Top public health officials, as well as a few Democratic and Republican senators, painted a much starker picture Tuesday of the coronavirus challenges still facing the …
Top public health officials, as well as a few Democratic and Republican senators, painted a much starker picture Tuesday of the coronavirus challenges still facing the nation than the rosier outlook offered by President Donald Trump.
A day after the president declared the nation has “met the moment, and we have prevailed,” top members of his coronavirus task force sent a different message at a Senate hearing on how the nation can safely reopen.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, said that while containment is moving in the right direction, the virus is not under control.
Easing restrictions too quickly will lead to “some suffering and death that could be avoided,” he warned, adding that it could also paradoxically set back attempts to recover the economy.
“It would almost run the clock back rather than going forward,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “That is my major concern.”
Fauci’s remarks to the committee came on the same day that the White House announced that Trump will travel Thursday to the politically pivotal state of Pennsylvania to spotlight his argument that the economy can be reopened safely and life can soon return to normal.
“We have met the moment, and we have prevailed,” Trump said Monday in a comment he later said meant the country prevailed on testing.
Trump has repeatedly taken aim at Democratic governors such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Washington’s Jay Inslee, who he argues have been reluctant to reopen their states.
In a tweet on Monday, Trump said « the great people of Pennsylvania want their freedom now, and they are fully aware of what that entails. The Democrats are moving slowly, all over the USA, for political purposes. »
One risk for Trump is the pandemic will become a political liability for him as he seeks reelection in November. Trump is betting that reopening the economy will boost his chances of winning another four years in office, but Democrats have excoriated him for what they see as his administration’s inadequate response to the virus threat.
Congressional Republicans up for reelection this fall are wrestling with whether to defend Trump’s response to coronavirus or to keep a distance so they aren’t weakened by political fallout if the virus is not contained.
Fauci told senators the novel coronavirus is unlikely to simply disappear, as Trump has repeatedly suggested.
