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(CNN) – President Donald Trump had predicted in almost every election that the media would stop talking about the coronavirus pandemic the day after the election. But it turns out that no one is ignoring the escalating tragedy more than the president himself.
Instead of taking over as the country plunges deeper and deeper into the worst internal crisis since World War II, Trump has disappeared in the White House. He hasn’t said anything in the House since he baselessly stated a week ago that President-elect Joe Biden was stealing the election.
He spends time with councilors, not studying strategies to manage the runaway health emergency, but looking for a way to win an election that has already been declared lost. It also found time to take out the Pentagon’s top leaders. And with few appointments on his public schedule, he seems to spend his days watching the news and tweeting misinformation about voter fraud.
In essence, Trump, his family and his advisers are wasting all their energy desperately trying to save a job – the presidency – that he seems to have no intention of executing in any meaningful sense.
It’s a particularly shocking and surreal leadership failure given the COVID-19 crisis and subsequent economic turmoil, even for a president who downplayed and lied about the true nature of the pandemic and repeatedly predicted that the virus would simply disappear.
Prior to the election, Trump White House Secretary General Mark Meadows had shown the way forward by telling CNN’s “State of the Union” that the pandemic could not be controlled.
Now that the election is over, the Trump White House seems to care even less about it than before.
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Explosion in covid cases
A disease that has killed more than 240,000 Americans cares little about the president’s hurt feelings after a defeat he has yet to acknowledge. Even after the elections it exploded.
On Wednesday, the United States recorded over 140,500 new infections and the loss of over 1,100 more lives. More patients than ever, nearly 65,000, are hospitalized with the disease, and the rate of increase is alarming for doctors, who fear that health services will be overwhelmed in a few weeks.
The situation is more serious than in the initial peaks of Covid-19 in the spring in the northeast and in the sun belt in the summer. The infection curve rises almost vertically and the virus spreads across the country.
These alarming case numbers and the reality of epidemiology and exponential spread mean Trump will leave the nation in a swamp of disease and death when his term expires in January. And every day the disaster that Biden will inherit gets worse, even as Pfizer’s announcement this week that its prototype vaccine is 90% effective means there’s at least some hope at the end of what promises to be a harrowing winter. .
Thanksgiving already looks like a fiasco, and authorities are warning Americans not to reunite with relatives at home for fear of causing new outbreaks. The example of Canada, which celebrated its Thanksgiving Day in October, suggests that the holiday will still leave its legacy of sickness and death.
However, there are no warnings from the president, who received the best medical care the United States can offer when he fell ill with covid-19 last month. Trump could use his megaphone to tell Americans to be careful, wear masks and keep social distance to limit the spread of a pandemic he downplayed ahead of the election.
Trump is not alone in his negligence. Vice President Mike Pence is the head of the White House coronavirus task force, but he hasn’t held public briefings in weeks, even though he met with the team this week. As a result, there are no directives from the West Wing on how Americans can mitigate the thousands of deaths expected before Biden, who has made fighting the virus his priority, took office.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released an updated guide on wearing masks on Wednesday in a rather subtle announcement that could have been designed to avoid the president’s wrath. The agency said evidence now suggests that wearing a face cover could protect the wearer, as well as those the person might come into contact with.
However, the president’s absence is causing great concern among experienced doctors.
“We have a leadership vacuum,” Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of Emory University School of Medicine, told CNN.
Dr. Seema Yasmin, a former CDC disease detective who is a CNN medical analyst, told CNN’s John King Wednesday that the current “unsustainable” carnage – 1,400 American deaths a day – equates to three or four full planes. of people crashing and dying every day.
“We need what we needed from the start: a robust response to a pandemic. I’m so worried we won’t see him … at least until opening day. Meanwhile, things will continue to get worse, “Yasmin said.
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Biden’s incoming White House Secretary General has experience with epidemics
Biden made his latest statement of intent by appointing Ron Klain as his White House Secretary General Wednesday night. Klain, a Washington veteran, served Biden in a similar role when he was vice president. And Klain was also President Barack Obama’s Ebola Tsar, so he’s used to ordering the US government’s public health resources.
The president-elect has already indicated that his attitude towards the coronavirus will be much more active than that of his predecessor. Biden wears a mask at all of his public events. On Monday, it appointed a 12-member advisory committee of esteemed scientists to review America’s efforts against the pandemic, which has been one of the least successful in the world.
“The purpose of wearing a mask is not to make your life less comfortable or to take something off. It is giving back something to all of us: a normal life, “Biden said Monday.” The goal is to get back to normal as quickly as possible and masks are essential to achieve that. It won’t be forever, “he said, trying. unlike Trump, to convince Americans that wearing a mask is not a political statement.
Trump and Pence in silence on the pandemic
While Trump and Pence remain silent on the pandemic, the coronavirus task force has continued to update states on the dire situation.
“There are community outbreaks increasingly widespread in the upper half of the country, where temperatures have cooled and Americans have moved inland,” the November 8 reports said and spread across the states Tuesday night. .
The task force, which warned of “significant deterioration of the solar belt” in reports last week, said the deterioration continued only in the past week, “leading to the most widespread spread experienced to date.”
Reports indicated that “proactive testing” should be part of the mitigation efforts. That ruling was impressive in itself, as the kind of massive testing and tracking operation that was needed at the start of the pandemic has yet to be implemented by the White House many months later.
Given Trump’s refusal to grant elections and unlock the funding and access to government departments and funding that Biden’s transition team needs, fears grow that efforts to curb the pandemic will be put at risk.
But the president shows no obvious concern.
CNN’s Betsy Klein and Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.
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