More than 32,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since Biden took office

When President Biden on Jan. 20 took office, 397,612 Americans had died of COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

In just more than a week in office, 32,358 more Americans have died, brining the total to 429,870 by midday Thursday.

The Biden administration has gotten off to a stuttering start to deal with the pandemic. On Wednesday night, shortly after Biden had taken the oath of office and signed an executive order mandating the wearing of COVID-protection masks on all federal property, the new president and his family headed over to the Lincoln Memorial for a little nighttime photo op.

But the president and others posing for pictures were seen without masks, standing shoulder to shoulder.

Asked about the apparent hypocrisy, new press secretary Jen Psaki defended the president. 

"He was celebrating an evening of a historic day in our country, and certainly he signed the mask mandate because it was a way to send a message to the American public about the importance of wearing masks, how it can save tens of thousands of lives," she said. "We take a number of COVID precautions, as you know, here, in terms of testing, social distancing, mask-wearing ourselves, as we do, every single day, but I don't know that I have more for you on it than that."

Scientists say that virus statistics are "lagging" numbers, meaning the those seen today reflect what happened days and weeks earlier. Still, the new administration has also taken some criticism about a sluggish response and unclear timeline.

Throughout the campaign, Biden pledged to swiftly "shut down the virus," claiming former President Trump had no comprehensive plan. But on Day 3 in office, the new president assumed a more resigned tone.

"Nothing can be done to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the coming months, no matter what Americans do," Biden said. "If we fail to act, there will be a wave of evictions and foreclosures in the coming months as this pandemic rages on, because there's nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months."

It wasn't until Tuesday — Day 6 — that Biden clarified what he meant.

"Well, I'm going to shut down the virus, but ... I never said I'd do it in two months," he claimed. "I said it took a long time to get here; it's going take a long time to beat it. And so we have millions of people out there who are — who have the virus."

"It's going to take time,” Biden continued. "It's going to take a heck of a lot of time. We're still going to be dealing with this issue in the — in early fall."

By then, America will have "herd immunity" from the vaccines developed under Trump's guidance.

In recent months, several news outlets have alleged that Trump had "blood on his hands" over the COVID-19 deaths in America. But so far, no outlet has blamed Biden for the number of deaths during his first week. 

In mid-December, Biden declared that he would see to it that the U.S. delivered 1 million shots a day for his first 100 days. But Trump's program was already doing that.

Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health-care workers, and so far 17.2 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the last week, an average of 912,497 doses per day were administered, Bloomberg reported Jan. 19.

In fact, the U.S. hit 1.6 million doses on the very day Biden took office.

Biden blasted the media when he took his first question from a reporter after signing some executive orders. An Associated Press reporter, Zeke Miller, asked Biden whether his target should be set higher than 1 million a day, noting "that's basically where the U.S. is right now."

"When I announced it, you all said it's not possible," Biden said testily. "C'mon, give me a break, man." The president has since said he's open to having a goal of 1.5 million vaccination doses per day, instead of 1 million.