Joe Biden calls for ‘presidential leadership’ to fight virus surge

Bloomberg

President-elect Joe Biden said that the US needs immediate presidential leadership as the daily death toll from the coronavirus exceeds 3,000 people.
“This nation needs presidential leadership right now, presidential leadership to model the steps we should be taking to save our lives and the lives of our families,” Biden said in a direct criticism of President Donald Trump.
Biden made his remarks before he introduced several new members of his cabinet and White House staff in Wilmington, Delaware. He said the daily death rate was “more than 9/11, more than Pearl Harbor.”
In an implicit rebuke of Trump’s handling of the crisis, which has killed almost 300,000 people in the US, he said: “We could wish this away, but we have to face it head on.”
Biden, who made what he called Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, promised to put in place “a national coordinated strategy that will beat this virus.”
Trump has consistently downplayed the virus and has talked about it only rarely since losing the election to Biden.
Biden also asked Americans to trust the coronavirus vaccine, which received rapid approval from the Food and Drug Administration after an advisory panel said that the benefits of the shot being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech SE outweighed any risks.
“You should have confidence in this,” Biden said. “There is no political influence. These are first-rate
scientists.”
He added: “Scientific integrity led us to this point.”
A Gallup poll released this week showed that 63% of Americans would be willing to receive an FDA-approved vaccine, a sharp increase from 58% in October.
Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious-disease expert, told the New York Times that “at least 75%” of Americans and “hopefully close to 80-85%” would need to be inoculated to achieve “herd immunity.”
Emergency-use approval of the vaccine by the FDA would be followed by a mass inoculation effort unparalleled in American history, including a nationwide distribution effort, starting with 2.9 million doses being made available to states.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that Americans may start getting shots as soon as Monday.

Court rejects Texas bid to overturn Trump’s loss
Bloomberg

The US Supreme Court rejected the bid by Texas and President Donald Trump to nullify the election results in four pivotal states in an abrupt, effectively unanimous order that could be the legal death-knell for efforts to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
The justices refused to let Texas sue to challenge Biden’s wins in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. The order clears those states to cast their votes for Biden in the Electoral College on Monday.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the court said.
No justice publicly dissented from that conclusion or said he or she would block the states from casting their votes.