Biden announces the creation of a commission to deal with the pandemic from Monday

Although the inauguration is still two months away and the vote count is not yet complete, newly elected US President Joe Biden will form a COVID-19 pandemic task force on Monday to begin developing his strategy.

Biden had already said on Friday that he would not wait for the official election results to be known before getting down to business. "While we wait for the final results, I want people to know that we are not waiting to do the job," he said.

The newly elected Democratic candidate for President of the White House has spoken of the need to restore confidence in the federal government and its handling of the pandemic, a theme that has been central to his campaign. The Washington Post has also reported that he plans to begin some of that work during the transition before taking office in January.

That will involve a lengthy process of consultations with Republican and Democratic governors to ask them to adopt mandatory face mask orders and communicate the importance of social distance from COVID-19.

With the vote count still underway and the announcement of his presidency already confirmed by the media, Biden has already set about forming the team that will manage the coronavirus pandemic when he comes to power in January.

The team will consist of 12 members, according to the Axios media. One of them will be Vivek Murthy, who was general surgeon between 2014 and 2017, during the government of Barack Obama; and another, David Aaron Kessler, who was head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 1990 and 1997, under Presidents George Bush senior and Bill Clinton.

The third co-chair of the working group will be Yale University (Connecticut) doctor Marcella Nunez-Smith. The formation of a task force even before interviews to form his cabinet begin indicates the priority Biden gives to the pandemic, which has claimed nearly 240,000 lives in the country.
 

In fact, Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris received a report on the state of the pandemic from the same experts who will sit on the task force this week, something the Democrat highlighted in his speech on Friday.

Cases of coronavirus in the United States have exploded in recent days to a record 127,021 new infections in 24 hours on Friday. In total, the United States has 9,831,030 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 236,856 deaths, more than any other country in the world, according to the independent count from Johns Hopkins University.

The management of the pandemic has been one of the black spots of Trump's last year in the White House as, despite having contracted the disease at the beginning of the campaign, it has mixed denial with misinformation and lack of measures, leading to an explosion of cases and a political war.

On Biden's transition website, there is a message in English and Spanish that says: "The American people have decided who will be the next president of the United States. The crises facing the country are serious, from a pandemic to an economic recession, from climate change to racial injustice, and the transition team is preparing in earnest to enable the Biden-Harris Administration to begin work from day one in office".

According to the Post, officials on Biden's team are preparing for the possibility that the Trump government may put up obstacles to their not having full access to executive resources as required by U.S. law.

In addition, senior members of the Democrat's transition team are already analyzing possible legal responses to that scenario and considering other alternatives for a transfer of power.

Following the media projections that confirmed Biden as the next president, it is now up to the air how the transition from the Donald Trump government to the future Democratic administration will be.

According to The Washington Post, Biden's team has been preparing for that transition for months, with the help of career civil servants. Moreover, the White House has already appointed President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff, Chris Liddell, to lead the transition effort.

The government agency responsible for initiating this process is the General Services Administration (GSA), which will launch the process once it determines that there is a "seemingly successful" winner in the election. As of today, the GSA has not yet pronounced itself on Biden's victory.
 

In his speech last night, President-elect Joe Biden presented himself as "the great unifier who will restore the wounds of four years of Donald Trump's presidency and who has left a country with an abysmal ideological gap, dangerous anger at both ends of the spectrum and a rickety government that denies climate change, the coronavirus epidemic or compassion for immigrants and minorities with its actions".

The agonising scrutiny of the last four days has put an end to the suspense of the presidency. Biden has promised to redirect the United States' course and correct four years of Trump policies, such as the departure from the Paris Agreement against climate change, disdain for NATO or the United Nations, the international irrelevance of Washington or the attacks on the health system, minorities and refugees or immigrants who previously found a safe place in the United States.

The Democrat and his vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, have also promised to unite the country, a task that will surely take more than one term, as millions of Americans have succumbed to a torrent of disinformation that puts the Democrats at the head of a plan to destroy the nation and lead it into a civil war for which they believe they must arm themselves to the teeth.

The Biden Administration will seek to build bridges that end the unprecedented polarization "that has led part of the country to see enemies among its own neighbours" or to perceive a reality that the system is designed to dispossess them of that which makes America "great", a message fed by Trump and ultra-conservative groups on social networks.

"We can be opponents, but not enemies," Biden said. "The purpose of our policy is not an endlessly relentless war. The purpose of our policy, the work of the nation, is not to fan the flames of conflict to solve problems," the Democrat warned.

After taking office in January 2021, Biden will have the support of more than 74 million votes and an historic turnout to get him on the ballot and give him the space he needs to tackle reform. During the transition they will have to fight against the mobilisation capacity of "Trumpismo".

However, much of the tears, shouts of joy and champagne pouring of yesterday are more for Trump's defeat than for the victory of Biden, who today broke the 270 electoral vote barrier after proclaiming himself the virtual winner in Pennsylvania and Nevada. 

The Democrats now win with 279 elected votes to 214 from the Republicans. In the Senate, there is less good news for the Democrats, who now have 46 senators compared to 48 for the Republican Party.

The House of Representatives is also in dispute at this point with a slight Democratic advantage. Four Congressmen are missing from Biden's majority, he now has 214 against 196 for the Republicans.

There are still votes to be counted, and we have to wait to see what will happen to the House and Senate. The citizens have already gone out to celebrate Biden's victory, but it remains to be seen whether the euphoria and unity will last until January.