President JOE BIDEN will unveil a new Covid plan in a pivotal speech at 5 pm. The latest … — Biden will require all federal workers to receive coronavirus vaccinations and eliminate their option to receive regular tests instead of the shot, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Liptak report. The president is also expected to announce expanding free public testing and address booster shots, though no new guidance will be issued. — The number of kids hospitalized with Covid-19 has reached an all-time high amid the start of the new school year, per NYT’s Lauren Leatherby and Amy Schoenfeld Walker. — Meanwhile, experts are worried about an earlier and nastier flu season in the coming months, WSJ’s Felicia Schwartz writes. IF YOU’VE LOST NPR … National Public Radio is a terrific news service, but any regular listener, if they are being honest, knows that it is not exactly a hotbed of criticism about the Biden administration. So it was a little jarring to listen to a report today on NPR’s always-excellent morning briefing, “Up First,” that included a withering indictment of how Biden has handled the latest phase of the pandemic. In a piece setting up Biden’s big Covid speech, health correspondent Rob Stein began by noting the “growing sense of disappointment and frustration” among health experts about the president’s recent stretch of pandemic policies, including the stalled vaccination campaign and the May announcement to “abruptly” drop masking — which, Stein noted, sent a dangerous message that the pandemic was over. (It wasn’t.) Cut to Dr. LEANA WEN, who had this unsparing assessment: “It is directly as a result of the CDC’s actions back in May — and the Biden administration’s lack of leadership — that we have the surge that we’re seeing now. What let Delta gain a foothold? It was because of people’s actions that were directly enabled by the Biden administration’s response.” The result? “Now we’re seeing hospitals around the country being overwhelmed,” Stein said. They moved on to the recent series of contradictory statements from the administration about booster shots that NPR described as “head-spinning messages that raise doubts about how well the vaccines work.” Next up was NYU’s Dr. CELINE GOUNDER, who advised Biden during the transition and hit the White House for making “political” decisions rather than leaving scientists in charge. There was more: NPR noted that the Biden testing regime was broken and that there were questions about why the administration was relying on foreign data “to make crucial decisions,” rather than closely tracking things at home. They brought in one more Biden-friendly health expert to kick the president in the teeth. “The CDC has not done the job it should do for monitoring genetic variants, as well as breakthrough,” said Dr. ZEKE EMANUEL, who, in addition to being one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act, is the brother of RAHM EMANUEL, Biden’s nominee for ambassador to Japan. “I mean [in] May we stopped recording breakthrough infections, systematically. That’s not a good place to be.” The purpose here is not to endorse all of these criticisms, but to point out that Biden is in danger of losing his intellectual base on the most important issue he confronts. And it will take a lot more than this evening’s speech to make up for what has been lost this summer with Covid’s stubborn return. Good Thursday afternoon. | 
