[standardUser]

Thank god the epidemiologists are not the ones making policy. Most state and local governments in the US have not shown a willingness to follow such a hardline approach, and we're already seeing reopenings as numbers drop, long before the vaccine has even had a major impact.

[leesalminen]

Pretty sure one of Biden’s main talking points of his election campaign was that America would start listening to the scientists more closely.

[Notorious_BLT]

So far no meaningful action has been taken that indicates he's particularly concerned. He's focused on trying to reopen schools, last I heard.

Some people have argued that the vaccinations are evidence of his success regarding Covid-19 but I don't see any part of that that wouldn't have been proceeding with or without him. As far as I can tell, the only difference between Trump and Biden's handling of covid has been "Biden knows to keep his mouth shut about specifics and predictions, because he might be wrong" which is exactly the kind of playing-both-sides I've seen from many state and city governments for the last year (talking a lot about how we need to follow the science and keep locking down to keep the spread low, but also taking no steps to enforce the rules or financially support people/businesses.)

[ghaff]

Oh I'm sure he's concerned. But there's precious little he can do other than doing what he can to get vaccines rolled out faster and closing borders to foreigners. Most people certainly support the former and most are at worst indifferent to the latter. He can also set a "good example."

But getting into a tussle with states he thinks are opening up too much, etc. is almost certainly counterproductive at this point.

[standardUser]

Nothing Biden has said or done has implied he wants to take a hardline approach to COVID restrictions, aside from briefly floating the idea of limited domestic travel. And he made no effort to tie the massive relief package to restrictive state polices. Beyond that, he has limited authority over state and local restrictions.

[ghaff]

To say nothing of control over how people actually act.

In any case, listening to scientists means you take their input and factor that into the tradeoffs that drive policy. Which may well involve simultaneously that there is e.g. some risk associated with allowing people to travel by air while allowing them to do it anyway.

[Mediterraneo10]

One of the Biden administration's first moves was to reinstate the ban on travel to the USA from Schengen that was about to expire. And it was just announced that this ban would now be extended indefinitely. The US ban on travel does not just affect tourism, it affects family reunification as well, and I would consider that a hardline approach.

[standardUser]

That travel "ban" is riddled with exemptions.

[Mediterraneo10]

Can you cite those exemptions? There is a longstanding campaign on Twitter (loveisnottourism) that complains that the US policy is preventing partners from seeing one another. Also, even if in some cases one could theoretically board a flight, that means nothing if you need a visa and your local US consulate won’t issue you one, because it says no visas will be issued during the pandemic.