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| | | — The White House is banking on Covid-19 booster shots to play a key role in preserving its progress against the pandemic. — The Biden administration will soon require nursing homes to vaccinate their entire staff or risk losing federal funding. — President Joe Biden is putting his Education Department on a collision course with GOP governors over in-school mask mandates. WELCOME TO THURSDAY PULSE — where for readers of a certain age (ours), the good news is LFO and O-Town are still touring. The bad news, of course, is that the pandemic has made interacting with fans a bit more awkward than normal. Send tips and '90s nostalgia to acancryn@politico.com and sowermohle@politico.com. | | | WHY BIDEN WANTS BOOSTERS NOW — Biden administration officials have offered a range of explanations for the decision to urge coronavirus booster shots, often grounded in deep analyses of the science and reviews of extensive data. But on Wednesday, it was Anthony Fauci who put it plainest: “You want to stay ahead of the virus,” he said. “Better to stay ahead of it than chasing after it.” That focus on preserving the nation’s pandemic progress has become a driving force for the administration, as it tries to manage an increasingly complex response fraught with new variants, partisan politics and all manner of logistical challenges. The U.S. has come a long way since January, vaccinating a majority of Americans and driving down deaths while the economy opens back up. Yet signs of a backslide driven by the Delta variant are still ominous: caseloads at highs not seen since winter and outbreaks sweeping across classrooms just days into the school year. It’s against that backdrop that Biden officials decided the U.S. can’t afford to gamble when it comes to boosters — making the case throughout the day that putting plans in motion now, even if it’s a bit too early, is far more preferable than waiting for data that could tell them they’re too late. “This is no time to let our guard down,” President Joe Biden said. “We just need to finish the job with science, with facts, and with confidence.” Still, the decision isn’t without consequences. The booster plans sparked immediate anger among international organizations that have struggled to secure first doses for poor countries, with Oxfam America calling such vaccine hoarding “not only morally wrong, but also shortsighted and dangerous.” And even among health experts close to the administration, the scientific rationale for such an urgent booster rollout struck many as thin. “I think it’s premature,” Jeremy Faust , an emergency doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told PULSE. “I’m not saying they’re wrong — I just don’t know yet that they’re right.” Faust added that the hasty announcement — which preempted the FDA’s determination that booster shots would be both safe and effective — sent the wrong signal from an administration that’s vowed to follow the science, and puts immediate pressure on the agency’s scientists to deliver a positive verdict by the Sept. 20 rollout date. Yet, at least for now, those are calculations the administration appears willing to make — especially if it means the nation’s vaccinated majority remains a bright spot in what could otherwise be a difficult fall for both the pandemic-exhausted public and a Biden presidency that hinges on someday defeating the virus.
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NURSING HOME VAX CRACKDOWN ON THE WAY — Nursing homes need to vaccinate their entire staff or lose federal funding under forthcoming CMS regulations — the government’s most drastic move yet to boost vaccinations for workers tending to some of the most vulnerable Americans.
The agency plans to finalize the emergency rules by late September, making full staff vaccination a condition of Medicare and Medicaid funding for roughly 15,000 nursing homes employing 1.3 million people. It’s a big step toward fixing one of the administration’s top frustrations: That in some states a majority of the workforce who run the facilities most likely to suffer deadly Covid-19 outbreaks aren't vaccinated. Just 62 percent of nursing home staff are vaccinated nationwide, with state-level rates dropping as low as 44 percent. That has a direct impact on residents’ safety, Biden said Wednesday, with studies showing high vaccination rates among workers are connected to 30 percent fewer Covid-19 cases among patients. What’s still unclear: How the long-term care industry will react. Earlier this month, some industry groups signaled they’d fight any threats to penalize nursing homes by withholding funding, even as they’ve encouraged other types of vaccine mandates. The administration is also likely to face pushback from GOP state leaders over its authority to pull money from the facilities. BIDEN TARGETS GOVS OVER MASK BANS — The White House is also taking a harder line with Republican governors who’ve sought to prevent mask-wearing in schools, POLITICO’s Bianca Quilantan reports. Biden said Wednesday he’ll direct the Education Department to “use all available tools” to ensure governors and other officials don’t get in the way of measures aimed at allowing a safe return to in-classroom learning. In his speech, Biden singled out Tennessee over threats lobbed by protesters at doctors and nurses making the case for mask-wearing in schools. The announcement also comes after Florida threatened to remove school leaders in two counties for defying GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on mask requirements. For his part, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona signaled that the department’s Office for Civil Rights could launch investigations into whether school districts’ policies — such as masking bans — impede students’ access to education.
