‘The Biden Admin Is Inheriting A Black Box’: Former Transition Advisers Discuss New Covid Strategy

Dr. Celine Gounder and Dr. Zeke Emanuel, who were members of Biden's Covid advisory board in the transition, join Andrea Mitchell to discuss the new administration's strategy on vaccine distribution and the impact of viral mutations. Dr. Gounder says, "The Biden administration is inheriting a black box. There's not enough visibility into how many vaccine doses have been manufactured and where they are." Aired on 01/22/2021.
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About Andrea Mitchell: Andrea Mitchell is NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports," an hour of political news and interviews with top newsmakers that airs each weekday at 12 p.m. ET on MSNBC.

In addition to politics, Mitchell covers foreign policy, intelligence and national security issues, including the diplomacy of Secretary of State John Kerry, for all NBC News and MSNBC properties.

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'The Biden Admin Is Inheriting A Black Box': Former Transition Advisers Discuss New Covid Strategy

64 comments

    1. It actually sounds like a plan, at least you have something to measure against. If I an not lined up to be vaccinated by June you know it only was a plan.

  1. It was true then, it’s true now.
    When the former president said he was going to run this country like he ran his (failed) businesses, he meant run it straight into the ground.

    1. @Knight Spask What will we be running our cars on? Does everyone have 100,000 dollars to spend on some high tech car? Windmills hurt the environment more than they help, don’t you know it takes a lot of petroleum to make them and lots of gas to haul them and set them up!

    2. @Dementia Joe please give Biden time. From what I have been following, he already got great ideas to clean up the mess from Trump. There’s no way Biden can clean up the mess in just one night! Biden’s administration is filled with smart competent people, don’t you agree? ✌

    3. @Agus Supriatna Biden can’t even ANSWER a QUESTION without a Teleprompter! He is a absolute MORON with Dementia!

    4. @Dementia Joe lol you demented clown, of course I dont care, there are replacement that ready to be change, so all your certain been put to rest so like I said get use to change or be left behind to old modern age, your choice, your fate, your decision and will. Dont blame others for your stupidity, accept it as your fault.

    5. @Knight Spask I wouldn’t even bother to help him think straight. Clearly he uses his ego and selfishness to think that Trump is much better than Biden. As an outsider, I don’t see anything good from Trump!! He was just trying to enrich himself and his branding! Anyway, I feel SO very happy that 🇺🇸 is a much better place now! It takes time to clean up the mess from Trump, but from what I have been following, he has been doing right things for 🇺🇸, for the people of the 🇺🇸!! 💙💙💙 bless you!!

  2. I am angry because Rupert Murdoch flew to the UK to get his Covid 19 vaccination stealing from needy UK seniors.

    1. @Mo He has dual citizenship though. I have been boycotting his newspapers etc since the early 1970’s. A greedy horrible man.From Wales(UK)

    2. Murdoch I’d Australian but gave up his citizenship to try to ruin Britain and when that went badly, became an American to do the same thing.

  3. There’s no vaccines anywhere in warehouses. There’s none. Trump has started these rumors that there’s some. There’s no evidences to back up these rumors. Just like Trump he didn’t have any scheduled to be anywhere until August.

    1. @Muddy Water I think you need help with your math. But, I am Canadian, and addition to being very polite, we also do math up here, so here goes:

      The US has had 25,360,518 cases, and from those cases, 423,613 death.
      That is a death rate of ((423,613/25,360,518) x 100) = 1.67%
      The survival rate, the percentage of people who get covid19 and don’t die, is 100 % – 1.67% = 98.3%.

      I have no idea where your figure of 99.96% came from, but it is incorrect. Additionally, there is a big difference (statistically) between 99.96% and 98.3%.
      So, you are basing your vaccine decision on completely incorrect mathematics.
      You said, “Nobody wants the vaccine”. Well, that is simply another thing that is not true. If it was, states would not be running out of vaccine, now would they? Lots of people want the vaccine.
      As far as your statement, “I trust my immune system”, how can you possibly trust something you don’t understand? If you encounter the virus that causes covid19 (and you eventually will), you will either fight it off and develop some future resistance, or you will die. You are rolling the dice, but more importantly, you are willing to be infected rather than get immunized first. Now, understand that your decision affects other people than just you. Every time this rna virus replicates, (when you have it) it is in a position to mutate. So if it happens to mutate when you have it, you may have some residual resistance to the original virus, but no resistance to the mutated virus. And of course you have the potential to unleash a new mutated strain on the population too.
      Ask yourself this: if everybody in the US did exactly what you are doing, what would happen? I will tell you the answer: it would be a health disaster. Millions of people would die. *_In fact, you are able to “trust your immune system” (as you say) only because many other people know the facts and are getting immunized-*

