Biden’s COVID plans: increased spending, surveillance, mask mandates

The seven-point plan includes one to "implement mask mandates nationwide." The new administration plans to demand that governors make mask mandatory in their states, and that local authorities comply as well. How the mandate would be enforced is as yet unclear.

The Biden Harris administration intends to "double the number of drive-through testing sites," increase at home coronavirus tests and instant tests, under the auspices of a Roosevelt-style Pandemic Testing Board.

Under Biden, "at least 100,000 Americans" will be hired under a new "US Public Health Jobs Corps," which will "perform culturally competent approaches to contact tracing and protecting at-risk populations." Biden will fund personal protective equipment at the state level.

Biden intends to increase funding to states for their own budget shortfalls, and will make guidelines for social distancing, business and school closures, uniform, from the federal level down the line to the state and municipal level. Another $25 billion will go to manufacturing and distribution of a vaccine.

While Biden states that in America, everyone should receive "the protection and care they deserve," the new administration, under Kamala Harris' lead, intends to "establish a COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force." Once the crisis is over, this task force will be permanent, and become an "Infectious Disease Racial Disparities Task Force."

Another new federal program will the the Nationwide Pandemic Dashboard, so that people can check in on the results of all the ramped up testing.

Biden will restart funding of the World Health Organization, and restore funding the US Agency for International Development's PREDICT program. There will be more funding for the CDC as well, including opening CDC offices in Beijing.

Biden's plans call for a strikingly more active federal government reach into state and local affairs in the fight against COVID-19. Americans can expect a drastic increase in spending, the creation of new government agencies, and contact tracing and mask-wearing mandates. Biden's plan represents a fundamental ideological shift in the approach to the pandemic, one that places the primary responsibility at the federal level.