity of the illness. He chose instead to focus on a federal mask mandate that is largely already in place. President Biden has also tied the delivery of more vaccines and COVID-19 tests to a $1.9 trillion stimulus measure which has little chance of passage. According to published reports, $1.8 trillion is still unspent from the five relief bills signed into law last year. His executive order designed to encourage private investment in more antivirals and other therapeutics failed to promote cheaper, safe, and widely administered therapeutic alternatives that already exist and have been used around the world to successfully treat those with mild to moderate symptoms. “President Biden’s judgment also received a failing grade in personnel selections, in particular his decision to appoint a coronavirus task force coordinator with no scientific or medical experience. The involvement of Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice is also of great concern given her false and misleading public statements following the Benghazi tragedy. AFLDS was also discouraged by President Biden’s appointment of Dr. Anthony Fauci – the federal government’s highest-paid employee – as chief medical advisor given his record of shifting positions on COVID-related issues and failure to use accepted scientific methods to advise both the president and the public. “Furthermore, President Biden has refused to push back against teachers unions in Chicago and elsewhere who are refusing to return to the classroom. He should lead forcefully on the issue of reopening schools and not allow unions to ignore the science to advance their political ends. “AFLDS also notes that President Biden’s executive orders don’t go far enough to resolve issues presented by states like New York and California who have bogged down their vaccine distribution and administration efforts in bureaucratic red tape. New York, for example, had thousands of vaccine doses go unused due to state rules which required healthcare employees to get the shot before at-risk populations like senior citizens and those with impaired immune systems. “For his muddled response thus far as president, America’s Frontline Doctors assigns Joe Biden an ‘F’ grade and asks ‘Where’s the real plan?’ We had hoped to see a broad-based, science-based approach to this national challenge. Time will tell. ”