Day 1,376: Trump keeps saying US is ‘rounding the corner’ on COVID-19. The US just hit a record number of infections.
After landing in Allentown, Pennsylvania for a Monday campaign stop, Donald Trump bragged that the U.S. was “absolutely rounding the corner” on the coronavirus, even as his chief of staff conceded defeat on controlling the outbreak a day prior.
Trump has made that exact claim dozens of times over the past eight months.
In reality, COVID-19 cases are soaring nationwide with potentially the worst to come.
“I think we’re right now at the cusp of what’s going to be exponential spread in parts of the country,”[former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott] Gottlieb said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“If we took aggressive steps right now, we could potentially forestall the worst of it, but we’re not going to do that,” because there’s a lot of fatigue and “policy resistance to taking strong action,” he said.
“We really have two or three months of the acute phase of this pandemic to get through,” he said. “This is going to be the hardest phase, probably.”
The U.S. just hit a seven-day positive case record, as the disease spreads in most pockets of the country.
That’s as the country continues to report the most number of cases we’ve seen to date. The seven-day average of daily new cases reached an all-time high of 68,767 on Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The previous record of 67,293 was set July 22.
Hospitalizations are up, percentage of new tests that come back positive are up and new confirmed cases have hit a record.
As Election Day nears, Trump continues to fume that the nation keeps focusing on a disease claiming 1,000 American lives a day. From the beginning, even when there were only 1,000 cases in the country, it was apparent Trump wasn’t up for this moment.
To date, more than 225,000 people have died in the U.S. from COVID-19 and infections have surged past 8.6 million people.
Trump’s COVID-19 response has ensured that, far from rounding a corner, the nation is running in a continuous circle.
1,376 days in, 86 to go
Follow us on Twitter at @TrumpTimer
