The United States recorded 74,410 coronavirus infections yesterday and while that was not a record (the current record is 85,085 on October 23) it's still more than we ever recorded earlier this year during the second surge of the virus in the summer months. The point is the coronavirus, or COVID-19, is spreading farther and wider than it ever has. Hospitals in several areas of the country are now making triage decisions; deciding who is worth treating and who will be left to die.
With all of that said, we've apparently conquered the virus according to the White House science office, or at least Trump has.
From Politico:
The White House’s science policy office on Tuesday ranked “ending the Covid-19 pandemic” atop the list of President Donald Trump’s top first-term accomplishments, even as the country registers record amounts of infections and hospitals fill up again.
The list, included in a press release from the Office of Science and Technology Policy credits the administration for taking “decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry, and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.”
The Daily Beast reports that some members of the coronavirus task force are not happy with this ridiculous statement.
“It’s mind-boggling,” one official said of the White House’s assertion it had ended the pandemic. “There’s no world in which anyone can think that [statement] is true. Maybe the president. But I don’t see how even he can believe that. We have more than 70,000 new cases each day.”
Four officials working with the White House coronavirus task force told The Daily Beast that they viewed the White House’s statement as a personal slight and a public rebuke of their efforts to try and get control of the virus.
If members of the coronavirus task force -- which itself is kind of a joke -- are so displeased, they should resign. It's long past time for them to resign. But I digress.
A White House and president who would not only say this but may also actually believe it is one that will never take distribution of a vaccine seriously. Because we've ended the pandemic, right? And if it's over, why would we need a vaccine?
Donald Trump is incapable of thinking beyond himself so it's possible that he really does believe we've ended the virus simply because he was personally saved by an experimental cocktail treatment and the most expensive and exclusive care on the planet.
There's little doubt in my mind that if he's reelected, we will hit the dire projections over 400,000 or more coronavirus deaths. Even if he loses we may hit that number before he's legally out of office.