Ross: How Joe Biden was both right and wrong about COVID in January

In his acceptance speech on the final night of the Democratic National Convention, Joe Biden was clear about the first thing he’d do.

“As President, the first step I’d take is get control of the virus that has ruined so many lives,” he vowed.

But a few minutes later on Fox, Karl Rove was declaring that line to be a major blunder.

“He knows he’s got a vulnerability on this issue,” Rove opined. “He and his campaign were wrong on this issue almost from the start. In late January, remember, he had said the China travel was hysteria and xenophobia.”

That sent me back to the archives, and Rove is right: Biden did criticize the travel ban on January 31. But what also popped up was a USA Today op-ed by Biden from four days earlier.

“The possibility of a pandemic is a challenge Donald Trump is unqualified to handle as president,” Biden’s op-ed read. “The outbreak of a new coronavirus will get worse before it gets better… cases have been confirmed in a dozen countries, with at least five in the United States. I am concerned that the Trump administration’s shortsighted policies have left us unprepared for a dangerous epidemic that will come sooner or later.”

So, Biden was predicting this would be a dangerous epidemic when the number of case in the US was five. As in 1-2-3-4-5, when you could count them on one hand. That’s at least worth mentioning.

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