It’s Wednesday aka day two of my WiFi being a bitch…
For Wednesday, November 3rd, 2021, President Biden has returned to the U.S., following his European tour. This afternoon the jet-lagged President will receive his daily brief.
President Biden has tweeted 4 times so far for Wednesday; I will be sharing them down thread.
When Biden Bits was published for Tuesday, President Biden had tweeted 2 times. He added 6 tweets giving him a Tuesday Tweeting Total of 8 tweets and 0 retweets.
During the second day of COP26 from Glasgow, Scotland, President Biden participated in a Build Back Better World initiative event. The YouTube is 17 minutes and 44 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
President Biden: That recognition was front and center when I announced the Build Back Better World initiative in June, along with our G7 partners. But to put this in perspective, the Build Back Better initiative, the Clean Green Initiative of Great Britain, the Global Gateway and Clean Green initiatives are all part — all part of a joint effort among the G7 partners to deliver high-quality, sustainable infrastructure. And I want to thank Ursula for the Clean Green Initiative as well.
President Biden: Build Back Better World is going to show that we can grow our economies, fight climate change, and leave a better, cleaner, more livable planet for all of our children.
Not a direct remark to quote tweet; but it’s similar to remarks he gave at the COP26.
President Biden: It’s imperative that we support developing nations so they can be our partners in this effort. Right now, we’re still falling short. There’s no more time to hang back or sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves. This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes. The existential thrength [sic] — threat to human existence as we know it. And every day we delay, the cost of inaction increases. So let this be the moment that we answer history’s call here in Glasgow. Let this be the start of decade of transformative action that preserves our planet and raises the quality of life for people everywhere. We can do this. We just have to make a choice to do it.
The YouTube is 29 minutes and 19 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
From the shared link: President Biden Announces Prescription Drug Pricing Plan in Build Back Better Framework
Nearly 1 in 4 Americans struggle to afford prescription drugs. Yet Medicare is currently prohibited from negotiating prescription drug prices to get the best deal for American seniors. President Biden and Congressional Democrats rolled their sleeves up in recent days to produce a compromise plan to end this unfair prohibition and reduce the costs of prescription drugs, while ensuring we continue to reward innovation and breakthrough new treatments. Specifically, the plan will:
Finally let Medicare negotiate drug prices. Medicare will negotiate prices for high-cost prescription drugs. This will include drugs seniors get at the pharmacy counter (through Medicare Part D), and drugs that are administered in a doctor’s office (through Medicare Part B). Drugs become eligible for negotiation once they have been on the market for a fixed number of years: 9 years for small molecule drugs and 12 years for biologics. Medicare will negotiate up to 10 drugs per year during 2023, with those prices taking effect in 2025, increasing to up to 20 drugs per year.
The policy will establish a clearly defined negotiation process that is fair for manufacturers, and gets the biggest savings on drugs that have been on the market a long time. This discourages drug companies from abusing laws to prolong their monopolies, while encouraging investments in research and development of new cures. Drug companies that refuse to negotiate will owe an excise tax.
Impose a tax penalty if drug companies increase their prices faster than inflation. Starting when this bill becomes law, future drug price increases will be compared to their current prices. We will finally put an end to the days where drug companies could raise their prices with impunity. If prices for a drug increase faster than inflation, manufacturers will owe a tax penalty, holding down prices for Americans with all types of health insurance.
Directly lower out-of-pocket costs for seniors. Today, there is no cap on how much seniors and people with disabilities have to pay for drugs, and millions of seniors pay more than $6,000 a year in cost-sharing. This proposal puts an end to this burden, and ensures that seniors never pay more than $2,000 a year for their drugs under Medicare Part D.
The plan will also lower insulin prices so that Americans with diabetes don’t pay more than $35 per month for their insulin. Lawmakers have also agreed to lower seniors’ cost-sharing for all types of drugs and they are working expeditiously to finalize legislative text that will save seniors money at the pharmacy counter without increasing premiums.
White House.gov. 11/02/2021.
