Donald Trump is accidentally right in saying the US shouldn’t fear Covid-19

Name: Donald Trump continues to downplay severity of Covid-19 as more US officials report infections
Uploaded: 2020-10-12T17:00:08.000Z
Duration: 2 min 47 s
Description: Donald Trump continues to downplay severity of Covid-19 as more US officials report infections

The problem is, instead of using his own brush with the virus to drive home a powerful message of overcoming adversity with common sense and courage, he made his refusal to wear a face mask the defining image of his failed Covid-19 policy

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US President Donald Trump removes his mask upon his return to the White House from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre on October 5. Photo: TNS

Robert Delaney

Published: 1:00am, 13 Oct 2020Updated: 2:05am, 13 Oct 2020

Donald Trump had a point about Covid-19 when he told Americans not to fear the disease, a remark that sparked an immediate backlash and accelerated the rapid worsening of his re-election odds.

Although there’s no scientific evidence that the pathogen itself is mutating into something less deadly, coronavirus death rates are falling. That’s because treatment methods and procedures for identifying Covid-19 deaths have improved.

We understand Covid-19 now better than we did earlier this year, which should allow us to avoid the kind of lockdowns we had to endure as we watched apocalyptic waves of death spread from Tehran to Florence to New York.

Given all of this, rational action should replace fear as we wait for effective vaccines to be rolled out in the coming months.

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Donald Trump continues to downplay severity of Covid-19 as more US officials report infections

Trump could have owned this message. He had an opportunity to use his Covid-19 infection to bring some voters outside of his ardent supporters on board in the final stretch of the election.