By: Lauren Schifley, Art Director
As Biden’s first 100 days come to an end, we look back at what he promised to accomplish by now and see how he did in keeping those promises.
The biggest issue of his presidency so far is, of course, the ongoing pandemic. In order to help decrease the death toll, Biden has mandated masks on federal property, rejoined WHO, supported 100 mass vaccination centers, facilitated the vaccinations for 100 million Americans and deployed mobile vaccination clinics. One promise in the healthcare sector that he has yet to meet is expanding healthcare access.
One of the major issues facing the world today is climate change. In terms of helping this, Biden has taken executive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, supported an amendment to the Montreal Protocol to curb hydrofluorocarbons and has convened a world climate summit.
Promises that Biden has partially met in this regard are making infrastructure investments that can withstand the changing climate, taking steps to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 and seeking emissions reduction commitments from shipping and aviation industries.
What affects ordinary citizens more directly are the promises that Biden made for government reforms and fixes to the economy. So far, Biden has extended the pause on student loan payments, approved pandemic economic relief, reviewed the U.S. supply chain in key sectors, taken steps to strengthen “buy American” measures, tightened ethics rules, eased federal unionizing restrictions and insulated the Justice Department from politics.
The promises that he has not kept in this category are increasing corporate taxes and restoring rules that were either weakened or eliminated by Trump. This is all according to Associated Press.
After temporarily pausing the rollout of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine due to concerns over rare side effects, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that the United States resume administering the vaccine.
The rare side effect in question is called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). The CDC says that, “Nearly all reports of this serious condition, which involves blood clots with low platelets, have been in adult women younger than 50 years old.”
The CDC goes on to say that the benefits of the vaccine greatly outweigh the rare potential risks. However, they do recommend that women younger than 50 years old should be a little more cautious and go with another vaccine option if possible to decrease the risk as this reaction has not been seen in the Moderna or Pfiezer vaccines.
They stress that this is an uncommon side effect as it has only showed up in 0.00009% of people who received the shot, which is about 9 people out of 10 million.