Tag: blames

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Politics

Biden blames delta variant, unvaccinated individuals

Biden blames delta variant, unvaccinated people

President Joe Biden on Friday blamed the coronavirus pandemic for a surprisingly weak jobs report, calling out Americans who have still not gotten vaccinated even amid the spread of the highly infectious delta variant.

Nonfarm payrolls in August increased by just 235,000, the Labor Department reported, far below the 720,000 new hires that economists predicted. The report showed the smallest monthly jobs total since January.

“There’s no question the delta variant is why today’s job report isn’t stronger,” Biden said at the White House shortly after the data came out.

Biden, who has spent much of his first leg in the White House focused on the pandemic, said, “We need to make more progress in fighting the delta variant.”

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Despite the government’s ongoing vaccination push, tens of millions of eligible Americans still have not received even a single dose of a Covid shot. Biden said that group is prolonging the pandemic and contributing to anxieties that impact the economy.

“This is a continuing pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the president said. “Too many have not gotten vaccinated, and it’s creating a lot of unease in our economy and around our kitchen tables.”

Less than 64% of U.S. adults, roughly 175 million people, are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-shot Covid vaccine, the only one to receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, is only available for people 16 and older. Kids ages 12 to 15 are still able to get Pfizer’s shot on an emergency use basis.

Biden acknowledged the weak numbers in the report — “I was hoping for a higher number,” he said. But he nevertheless defended the economic progress that the U.S. has seen under his administration.

“What we’re seeing is an economic recovery that’s durable and strong. The Biden plan is working. We’re getting results.”

The president highlighted the decrease in the unemployment rate, down to 5.2% in the latest report from 6.3% in January.

He also teased new steps the White House would take next week to combat the delta variant, suggesting that the actions would focus on protecting schools, businesses, families and the economy from the virus.

The spread of the delta variant has led to another huge surge in Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths around the country, with Southern states hit especially hard. Florida has a higher Covid hospitalization rate than anywhere else in the U.S., and this week broke its record for the largest single-day rise in deaths, with 1,338 reported Thursday.

Some experts are predicting another spike is in store for the Northeast.

“Now whether we see a wave of infection as dense and severe as the South, I don’t think that’s going to be the case because we have a lot more vaccination; we’ve had a lot of prior infection, which we also know is protective,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who served as FDA chief for two years under then-President Donald Trump, told CNBC earlier Friday.

“But we will probably see a build in cases here in the Northeast,” he said. “I don’t think that we’re done with this.”

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Health

Texas Gov. Abbott blames Covid unfold on immigrants, criticizes Biden’s ‘Neanderthal’ remark

Texas Gov. Abbott blames Covid spread on immigrants, criticizes Biden's 'Neanderthal' comment

Texas governor Greg Abbott Thursday criticized President Joe Biden for calling his decision to lift Covid-19 restrictions and masking mandates earlier this week “Neanderthal thinking,” making undocumented immigrants for the persistent Outbreak of the state responsible.

Abbott’s comments come after its much-criticized decision on Tuesday to lift most of the state’s Covid-19 restrictions, including a statewide mask mandate. Texas businesses will be allowed to open “100%” starting March 10, he said. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves took a similar move around the same time.

Biden on Wednesday hit governors for a “big mistake”, adding that “the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking”.

Abbott told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the comment was “not the kind of word a president should use” and accused immigrants crossing the southern border of spreading the coronavirus. The Republican governor said the Biden government “refused to test them for the virus.”

“The Biden government has released immigrants in South Texas who exposed Texans to Covid. Some of those people were put on buses and took that Covid to other states in the United States,” Abbott told CNBC. “This is a Neanderthal approach to dealing with the Covid situation.”

While the Republican governor failed to provide details, Telemundo reported Tuesday that some migrants released by Border Patrol in the Texas city of Brownsville subsequently tested positive for Covid-19. Since testing began in the city on January 25, 108 migrants have tested positive for Covid-19, which corresponds to 6.3% of all test subjects, according to the report.

“The Biden government must stop importing Covid into our country,” Abbott said.

Senior U.S. health officials have repeatedly urged states not to lift Covid-19 restrictions as statewide coronavirus cases and deaths stall and highly communicable variants threaten to “hijack” the recent decline in infections.

Abbott, however, defended his decision to repeal the state’s mask requirements, claiming that Texans already know that “the safe standard is to wear a mask, among other things.”

“Do you really need the state to tell you what you already know for your personal behavior?” Abbott told CNBC.

The governor added that the state’s coronavirus infections are “at a four-month low” and Texas hospitals stand ready to treat an influx of patients if needed. According to a CNBC analysis of the CNBC analysis compiled by Johns Hopkins University, Texas reports a daily average of around 7,265 new cases over the past week. That’s a decrease from the high of more than 20,400 daily cases the state reported in January.

However, new infections are creeping back across the state, with the average daily new cases increasing nearly 13% from a week ago.

Abbott said most of the state’s coronavirus that spread over the holidays was being driven by indoor gatherings, not restaurants and other businesses. The newly lifted restrictions “aren’t really that transformative” because the state’s mask mandate was not enforced and businesses were already 75% busy, he said.

“Maybe it seems like a big difference to the people in New York,” Abbott said.

– CNBC’s Will Feuer contributed to this report.

Categories
Health

NJ governor blames Walgreens, federal authorities for sluggish Covid vaccine rollout

NJ governor blames Walgreens, federal government for sluggish Covid vaccine rollout

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) blamed Walgreens and the federal government for the Garden State’s sluggish vaccine rollout during an interview Wednesday night on CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith.

“The big reason is the federal program with CVS and Walgreens,” Murphy said. “They basically amassed these cans, they are planning visits to long-term care homes, they are extending their lives and they are suffering from their weight, especially at Walgreens, and that is where most of the remaining cans are.”

Murphy suggested to Shepard Smith that Walgreens “put more bodies on the case” to solve the rollout problem.

On Tuesday, Murphy said that New Jersey was effectively equipped to distribute the vaccine, but that all vendors were missing “are the vaccine doses.” New Jersey has a population of approximately 8,882 million people and has distributed 898,550 vaccines while only 432,220 of them have been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pointing out the Covid vaccine doses under state control, Murphy said they get into people’s arms more efficiently.

“There aren’t many doses in hospitals or other distribution points that we directly control that are not in use,” Murphy said. “We get shot in the arms with all areas we can control.”

Smith pushed back with Murphy, insisting that “people lose” when it comes to the slow adoption of vaccines. There are currently more than 123,000 Americans in the hospital and an average of 3,000 people die each day, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data. The pandemic has killed more than 400,000 people since the pandemic started early last year. Murphy pointed to the federal government.

“There is no question that we have a huge imbalance between supply and demand that, with all due respect, begins with the federal government, at least to this day, after they dropped the ball – too promising and too little delivered,” Murphy said. “So if Walgreens hits 1,000, if CVS hits 1,000, and we as a state continue to do what we do, which gets vaccines into people’s arms, we’ve still been disappointed by the Fed.”

Murphy applied for up to $ 20 billion in federal aid to help with Covid’s deficits. President Joe Biden said Friday that he would use the Defense Production Act to increase vaccine supplies during his first month in office.