Meanwhile Trump also helped change the use of masks, which has been shown to slow transmission of disease, into a matter of cultural warfare. And the demonstration in Oklahoma on Saturday night was a rebuke to the idea of social alienation – although, ironically, the smaller crowd than expected would allow such a practice to occur. Health experts warn that the surge in infections in states such as Florida and Arizona – both setting new highs in daily infection rates over the weekend – are driven by diminishing public will to avoid large gatherings and a reluctance to wear masks.
The President’s bad example represents a typical effort to divide Americans and highlight divisions on specific issues for his own political gain. But in the long run, besides putting thousands of lives at risk, it’s counterproductive, because stricter efforts to avoid rising infections because the country opens up the possibility of promoting a rapid economic recovery where Trump is a re-election campaign bank that has slipped into trouble in some the last week.
By ignoring or attempting to eliminate increasing infections, the White House effectively revealed that it had no plans or tendencies to aggressively fight the worst public health crisis in a century, with the United States failing to see a sharp decline in infections after reaching a peak the country had seen. other large industrial countries.
But another week starts with the White House in turmoil
The White House starts a new week in a typical storm of controversy, exacerbated by Trump’s decision to hold a rally that could turn into a super-spreader event during the pandemic and his administration’s steps to sack Geoffrey Berman, a chief prosecutor in New York, which sparked renewed concerns about respect for the rule of law and the independence of the justice system.
A Trump adviser told CNN that Trump was “very” upset with the turnout at the rally late Saturday. Donors and friends of the President were angry on Sunday after a rally that Trump did not attend this weekend, someone involved with the re-election said.
Meanwhile, the virus is still raging, and the government doesn’t seem to be on the same page about whether there will be a second wave in the fall. Although White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told CNN Jake Tapper about the “State of the Union” that the White House was preparing, Vice President Mike Pence blamed the media for inciting
“panic” in front of that.
The government’s slow efforts to increase corona virus testing early in the pandemic exacerbate the effects of the disease. And although the number of tests carried out now has reached 25 million, that number is far below the millions of tests a week according to health experts needed to identify the true spread of the disease and to track and isolate those infected.
The controversy over Trump’s test comments ended a sad weekend that should have given the President momentum but instead showed his political weaknesses, including his habit of constantly saying wild things that reduced his own campaign. The president was angry, CNN reported, about the crowd of poor people – around 6,200 people – who appeared at a rally in Tulsa after he spent this week claiming attendance would break records.
During a rally on Saturday night, Trump made a shocking statement that he had told his staff to slow down testing to cover the true extent of the disease. And this is not the first time he has suggested it.
“You know testing is a double-edged sword,” Trump said on Saturday. “This is the bad part … when you do that testing, you will find more people; you will find more cases. So I say to my people, please slow down the test.”
It is unclear whether officials conducted slow tests when they claimed they were speeding up and falsely stated that the United States is the world leader in testing. An administration official told CNN that Trump was “clearly joking.” Navarro also said the President joked about the “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“Come on, it’s cheeks,” Navarro said to Tapper. “It was a light moment for him at a rally.”
Why the President would joke about testing efforts in a pandemic that killed thousands of Americans and revealed the responsibility of his own government is a mystery. But if he speaks jokingly, the statement itself will reflect a brash attitude in which he has approached a pandemic and his own rejection of scientific measures that can improve the situation.
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf believes that Trump is angry at the press because of his (factually correct) coverage of an increase in cases of new corona virus infections.
“What you hear from the President is frustration – frustration in the sense that we are testing, I believe we have tested more than 25 million Americans. We have tested more than any other country in the world,” Wolf told CBS’s. “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “Instead, the press and others, all they want to focus on is increasing the number of cases.”
Trump’s statement drew an immediate rebuke from the Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s alleged campaign.
“This is a terrible attempt to reduce numbers just to make it look good,” Symone Sanders, a prominent Biden adviser, told “Fox News Sunday.”
“That is what will be remembered long after the misfortune of the demonstration last night – the President’s recognition that he slowed down testing for his political gains.”
Increased infection rates
Public health experts react with no confidence in Trump’s comments about testing.
“This is very frustrating for millions of Americans who are sick and have not been able to undergo tests. It must be very frustrating for people who have lost families in nursing homes, because we have not been able to test the nursing of occupants and workers, or meat packaging workers. Unfortunately this is not joke, “Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN on Sunday.
In NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Research and Policy on Communicable Diseases at the University of Minnesota, said that the pandemic was like a “forest fire” that might not slow down and aggravated by White. House has no strategy.
“At this point, we don’t really have a national plan that really unites what we are trying to do. We have 50 different states, the District of Columbia, the region, all types with their own plans,” Osterholm said. “We are in 70% of the number of cases today that we were at the peak of a pandemic case in early April, but I don’t see anything from ‘This is where we have to go, this is what we need to do to achieve such an effort, and that’s one of our challenges. “
New criticisms of the poor administration’s response to the pandemic coincide with alarming new evidence that the disease is making progress in southern and western countries. Arizona health officials reported 2,592 new infections on Sunday. The total state cases almost doubled in 14 days. Tulsa County, which hosted the Trump rally, reported another new daily corona virus case with 143 in the previous 24 hours. Florida reported more than 3,000 cases of Covid-19 on Sunday after reaching a new daily height of more than 4,000 new infections the day before.
Officials in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and other states report that a higher proportion of young people who test are positive for the virus. While younger people usually experience less severe symptoms of Covid-19 than their parents, they can pass it on to others and the data is alarming because it shows that social distance and closure are damaged.
But the President has refused to wear masks in public and at least be ambivalent about their use, and his conservative supporters have described the use of masks as an attempt by liberals and elitists to violate the basic freedoms of Americans. Does the President make a model wearing a mask – or argues that it can be a temporary inconvenience that can help everyone resume normal life faster – he can have a big influence, given the superiority of his platform and its influence on his supporters.
“The best spokesman is the President,” Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer ahead of the Trump event in the city on Tuesday.
“If he tells everyone at the rally it’s important to wear a mask, I’m sure they will,” Gallego said. “Please send the strongest signal to everyone – they need to wash their hands, they need to wear masks and they have to stay home if they have questions if they are sick.”
Despite Trump’s campaign of distributing masks at the rally on Saturday, several people in the crowd seemed to be wearing it. Senior officials who travel with the President for the most part and conspicuously refuse to wear them. This is despite the fact that six campaign staff sent to prepare for the general meeting tested positive for the virus before the President arrived.
Jim Acosta and Sarah Westwood from CNN contributed to this report.
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