Originally posted by: Roger S
I don't know about that, just recently he said that covid will be defeated by the states and not the federal government
That's not precisely what he said and you're taking it out of context, but yes, he's found that vax and masking resistance have been much stronger than he thought. It's evident that he believed the Republicans wouldn't fight against and disregard health and safety measures meant to keep their constituents from getting sick and dying.
He was wrong. For Republicans, dealing with the pandemic has been all about the associated politics. Biden's a nice guy and doesn't really comprehend why his Republican opponents would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans for political advantage. He just doesn't get how amoral and implacable his opponents really are.
But he's beginning to realize that we're too divided as a nation to have a unified response to anything. So he acknowledges now that the best approach will be state-level measures. Let the Republihole red-state governors bloviate about Preshus Freedumb and get in the way of federal efforts to control the pandemic. Give federal assistance to the sane states instead. Why send vaccines to Texas, for example, when they aren't used and eventually expire? Fuck 'em.
Covid will eventually evolve to a contagious disease, not a pandemic. We've gotten there in the worst possible way, of course. There are still many things the federal government can do to slow infection rates and ease the resultant suffering, and Biden said he will continue to do them.
Biden's difficulties in general have been because he doesn't understand the utterly ruthless nature of his opposition. For his whole career, he was a deal-maker, a "reach across the aisle" type of guy. He's been slow to learn that if you do that now, some glory-seeking rising star RepubliQ will bite your hand off.
(I mean, can you imagine the likes of Greene or Boebert in high elected office twenty years ago?)