Biden world not looking to change things up after Covid infection

President Joe Biden’s coronavirus diagnosis may have disrupted his day. But it’s not giving the White House any pause about how it’s handled the pandemic threat that still looms over his presidency.

White House officials on Thursday struck a defiant tone in the face of questions about Biden’s health and their own Covid protocols, downplaying the risks facing the president and dismissing fresh concerns about their approach to a virus that’s killed more than a million Americans — and is surging across the country once again.

In a briefing just hours after Biden tested positive, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre rejected suggestions the White House should step up its Covid precautions. She dismissed the need for tighter masking requirements and refused to say whether others in the West Wing had come down with the disease.

As for where Biden might have picked up the virus over a seven-day stretch that included trips both domestic and abroad? “I don’t think that matters,” Jean-Pierre said.

“We knew this was going to happen,” she added later. “There’s been no change to our protocol.”

The decision by the White House to treat the infection of the world’s most powerful man with a still-deadly disease as a mere nuisance underscores the advancements health care professionals have made in the Covid fight. It also echoes a larger political calculation the president’s team has made to treat the pandemic as an unfortunate but manageable part of life — one now impacting the president himself.

Biden has so far experienced only mild symptoms and continued to work in the White House residence, aides said — a point the president himself reiterated in statements and a video.

But while Biden and his team toggled between an aura of defiance and nonchalance, health experts wondered whether they had missed an opportunity to refocus the public’s attention and concern at a time when hospitalizations from the disease have risen sharply and few counties are following guidance to implement indoor mask wearing.

“They need to up their game in terms of masking,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist who advised Biden’s transition team on the pandemic, adding that this represents perhaps the highest-profile reinforcement of the virus' contagiousness. “Obviously someone who tested negative came in contact with him and converted, so it’s highly infectious.”

White House aides and health experts long viewed Biden’s Covid diagnosis as an eventuality, especially as the various Omicron sub-variants proved they could dodge the immunity provided by vaccines. Aides shifted their public messaging to reflect the changing reality. Their new tenor was that it was indeed possible — maybe even likely — that Biden would suffer a breakthrough case, but would recover well, emphasizing that the vaccines are effective enough to ward off the worst effects, and that beyond that, he has access to round-the-clock medical care.

That, too, was their broader message to the American people: that COVID was not vanishing but it could be managed. The White House did not want to entertain reinstating significant restrictions unless absolutely necessary, believing that the public had pandemic fatigue.

"Because the president is fully vaccinated, double boosted, his risk of serious illness is dramatically lower," White House Covid response coordinator Ashish Jha told reporters at Thursday’s briefing. "It’s a reminder of the reason that we all work so hard to make sure that every American has the same level of protection."

Still, the White House has done its best to limit Biden’s risk. Meetings in the West Wing are often masked and socially distanced, and visitors must test negative before meeting with the 79-year-old president, the nation’s oldest.

But Biden also wanted to project as best he could that both he and the country were back at work. And always a tactile, grip-and-grin politician, he deeply hated being isolated from political friends and regular Americans and urged his staff to start hosting events at the White House and to increase his travel, according to two officials not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

He embarked on a four-day trip overseas last week and then traveled Wednesday to Massachusetts for a speech. Three Democratic lawmakers from the state — Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jake Auchincloss — flew with him aboard Air Force One on that Massachusetts trip, along with several aides. Auchincloss later posted a photo from the flight showing the two of them maskless. Biden also greeted and shook hands with dozens of attendees following his speech.

The White House itself had relaxed its protocols over the last several months, dropping its mandatory mask requirements and Covid-prompted attendance limits for its press briefings.

The more relaxed approach that was gradually adopted angered some health experts who believe the administration should be doing far more to break the pattern of Covid and protect vulnerable groups. Biden raised eyebrows by largely eschewing a mask in public events. And in June, Jean-Pierre faced blowback for refusing to detail Biden's testing regimen. The White House has also limited its disclosure of Covid cases among others in the building, notifying the public on only a handful of occasions where senior aides had tested positive.

On Thursday, Jean-Pierre rejected suggestions that Biden's personal doctor, Kevin O'Connor, needed to take questions directly from the press about the president's condition.

"We are doing this very differently," she said. "And we’re going to continue to provide information for all of you."

But behind the scenes, White House aides say a concern about the newest variant of Covid-19 has pushed aides, including those who meet with the president, to wear masks more often in recent weeks. Aides seen by reporters in the press office Thursday were masked after the president’s diagnosis, though they say there was no directive to do so.

Under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's current guidelines, Biden’s close contacts will not have to quarantine as long as they're not showing symptoms. But they should wear a mask any time they’re around other people for the next 10 days, according to the agency, and isolate immediately if they develop any symptoms.

Biden himself received the antiviral pill Paxlovid immediately following his positive test to cut down even more on his chances of developing severe symptoms. His personal doctor also plans to provide daily public updates on his condition.

Beyond his personal health, Biden’s diagnosis represents just the latest inconvenience for a president already struggling to quell whispers within his own party over whether he should run again in 2024. And it serves as an untimely reminder that the White House has largely failed in its quest to end the pandemic.

Eugene Daniels contributed to this report.