Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response killed over 225000 Americans

Worst place, worst time: Trump faces virus spike in Midwest

OSHKOSH, Wis. (AP) — Gabe Loiacono is the kind of voter President Donald Trump can ill afford to lose. He lives in a pivotal county of a swing state that is among a handful that will decide the presidency. 

A college history professor who last cast a ballot for a Democrat more than 20 years ago, Loiacono is voting for Democrat Joe Biden because he thinks Trump has utterly failed in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. 

“President Trump still does not seem to be taking the pandemic seriously enough. I wish he would,” said Loiacono. He said he never thought of Trump as “all bad” but added, “There is still too much wishful thinking and not enough clear guidance.” Continue reading.

In rural America, resentment over COVID-19 shutdowns is colliding with rising case numbers

As COVID-19 spreads through rural America, new infection numbers are rising to peaks not seen during this pandemic and pushing hospitals to their limits. Many towns are experiencing their first major outbreaks, but that doesn’t mean rural communities had previously been spared the devastating impacts of the pandemic.

Infection rates in rural and frontier communities ebbed and flowed during the first seven months, often showing up in pockets linked to meat packing plants, nursing homes or prisons.

Even if they had no cases, many rural areas were under statewide public health orders that left businesses closed and events canceled. And that has become part of the problem today. The early compassionate and cohesive community responses to COVID-19 quickly gave way to growing anger and compliance fatigue, especially when some isolated towns didn’t see their first positive cases until summer. Continue reading.

Harris Slams ‘Greatest Failure In History’ As Meadows Admits Defeat In Pandemic

Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) on Sunday slammed the Trump administration for “admitting defeat” in the fight against COVID-19 after White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN “we are not going to control the pandemic.”

Meadows made the remark Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, telling host Jake Tapper that the president’s strategy is “to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas,” even as cases skyrocket across the United States.

“They are admitting defeat,” Harris told reporters when asked about Meadows’ comment. “This is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of America.” Continue reading.

White House signals defeat in pandemic as coronavirus outbreak roils Pence’s office

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The presidential campaign was roiled this weekend by a fresh outbreak of the novel coronavirus at the White House that infected at least five aides or advisers to Vice President Pence, a spread that President Trump’s top staffer acknowledged Sunday he had tried to avoid disclosing to the public.

With the election a little over a week away, the new White House outbreak spotlighted the administration’s failure to contain the pandemic as hospitalizations surge across much of the United States and daily new cases hit all-time highs.

The outbreak around Pence, who chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force, undermines the argument Trump has been making to voters that the country is “rounding the turn,” as the president put it at a rally Sunday in New Hampshire. Continue reading.

Infection of Pence Aides Raises New Questions About Trump’s Virus Response

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From the beginning, the president has turned mask wearing and other preventive measures into a loyalty test. He and his aides have taken the same approach inside the White House.

WASHINGTON — “Covid, Covid. Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid,” President Trump groused at a rally in North Carolina on Saturday, expressing dismay that the deadly coronavirus pandemic had come to dominate the final days of his struggling re-election campaign. He made up a scenario: “A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it. ‘Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.’”

But just seven hours later, the White House made its own Covid headlines when officials acknowledged that another coronavirus outbreak had struck the White House, infecting Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff and four other top aides — and raising new questions about the Trump administration’s cavalier approach to the worst health crisis in a century.

“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning, essentially offering a verbal shrug in response to any effort to prevent an outbreak in the top echelon of the nation’s leaders. “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations, because it is a contagious virus — just like the flu.” Continue reading.

Trump’s campaign made stops nationwide. Coronavirus cases surged in his wake in at least five places.

As President Donald Trump jetted across the country holding campaign ralliesduring the past two months, he didn’t just defy state orders and federal health guidelines. He left a trail of coronavirus outbreaks in his wake. 

The president has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August, all but two at airport hangars. A USA TODAY analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in the following counties: Blue Earth, Minnesota; Lackawanna, Pennsylvania; Marathon, Wisconsin; Dauphin, Pennsylvania; and Beltrami, Minnesota.

Together, those counties saw 1,500 more new cases in the two weeks following Trump’s rallies than the two weeks before – 9,647 cases, up from 8,069.  Continue reading.