Biden?s promises on covid create political risk

“It’s always tricky to make specific promises,” said Kathleen Sebelius, who served as secretary of health and human services under Barack Obama. “Is there a risk? You bet. Is there a sense of accountability that goes along with that? You bet.”

Sebelius was secretary when the widely anticipated rollout of the Affordable Care Act was torpedoed by a glitchy website, compelling her to promise that it would be fixed by a specific date — then hope desperately that it would happen.

“One of the most terrifying things I had to do in my entire career was to, after acknowledging that Healthcare.gov was flawed to the point that it was basically unusable, we then said, ‘By December 1st it will be usable,’ ” Sebelius recalled.

In the coronavirus recovery effort, public health experts said the unknowns include whether dangerous new variants of the virus will spread; whether a rush to open the economy in some states will yield a new spike in infections; whether the cultural divide over masks and social distancing will interfere with recovery initiatives; and whether many Americans will simply decline to get vaccinated.

Beyond that, as the ACA website debacle shows, bureaucratic and technical challenges have snagged other major government endeavors, a risk that hangs over the “find a vaccination” website and hotline that Biden has promised.

The realm of high-risk, high-reward is new terrain for Biden when it comes to the coronavirus, since until this week he had mostly tempered expectations about defeating the pandemic. He also routinely blamed the Trump administration’s mismanagement for adding to his challenge, suggesting that he did not have full ownership of the recovery effort.

This week, Biden appeared to conclude that the time had come for a different tone and message, and that Americans would tire of admonitions to wear masks and keep apart unless they also received more reason for hope and a sense of when things might get better.

On Friday, the president’s shift to taking more responsibility for the government’s response was increasingly evident, a change he had begun with the previous night’s speech.

“To every American watching: Help is here, and we will not stop working for you,” Biden said at an event in the White House Rose Garden celebrating the sweeping $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan he had signed into law the previous day.

After ticking through many of the provisions in the law, including $1,400 stimulus checks that…