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From: daily.mexican@gazette.com
In article
wrote:
>
> I believe Biden is incompetent and insane. Facts speak for themselves.
>
White House officials have grown so frustrated with top health
official Xavier Becerra as the pandemic rages on that they have
openly mused about who might be better in the job, although
political considerations have stopped them from taking steps to
replace him, officials involved in the discussions said.
Top White House officials have had an uneasy relationship with
Becerra, the health and human services secretary, since early in
President Biden’s term. But their dissatisfaction has escalated
in recent months as the omicron variant has sickened millions of
Americans in a fifth pandemic wave amid confusing and sometimes
conflicting messages from top health officials that brought
scrutiny to Biden’s strategy, according to three senior
administration officials and two outside advisers with direct
knowledge of the conversations.
The frustration with Becerra comes as top White House and health
officials face growing criticism for health messaging missteps,
as well as controversial policies about coronavirus testing and
isolation. The administration has also struggled in the face of
a tsunami of cases that have overwhelmed hospitals and shuttered
some schools and businesses because so many workers became
infected.
White House and HHS officials denied such tensions and pointed
to the administration’s work on delivering vaccines, as well as
new covid treatments and diagnostic tests, as proof of a
productive working relationship. “Since day 1, the
administration has managed a strong, coordinated COVID-19
response thanks to Secretary Becerra and HHS officials at every
level of government,” White House spokesman Kevin Munoz said in
a statement.
Becerra, a former California attorney general and longtime
congressman with no front-line health-care experience, was never
given a clear role in a response that is run out of the White
House, prompting defenders to say it is unfair to blame him for
recent stumbles. Still, his low profile has become more
confounding as the pandemic has worn on and health officials
have made statements that sometimes blindsided the president and
bewildered the public, some officials and outside experts say.
They also said the health secretary isn’t fulfilling a core
responsibility of his job, which is to act as a de facto field
marshal coordinating the nation’s vast health bureaucracy to
achieve the White House’s strategy, even though he does not set
it. For instance, they cited officials’ airing of differences
over booster shots and covid-19 isolation guidance as confusing
and unnecessary. They said the tension between Becerra and the
White House has complicated the pandemic response at a time when
Americans are already exhausted and struggling to make sense of
ever-changing guidelines.
“He hasn’t shown up,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps
Research Translational Institute and a prominent covid analyst,
adding that Becerra has been “like a ghost” during the pandemic.
“An HHS secretary has so much authority and power to help. And
we have no evidence that any of it is being exerted.”
Topol, who wrote an editorial in Science magazine this month,
saying Becerra had “shirked” responsibilities such as collecting
covid data and coordinating his deputies, said he had heard
similar concerns from people close to the White House. The
secretary has “to step up or step aside,” Topol said.
Several administration officials voiced similar displeasure with
Becerra’s leadership, although they would not do so on the
record because they were not authorized to speak with the media.
The health secretary “is taking too passive a role in what may
be the most defining challenge to the administration,” said one
senior administration official.
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