President-elect Joe Biden will begin his presidency by asking everyone in the United States to wear a mask for 100 days, he told CNN Thursday. “Just 100 days to mask,” Biden said. “Not forever. 100 days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction.”
While it’s likely that longer than 100 days will be the more responsible choice, this strikes a notably different tone than what we’ve been seeing from Donald Trump, to say the least.
Biden also told CNN he had asked Dr. Anthony Fauci not just to stay in his longtime job as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—in addition “I asked him to be a chief medical adviser for me as well and be part of the covid team.”
Fauci isn’t the only top health appointment Biden is making. He has also reportedly asked Vivek Murthy to return as surgeon general, with an expanded role as a key part of the White House effort to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Murthy would be part of a COVID-19 team that would be led by Jeff Zients, Politico reports. Zients is not a public health expert, but is experienced in managing large projects across agencies. “Jeff isn’t a health care guru, and he’s the first to say that, but he’s a manager and a trusted player without an agenda other than outcomes,” a source told Politico.
Additionally, Biden will reportedly appoint Marcella Nunez-Smith, a co-chair of his current COVID-19 advisory panel, to a new administration role focused on health disparities, in this pandemic that has hit Black and Latino communities so hard. Nunez-Smith is an associate professor of medicine at Yale University whose research is on healthcare inequality.