    2. @Tom Terrific Plus no one is talking about the ones that don’t die and ar long haulers with bad physical and possibly disabling consequences , maybe for months maybe for life. There are many times more of them than fatalities

    3. @E Toma probably but that doesn’t account for the 70-85% that haven’t been infected yet. whatever that number might be

      There are a couple of other approaches to our good Northern neighbors maths arrival which paint a slightly more drearier picture.

      Infections (I)
      Recoveries (R)
      Deaths (D)
      Concluded cases (C)
      Percent of or size of population is irrelevant (P)

      (R) + (D) = C
      D/C = case fatality rate

      R = 15,222,719
      D = 424,177
      C = 15,646,896
      D/C (x100) = 2.71%
      CFR = 2.71%
      Survival = 97.289%

      The CFR when arrived at that way held pretty steady around 5% for many months, but as testing eventually started to happen they caught more asymptomatic and mild cases to report.

      The reason the Tom Terrific’s number is lower than mine is that his sample contains non-concluded cases – we don’t know if some of them will live or die – the reason it is still a viable bootstrap method is because this scourge has gone on for a year so most have now recovered or died. It only takes 10-14 days to recover but might take 6 weeks or even 6 months to die and those are not easy maths for me. You could apply a historic rate, but the numbers are close enough.

      What we don’t know yet, is how viral/contagious and how lethal/deadly the new strains will be. While not the flu, it is a virus, and the fall wave of the 1918 flu was less catching but 8x more deadly [(if you caught the second wave you were 8x more likely to die) (copenhagen studies)]

      To me, the most important thing @Tom Terrific touched on is something Muddy Water simply won’t see. He’s not “taking his chances” he’s a lethal weapon with randomized victims he’ll never see.

    4. Another wide angle view of those maths is to take to concluded cases as a percentage of all cases, and to take the entire known current infections and see what part of them are (C). Pendantic but interesting to the layman like me

    1. @Mr Perpetual You’re wrong.
      The POTUS is always responsible for the country’s health during a GLOBAL PANDEMIC, just as he’s responsible for our Nat Sec. It’s part of the job. That’s why we’re currently experiencing 400,000+ deaths & vaccine shortages.

    2. @Sher what more did you want Trump to do? I just can’t see anything different that could have been done. The governors were in charge of their states. Did you want to lockdown the entire country in late January? Remember when Fauci told us we didn’t need to wear masks at the moment? That’s because only way to get thru it was let it spread then deal with it accordingly. Trump has many faults but here I just can’t see anything that was done to make it worse than it is. It was a novel virus.

  4. The press has a great opportunity here to URGE CONSTITUENTS to CONTACT THEIR REPRESENTATIVES in Congress to approve Biden’s plan. You probably won’t but you could.

    1. Sleepy Joe doesn’t know how to distribute vaccines already produced. Best excuse for incompetency: Blame Trump

  5. Congratulations to everyone at MSNBC for setting an Inauguration Day record of 5 million total viewers. Watching MSNBC it’s the new normal

    1. Would love to know the number of world viewers – it was given full coverage here in Australia and I along with many others got up at 3am to watch!

    1. I support it, rather than keep begging so called priority people. I’d give one week for 1st and 2nd shot, if you dont make it stand in the regular line,

    1. Evidence, please. Clearly this is the price you pay when you have anti-government “conservatives” sabotaging the government.

  6. I have a feeling that when historians get their hands on the Trump Regime documents, they will generally resemble C- quality products from third graders.

  7. When will the press start talking about the cost of staying alive due to Covid. Where I live in WNC, a source told me, “One dose of Remdesivir is $6,000 dollars. A five day script is $90K.” Add in the uninsured, with or without unemployment… when are the US Press going to start going after the Pharma industry and the benefits socialized medicine or at the very least a real regulation of price gouging?

  8. No, they are not “inheriting a black box.”
    It is more like an undetermined number of ticking time bombs.

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