President Joe Biden shifted the goal post on Friday morning on fighting the pandemic after repeatedly promising on the campaign that he would “shut down the virus.”

During a press conference, Biden was confronted on an op-ed that he wrote in USA Today this week [emphasis added]: We are going to fight COVID-19 not with shutdowns or lockdowns – but with more widespread vaccinations, boosters, testing and more. We will beat it back with science and speed, not chaos and confusion – just as we did in the spring and again with the more powerful delta variant in the summer and fall.

“So on COVID policy, it seems like the administration is starting to soften some of the language,” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy said. “There’s this new op-ed where you talk about COVID, ‘We are going to beat it back.’ Are you no longer going to ‘shut it down?’”