It’s Wednesday aka Presidential Travel Day.
For Presidential Travel Day, June 9th, 2021, the President and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will have departed Joint Base Andrews to travel to the Royal Air Force Mildenhall, United Kingdom, where the pair are expected to deliver remarks to US Air Force personnel and their families later this afternoon.
CNN fact-checker and all around good guy Daniel Dale uses UK times for the schedule.
So far for Wednesday, President Biden has retweeted 1 time and tweeted 1 time.
Factba.se’s public calendar for the President has a list of his upcoming events on his first overseas trip.
I can’t help it, this made me LOL….
From CNN…
The LOL line: Biden is also scheduled to depart for England on Wednesday morning aboard Air Force One — an aircraft that presumably has better protection from the East Coast cicada invasion.
Why did I find that humorous…
The White House published his full remarks before departure.
THE PRESIDENT: You dropped your phone. You dropped your phone.
White House.gov. 06/09/2021.
Watch out for the cicadas. I just got one — it just got me.
Q: What’s your main goal today when you get over there?
THE PRESIDENT: Strengthening the alliance and make it clear to Putin and to China that Europe and the United States are tight, and the G7 is going to move.
Q: Mr. President, do you expect to come out with a vaccine strategy for the world?
THE PRESIDENT: I have one and I’ll be announcing it. Thank you.
Q: Do you expect that Putin will be able to work out any kind of understanding with you on the cyberattacks?
THE PRESIDENT: Who knows at this point. It’s going to be a subject of our discussion.
It’s the little things…
When Tuesday’s Open Thread was published, President Biden had tweeted 2 times. He added 4 tweets and no retweets giving him a Tuesday Tweeting Total of 6 tweets and no retweets.
In Tuesday’s Note Thread, Beth shared the following tweet from the Washington Post.
The article was pay-walled for many, the obvious question being what about the effectiveness of the vaccines against the new variant?
Will it resist the current arsenal of vaccines deployed in Britain — the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna shots? Unknown. Early laboratory studies and clinical data suggest it may resist the vaccines a little bit, and people who have been only partially vaccinated may be vulnerable.
Washington Post. 06/08/2021.
Yesterday the White House COVID-19 Response Team held a briefing in where Dr. Anthony “Next Slide” Fauci goes a little deeper into what is known at this time about the newly named Delta Variant.
Dr. Fauci: What I’m going to do right now is spend the next couple of minutes talking to you about a subject that has gained a lot more attention over the last few days, and that has to do with the variants in general, but particularly in the variant which we now refer to as Delta, or the B1617.2., which, in fact, as you know, originally was noticed in India and dominated in certain states in India, but now has spread throughout other elements and other areas of the world.
Next slide.
Dr. Fauci con’t: So let’s just take a quick look at that. It’s reported in 60 countries, including the UK and the USA. Clearly, now its transmissibility appears to be greater than the wild type, named the Alpha variant. It may be associated with an increased disease severity, such as hospitalization risk, compared to Alpha. And in lab tests, associated with modest decreased neutralization by sera from previously infected and vaccinated individuals compared to the Alpha. However, fortunately, two doses of the Pfizer vaccine and AstraZeneca appear to be effective against the Delta variant. There’s reduced vaccine effectiveness after one dose, however — and I’ll get back to that in a moment.
Next slide.
Dr. Fauci con’t: This is a publication, from what I had mentioned to you at a previous briefing, from Public Health England, and it has to do with the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines against this delta variant. Just to reiterate: Two weeks after the second dose of the mRNA Pfizer-BioNTech, it was 88 percent effective against the 617, and just like we’ve shown multiple times, over 93 percent effective against the B117. Take a look at the last bullet. Three weeks after one dose, both vaccines — the AZ and the Pfizer-BioNTech — were only 33 percent effective against symptomatic disease from delta. Clearly important about why a second dose is so important.
Next slide.
Dr. Fauci con’t: Now, what about what’s going on in the UK and why should we learn lessons from this, and always getting back to the situation of why it’s so important to be vaccinated? In the UK, the delta variant is the rapidly emerging as the dominant variant — greater than 60 percent. It is replacing the B117. The peak transmission in my conversations with, and the data associated with the UK, when talking to their health authorities, the transmission is peaking in the younger group of 12- to 20-year-olds — mainly that group that we’re concerned about here, about making sure they get vaccinated. And as I mentioned before, there’s poor protection after a single dose of either the mRNA or AZ vaccine.
Next slide.
Dr. Fauci con’t: This slide graphically demonstrates in the darker part of the slide, the red, the emergence of the B1617.2 compared to the lighter pink, which was the original B117. It’s essentially taking over.
Last slide.
Dr Fauci con’t: So let’s look at where we are in the United States. That variant, the delta variant, currently accounts for more than 6 percent of the sequence cases in the United States. This is a situation, the way it was in England, where they had a B117 dominant, and then the 617 took over. We cannot let that happen in the United States, which is such a powerful argument to underscore with Dr. Walensky said. To get vaccinated, particularly if you’ve had your first dose, make sure you get that second dose. And for those who have been not vaccinated yet, please get vaccinated. This is the national month of action. We want to get to and above the goal of 70 percent of the adult population receiving at least one dose by the fourth of July.
*I’ve cued the video to his remarks on the Delta variant.*
For his next three tweets he talks about the American Rescue Plan, how he’s honored to serve as President, and the American Jobs Plan.
As you’ve might have guessed, text similar to above was taken from his Friday remarks regarding the May Jobs Report.
Because of that law, more than 167 million of those Rescue payments of up to $1,400 have gone out to individual families. A recent study — the Census Bureau data found just how much these checks mattered. They drastically reluced [sic] — reduced depression — according to study — anxiety, and hardship for families. More than 40 percent fewer families struggled to afford food, rent, utilities, car payments, student loans, and healthcare expenses.
White House.gov. 06/04/2021.
Small businesses and restaurants are — were getting killed. Now we’re delivering loans and support they need to reopen and to stay open.
Schools are struggling to reopen, so we made vaccinating teachers a priority. We delivered schools the much support they needed. State and local governments had to lay off tens of thousands of educators and first responders. Many are now back on the job, thanks to the Rescue Plan.
Musical break!!!
Beyond the fact that Caleb Johnson is just a great performer, the guitarist in the video clip is amazing. For more great guitarists see the Night Owl…
President Biden and the First Lady’s remarks are scheduled for 3:45 p.m. D.C., time (8:45 p.m. UK time).
Just a heads up: Because the President is traveling; the tweets, the press gaggles or briefings, and any press conference President Biden might have will be timed oddly. Because Time Zones, are real…
This is an Open Thread.
P.S.
Attorney General Merrick Garland will testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee regarding the 2022 budget this afternoon at 2:00 p.m. D.C., time. I doubt we will learn much about DOJ decisions to continue to defend things we disagree on, but you never know…
