(Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)īiden won the White House in part because the public saw him as more qualified than former President Donald Trump to address the pandemic. adults approved of the economic aid package. A year ago, optimism was in the air President Joe Biden speaks to reporters in the White House Rose Garden in March 2021, a day after signing the $1.9 billion American Rescue Plan into law. Amid these criticisms, a growing share of Americans appear ready to move on to a new normal, even as the exact contours of that new normal are hard to discern. A majority of Americans now give Biden negative marks for his handling of the outbreak, and ratings for other government leaders and public health officials have tumbled.
And thorny new societal problems have emerged, including alarming increases in murder and fatal drug overdose rates that may be linked to the upheaval caused by the pandemic.įor the public, the sense of optimism that the country might be turning the corner – evident in surveys shortly after President Joe Biden took office and as vaccines became widely available – has given way to weariness and frustration. The nation’s political fractures are reflected in near-daily disputes over mask and vaccine rules. The economic recovery has been uneven, with wage gains for many workers offset by the highest inflation rate in four decades and the labor market roiled by the Great Resignation. The staggering death toll of the virus continues to rise, with nearly as many Americans lost in the pandemic’s second year as in the first, despite the widespread availability of vaccines. The landscape in other ways remains unsettled.
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