Biden's next challenge: Getting Americans to accept the virus

And containment, not eradication, is the most realistic goal: Public health experts say the coronavirus is here for the long haul. Now, the challenge for Biden, his response team and state health officials will be managing the rolling series of outbreaks possibly driven by more dangerous virus variants, while avoiding the wishful thinking of the Trump administration, which downplayed the disease's lethality. “In the short term, we are not talking about eradicating the virus,” a senior administration official told POLITICO. “But we can control it if it’s smaller. Because all the tools of containment work a lot better if it’s smaller.”... Progress is unlikely to follow a straight line, and new hot spots continue to emerge. All eyes recently were on Michigan’s soaring case load. That’s now improving but the state, with 3 percent of the U.S. population, still accounts for nearly 10 percent of the country’s new cases. Colorado counties with the lowest vaccination rates are seeing spikes in infections. Washington state’s case rate has doubled over the past month.