WASHINGTON — Joe Biden's first act as president-elect was to urge all Americans to wear masks, announcing Monday the formation of a new coronavirus advisory board that will consider a national mask mandate amid rising cases and deaths.
"It doesn't matter your party, your point of view," Biden said after receiving his first briefing from the group. "We could save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Not Democrat or Republican lives — American lives."
Unifying the country around a common pandemic plan, when it is still divided over the results of the 2020 presidential election, will be among Biden's greatest challenges entering the White House. Coronavirus cases have broken records nationwide and several states are at risk of reaching hospital capacity.
The 12-member task force is building out policies to end persistent shortages of personal protective equipment for front-line workers and increase the precision, speed and availability of testing.
It is also debating just how far Biden should go in urging Americans to wear masks, widely seen by public health experts as an affordable and effective tool at stopping the spread of COVID-19.
Public health experts who for months advocated for a more centralized, disciplined national pandemic plan expressed relief at the naming of the new task force, and encouraged its members to immediately begin reaching out to state and local government officials to coordinate their plans.
The Trump administration repeatedly deferred to the states to issue pandemic restrictions within their own jurisdictions, insisting that the federal government had no authority to override local officials resistant to closing schools and businesses.
"That is a part of what I think the biggest challenge is going to be, period, for the Biden administration, and that's really a communication challenge," said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University.
"Over 70 million people voted for Donald Trump, and they themselves are probably going to be very resistant to a lot of the recommendations that are made, so communicating clear messages out to the public — having everyone be on the same page — is going to be crucial," Rasmussen said.
As a candidate for president, Biden said he supported the idea of a national mask mandate, but acknowledged it would likely face legal challenges.
Epidemiologists warn that the United States could see an additional 200,000 lives lost to the coronavirus in the coming months before a vaccine becomes available — a number that would be drastically reduced with widespread mask use.
Exit poll data on Election Day voters found that a large majority of Americans, roughly 68%, believe that mask-wearing is a public responsibility, while one in three Americans said that the use of masks was a personal choice.
"One of the policy proposals that Biden included in his COVID plan was to implement a nationwide mask mandate, which is something that he can effectively do on day one by executive order," Rasmussen said. "I think in order to make sure that's implemented across the board, that's going to require establishing these collaborative relationships with some of those governors."
An executive order could be limited to mask-wearing on federal lands, in federal buildings and on federal transportation.
Other public health experts who have worked closely with members of the new advisory panel expect them to recommend such a move to the president-elect.
"This is an evidence-based recommendation that has seemed clear to everybody for months now, because it's an effective way to prevent transmission and save lives," said Dr. Howard Koh, former assistant secretary for health under President Barack Obama and now at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
"This should be an obvious place to begin for the new administration, and the president-elect, very importantly, has led by example on this issue for months," Koh said. "His message has been consistent and clear on this for months. I anticipate that will go forward."
Outside experts who are in touch with members of the task force and advised Biden's campaign, told McClatchy to expect "rings" of advisers that expand beyond the core coronavirus advisory group.
The Biden team will reach out to expert vaccinologists, virologists and epidemiologists, who will serve the advisory group, a Biden aide said.
David Kessler, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, Marcella Nunez-Smith, a leading epidemiologist at Yale University, and former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy will lead the new advisory group.
Celine Gounder, a member of the advisory group, said its most imminent priority is unifying the country behind a plan.
"We must care for one another. We must heal. We must unite against COVID," Gounder told McClatchy.
President Donald Trump, who has called into question the need to wear masks and has rarely worn one in public, said in the closing days of the 2020 campaign that the country was rounding the corner on the pandemic. Over 237,000 lives have been lost in the United States to COVID-19 since the outbreak began in March.
The Trump administration set up a federal program called Operation Warp Speed to expedite the discovery, production and distribution of coronavirus vaccines. Several vaccine candidates are now in advanced clinical trials, and Pfizer reported that its vaccine candidate had produced clinical results indicating it was 90% effective at preventing COVID-19 infections.
A Biden aide told McClatchy that the president-elect's team plans on focusing on equitable allocation of an eventual vaccine to ensure that underserved communities get equal access.
Biden offered cautious optimism that a vaccine could be approved by the FDA before the end of the year. But he noted that it would take months to make any approved vaccine widely available to the general public.
In the meantime, mask-wearing will be essential, he said.
"We know the single most effective thing we can do to stop the spread of COVID is wear a mask," Biden said. "A mask is not a political statement but it is a good way to start pulling the country together."
