Coronavirus will ‘fade away’ even without vaccine, Trump claims days before Tulsa re-election rally
- The US has continued to record 20,000 new daily cases from a pandemic that so far has killed 117,000 people in the country
- Trump’s aides have sought to cast the US response to the coronavirus pandemic as ‘cause for celebration’ but most Americans disagree
“We’re very close to a vaccine and we’re very close to therapeutics, really good therapeutics,” Trump said in a television interview with Fox News. “But even without that, I don’t even like to talk about that, because it’s fading away, it’s going to fade away, but having a vaccine would be really nice and that’s going to happen.”
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The US has continued to record 20,000 new daily cases from a pandemic that so far has killed 117,000 people in the country. The president has called for easing restrictions on public activity that were imposed to slow the spread of the virus but that plunged the US into recession.
Anthony Fauci, the head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said a vaccine could be ready by the end of the year or the first few months of 2021. More than 130 vaccines against coronavirus are in development, according to the World Health Organisation.
But Fauci, a member of the White House’s mostly mothballed coronavirus task force, also warned last week that the infection won’t “burn itself out with mere public health measures”.
“We’re going to need a vaccine for the entire world, billions and billions of doses,” Fauci said in online comments on June 10 to the Biotechnology Innovation Organisation, an industry group.
The US recently passed the 2 million mark for cases, although earlier epicentres like New York and New Jersey have seen the pandemic tail off after aggressive action to shut down their economies.
An uptick in coronavirus cases in many states over the past two weeks, along with rising Covid-19 hospitalisations, reflected a troubling national trend that has seen daily US infection numbers climbing after more than a month of declines.
Oklahoma reported a record 259 new cases over the previous 24 hours, while Florida reported more than 2,600 new cases and Arizona more than 1,800 – the second-highest daily increases for those two states.
Trump rejects Tulsa rally virus concerns, wants triple crowd
Trump’s political team, meanwhile, forged ahead with plans for the campaign rally on Saturday in Tulsa, his first such event since stay-at-home restrictions were imposed across much of the country in March to fight the coronavirus.
Public health experts worry that assembling thousands of shouting, chanting people inside an arena – particularly if many aren’t wearing masks – could turn the rally into a coronavirus “super-spreader event.”
Trump’s aides, including Vice-President Mike Pence, have sought to cast the US response to the coronavirus pandemic as “a cause for celebration” but recent polling shows more than half of Americans called it fair or poor.
The Gallup and West Health survey released on Thursday found 57 per cent of US adults rated the national response to Covid-19 as fair or poor, particularly in light of the fact that America has the world’s most expensive health care system.
The numbers amount to a red flag for Trump and his White House team, eager to change the narrative from projections that show a growing number of US pandemic deaths to a story of American resilience and economic revitalisation to reinforce his re-election bid.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion article published on Wednesday, Pence castigated the news media for focusing on rising Covid-19 cases in certain states.
“We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives, and we’ve created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future,” wrote Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force. “That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering.”
The poll found that only 23 per cent of adults rated the national response as excellent or very good, while an additional 20 per cent rated it as good.
Additional reporting by Reuters, Associated Press