WEDNESDAYS TWEETS:
We have reached a turning point in our battle against COVID-19: authorization of a safe, effective vaccine for children age 5-11. It will allow parents to end months of anxious worrying about their kids — and is a major step forward in our fight to defeat the virus.
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 3, 2021
My Administration has been working hard to be prepared for this moment — and we are ready to act. We’ve secured enough supply for every child in America — and have begun distributing pediatric vaccine doses to thousands of locations across the country.
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 3, 2021
The program will ramp up over the coming days, and be fully up and running next week. Parents will be able to bring their children to one of tens of thousands of locations including pharmacies, pediatricians’ offices, schools, and other sites to get vaccinated.
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 3, 2021
The vaccine is safe and effective and is the best way to protect kids from COVID-19 — including the Delta variant. Let’s build on the extraordinary progress we’ve made over the last nine months and put this pandemic behind us once and for all.
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 3, 2021
From the shared link:
Today, we have reached a turning point in our battle against COVID-19: authorization of a safe, effective vaccine for children age 5 to 11. It will allow parents to end months of anxious worrying about their kids, and reduce the extent to which children spread the virus to others. It is a major step forward for our nation in our fight to defeat the virus.
Over the last several weeks, my Administration has been working hard to be prepared for this moment: we are ready to act. We have already secured enough vaccine supply for every child in America, and over the past weekend, we began the process of packing and shipping out millions of pediatric vaccine doses. These doses — specially designed for these younger children — have started to arrive at thousands of locations across the country.
The program will ramp up over the coming days, and be fully up and running during the week of November 8. Parents will be able to bring their children to thousands of pharmacies, pediatrician’s offices, schools, and other sites to get vaccinated. Because of the groundwork we’ve laid, we can be confident that vaccinations for kids will be available, easy, and convenient.
A vaccine for children age 5 to 11 will allow us to build on the extraordinary progress we’ve made over the last nine months. Already, more than 78 percent of Americans age 12 and older have gotten at least one shot, including millions of teenagers — and the vaccines have proven to be incredibly safe and effective.
White House.gov. 11/02/2021.
Today, CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, M.D., M.P.H., endorsed the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP) recommendation that children 5 to 11 years old be vaccinated against COVID-19 with the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine. CDC now expands vaccine recommendations to about 28 million children in the United States in this age group and allows providers to begin vaccinating them as soon as possible.
COVID-19 cases in children can result in hospitalizations, deaths, MIS-C (inflammatory syndromes) and long-term complications, such as “long COVID,” in which symptoms can linger for months. The spread of the Delta variant resulted in a surge of COVID-19 cases in children throughout the summer. During a 6-week period in late June to mid-August, COVID-19 hospitalizations among children and adolescents increased fivefold. Vaccination, along with other preventative measures, can protect children from COVID-19 using the safe and effective vaccines already recommended for use in adolescents and adults in the United States. Similar to what was seen in adult vaccine trials, vaccination was nearly 91 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 among children aged 5-11 years. In clinical trials, vaccine side effects were mild, self-limiting, and similar to those seen in adults and with other vaccines recommended for children. The most common side effect was a sore arm.
COVID-19 vaccines have undergone – and will continue to undergo – the most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history. Vaccinating children will help protect them from getting COVID-19 and therefore reducing their risk of severe disease, hospitalizations, or developing long-term COVID-19 complications. Getting your children vaccinated can help protect them against COVID-19, as well as reduce disruptions to in-person learning and activities by helping curb community transmission.
Distribution of pediatric vaccinations across the country started this week, with plans to scale up to full capacity starting the week of November 8th. Vaccines will be available at thousands of pediatric healthcare provider offices, pharmacies, Federally Qualified Health Centers, and more.
The following is attributable to Dr. Walensky:
CDC.gov. 11/02/2021.
“Together, with science leading the charge, we have taken another important step forward in our nation’s fight against the virus that causes COVID-19. We know millions of parents are eager to get their children vaccinated and with this decision, we now have recommended that about 28 million children receive a COVID-19 vaccine. As a mom, I encourage parents with questions to talk to their pediatrician, school nurse or local pharmacist to learn more about the vaccine and the importance of getting their children vaccinated.”
This is an Open Thread.