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| | | INSIDE THE GOP’s COCKTAIL CRAZE — Republican governors in states hammered by Covid-19 are trying to medicate their way out of the crisis , touting antibodies for infected people rather than breaking with conservative orthodoxy on masks or vaccine mandates, POLITICO’s Dan Goldberg reports. The state leaders’ gamble — that a pound of cure is more politically palatable than an ounce of prevention — has rankled the White House and exasperated public health officials. They worry that the emphasis on Covid-19 treatments risks undermining the reality that the virus is more serious than some easily treated flu or common cold. While the administration has urged states with low vaccination rates and rising cases to take advantage of the treatments, that was always supposed to go in tandem with other public health measures. Instead, some red states have treated it almost as a substitute for keeping people from getting sick in the first place. | | Building the Biden Administration | | BIDEN TAPS EX-MICHIGAN HEALTH SECRETARY FOR HHS POST — The president is nominating Robert Gordon to be HHS’ Assistant Secretary for Financial Resources, putting another Obama administration alum in line for a senior post at the department. Gordon co-chaired the Biden transition’s HHS agency review team alongside now-CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. He was also director of Michigan’s health department up until January. But that gig ended abruptly when Gordon resigned the same day Michigan began reopening its restaurants for indoor dining amid declining Covid-19 cases. The Detroit News later obtained internal emails that showed Gordon raising concerns the reopening plan went too far. The state later suffered a resurgence throughout March and April. During the Obama era, Gordon spent time at both the Education Department and OMB. | | | PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS GROUP ADDS LOBBYING FIREPOWER — Advocacy organization Guarding Against Pandemics has hired top lobby shop Van Scoyoc Associates, escalating its effort to get $30 billion of pandemic preparedness funding included in Democrats’ reconciliation package. Van Scoyoc is the group’s first outside lobbying hire, POLITICO’s Megan R. Wilson reports. And it comes as the $3.5 trillion package faces intensifying resistance from centrist Democrats. “We’re not going to let up on this;, we’re in it for the long haul,” said Gabe Bankman-Fried, a former Hill aide and the founder and director of Guarding Against Pandemics. “We really want to — and have been — building a presence in D.C., a real advocacy for pandemic preparedness writ large.” Bankman-Fried founded the organization last year, with the backing of private funders, including his brother, cryptocurrency billionaire and Biden donor Sam Bankman-Fried. Guarding Against Pandemics has since spent big on advertising, shelling out $278,000 to urge lawmakers, including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), to back the $30 billion pandemic preparedness allocation — and thanking others, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who already do. The group also launched a PAC this summer, with plans to contribute to candidates who support efforts to head off future health crises. | | | New data from Israel indicates a booster shot of the Pfizer vaccine can improve immunity for those aged 60 and above, The Wall Street Journal’s Dov Lieber reports. Hospitals overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients are having to send critically ill patients out of state, and often hundreds of miles away for care, the Associated Press’ Heather Hollingsworth and Jim Salter report. In a rare courtroom appearance, former Purdue Pharma President Richard Sackler testified that he and his family bear no responsibility for fueling the opioid crisis, The New York Times’ Jan Hoffman writes. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
