President Trump made more optimistic predictions today about the coronavirus, which he insisted today was ‘going away’ as he again called to reopen schools and added conditions would improve by November.
‘This thing’s going away. It will go away like things go away and my view is that schools should reopen,’ Trump said.
Trump made the upbeat statements in a call-in interview on Fox News, where he looked beyond mentions of the daily death count – information he also was presented with in an Axios interview Monday.
He forecast improvements by November, as he continued to bash mail-in voting, other than in the state of Florida, which he says is prepared for it.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci warns that the US could end up “in a really bad situation” if it does not bring its daily coronavirus case count down to 10,000 by September.
The top infectious diseases expert told the Journal of the American Medical Association in a livestreamed interview today that between 50,000 and 60,000 cases are diagnosed each day — suggesting the US is “right in the middle of the first wave.”
“If we don’t get them down, then we’re going to have a really bad situation in the fall,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
He said his assessment was based on the expected fall emergence of the flu, which sickens thousands, and the colder weather, which will likely drive more people indoors, where the coronavirus spreads more easily.
‘By the time we get there we’ll probably be in good shape,’ Trump said.
‘We have people that really want to get out and vote. It’s going to be safe,’ Trump said.
He said November 3 is ‘a long ways off’ and ‘a lot of things are going to happen may be positive.’
Coronavirus is more widespread in the US than ever before, prompting White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx to say over the weekend the country has entered a “new phase” of the pandemic.
The virus is now hitting urban, suburban and rural areas and has even spread to Americans living on distant islands.
Hawaii and Puerto Rico both saw their highest seven-day averages of new daily cases on Monday, per data from Johns Hopkins University.
Nationally, the seven-day average of new daily cases is at about 60,000 and slowly declining, while deaths, which typically lag several weeks behind, are steadily increasing.
For a week straight now, the US has had a seven-day average of over 1,000 deaths per day.
At the same time, the states that led the summer surge — California, Florida, Texas and Arizona — have seen cases plateau and slightly decrease in recent weeks from their highs.
Florida is averaging about 8,448 new daily cases per day over the last seven days, a number that is actually 18% lower than the week prior.
Fox & Friends interviewer Brian Kilmeade noted the U.S. Florida has about 60,000 coronavirus cases as the nation experiences about 1,000 deaths a day due to the disease.
‘That’s what’s got people freaked out,’ Kilmeade said.
Trump responded that ‘This country’s done a great job on the corona,’ and predicted its ultimate demise, as he has in the past.
Trump said the economy was ready to ‘rock and roll,’ and accused Democrats of seeking to close schools to hurt him – even as his top aides negotiate with Democrats behind closed doors for another coronavirus relief package.
‘Much of the country’s in really good shape,’ Trump said, adding Democrats don’t want to reopen schools ‘because they think it’s going to hurt the election for the Republicans.’
Demand for tests is outstripping supply, makers of test components say, even as about 800,000 tests are carried out per day in the US, according to the Trump administration’s coronavirus testing czar, Admiral Brett Giroir.
And test results are sometimes taking days or longer, hampering tracing abilities.
A coordinated effort by the federal government to identify and solve issues in the supply chain and provide better guidance to health workers on the best use of limited resources is what’s needed most, according to public health officials.
The federal government’s failure in testing has hurt North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper said yesterday.
“It’s hurt a lot. We wish there had been a better federal testing strategy,” Cooper said. “In North Carolina we’ve worked very hard to get testing out, but we find problems with supply chain, we find problems with personal protective equipment. So, as governors, we’ve had to step up and do the job.”
Trump’s posture came shortly before CNN reported that a source familiar with Tuesday’s coronavirus task force meeting, which included Trump, said the president doesn’t ‘get it.’
‘He still doesn’t get it. He does not get it,’ according to the source.
The report described other task force meeting struggling to get Trump to take the situation more seriously.
Trump fired back on Twitter, saying the network ‘has no sources on the Task Force. Their “sources” are made up, pure fiction!’ He called network correspondent Jim Acosta ‘a Fake reporter!’