Security held in a seemingly fortified Washington. The planning, preparations and worry, from the session at Conmy Hall to the troops and officers on the streets, had apparently deterred any of the threatened violence.
Klain and Sullivan, along with several other aides, including Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s homeland security adviser, stayed in the Situation Room for over an hour on January 20, monitoring it all.
When Biden arrived at the Oval Office after 4 p.m., he greeted his team and asked Klain what he had for him to sign. Where was the work? Let’s go, he said.
Biden signed 15 executive actions and two agency directives, which press secretary Jen Psaki later noted were far more than Trump’s two orders on Day One.
Many strokes peeled back some of Trump’s signature agenda items. Requiring people to wear masks on federal property. Nixing the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Reestablishing ties with the World Health Organization and the Paris climate pact. Ending the national emergency Trump used to secure funds for his border wall. Repealing the travel ban on some Muslim-majority nations.
Inside a drawer in the Resolute Desk, Trump had left his letter for Biden. He put it in his pocket and did not share it with his advisers.
His attention turned to the virus.
As Biden had headed to the Capitol earlier on January 20, Sonya Bernstein, 30, one of Jeff Zients’s deputies, was preparing to launch the president’s coronavirus response plan as soon as the clocks struck noon.
Bernstein, formerly executive assistant to budget director Sylvia Burwell, had spent nearly every day for months working from her English basement apartment in Mount Pleasant, D.C. The operational command center, she joked. In her prior job, she worked in New York City’s public hospital system as cases surged in the nation’s first big nightmare of an outbreak, overwhelming hospitals and staff.
Each day, she would wake up thinking of the lives lost and hoping tomorrow would be better, but the number of deaths had climbed and climbed. She had found it crushing and jumped at the chance to help Biden change the trajectory.
Bernstein joined a video meeting on inauguration morning. They had an elaborate to-do list, plus their spreadsheet listing all of the federal agencies and subagencies. They tracked their top questions and actions. They had to go from zero to a hundred in just a few days.
An organized Covid testing infrastructure had to be built fast. Funding, personnel and equipment for getting vaccines, vaccinators and sites had to be found. Vaccines were not being given from retail pharmacies, and Zients wanted a pharmacy program built. Teachers had to be given vaccine priority as Biden wanted schools reopened. Supply chains had to be improved.
Representatives from Homeland Security, Defense and Health and Human Services joined the video call. They seemed eager to have a seat at the Zoom table.
Bernstein could almost feel the vaccines going into people’s arms.
On Monday afternoon, January 25, Zients met with Biden and Vice President Harris in the Oval Office to talk about vaccine supply.
The Trump team had a prolonged negotiation with Pfizer for a second 100 million vaccine doses but had not ordered them.
“Mr. President,” Zients said, “I think that we have the opportunity here, if we move quickly, to get more supply delivered across the summer and we should make a commitment.” The total cost was $4 billion for 100 million additional Pfizer doses.
It’s wartime, Biden said, embracing the recommendation instantly. “The worst-case scenario here is not a bad scenario at all,” Biden said, “which is we have excess supply.”
Zients agreed. “You never run to the top of the hill,” he said, “you run beyond the top of the hill, right?” Overwhelm the problem.
“How confident are you that they can deliver?” Biden asked.
“Stuff can always go wrong,” Zients said, “but we’re going to monitor it really close. We’re going to use every one of your authorities, including the Defense Production Act to support them in getting this done on time or faster. If we can expedite it, we’ll expedite it.”
“Sounds to me like the right decision for sure,” Biden said, “not a close call.”
Biden decided to announce the additional 100 million Pfizer doses the next day. He also agreed to buy 100 million more Moderna doses, and the 200 million additional doses were added to the 400 million already ordered, giving the U.S. 600 million doses—enough for 300 million Americans with the two-shot regimen.
He had more questions for Zients. “Is there anything we can do to make it faster? How do we know they are going to be able to deliver on time?
“How are we doing on getting the masking orders in place?”
Biden had announced he wanted all Americans to “mask up” for his first 100 days. Mask wearing was the fastest and easiest way to save lives but had become intensely politicized following mixed messages from the Trump White House on whether it was necessary.
“What are we doing to stand up mass vaccination sites?” Biden asked Zients.
FEMA is making progress, Zients said. They would have 21 mass vaccination sites up and running by the end of March with the ability to deliver a total of 71,000 shots per day at full capacity.
“Are they all big stadiums?”
No.
“Mobile vaccination units?”
It was an umbrella term describing efforts to bring vaccination services into communities and reach specific population groups.
“How are we going to deploy those in rural areas and hard-to-reach areas and make sure the vaccine is done in an equitable way?” Biden asked.
Some data showed it was not yet being handled equitably, Zients said.
Biden said they had to focus on equity. He said he wanted to be sure all the assets and capabilities of the federal government were being used.
“Let’s do what we can to get people masked up,” he said. “Let’s do what we can to push supply as hard as we possibly can. Let’s do what we can to create more places where people can get vaccinated, more vaccinators, more needles in arms.”