US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — Donald Trump has actually abandoned the strategy for combating the coronavirus pandemic carried out by the health authorities, and “clearly demonstrates a willingness to exchange people‘s lives for the Dow Jones Index,” critics of the American president say.
Recently, a White House report for official use was published in the media, which says that on June 1, coronavirus deaths will reach 3,000 people a day, which is almost twice as high as today’s figure of about 1,750 people. This was reported on Monday by the New York Times.
Despite this, Trump canceled the daily briefings of the coronavirus task force and moved away from medical experts, preferring economists to flood the air and urge states to resume business activity despite the increase in the number of infected people.
On Tuesday morning, Trump went to Arizona for a medical mask factory. This is his first long trip since the end of March, when the number of covid-19 diseases began to increase in the United States. But before boarding the presidential plane, Trump compared forecasts of rising mortality and economic recovery.
“One way or another, there are no big victories. But I will tell you where there is a big victory. We intend to build a country; I already did this once, two months ago, we had the best economy in all of world history. But we will do it again, and we are already starting … it will happen pretty quickly. ”
In an interview with CNN, director of the National Institute for the Study of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, who led the White House Coronavirus Task Force, warned the day before that if the US “prematurely” lifts isolation measures in society and in business, the number of new cases will rise again.
“How many deaths and human suffering are we willing to accept for the sake of returning sooner or later to some normal state?” – he asked.
And on Tuesday morning, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo warned of the inadmissibility of a compromise between life and death when planning to lift restrictions. “The faster we resume economic activity, the higher will be the loss of life because we will lose more lives. But, my friends, we are already making such a decision, ”the governor said at his daily briefing.
Critics very much doubt the correctness of the Trump administration. Fauci called the “very difficult choice” a comparison of casualties and economic disaster.
“They very utilitarian decided that the political damage from the collapse of the economy would be more serious than the political damage from an increase in mortality among Americans in the month of June by another 90,000 people,” said Rick Wilson, a former Republican Party strategist. – We have witnessed a disgusting policy of pragmatism in action. Its authors are ready to exchange people’s lives for the Dow Jones index. ”
A sign of impending change was a statement by ex-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie CNN. He said an increase in deaths would be justified if the economy resumed operations. “Of course, everyone wants to save as many lives as possible. But the question is, what is the ultimate goal of such salvation? ” – said the Republican, who led the transition team of President Trump in 2016. Christy added: “Can we … complete a difficult task, assuming that there will be death under any circumstances?”
When Trump declared a state of emergency on March 13, there was hope that despite attempts to downplay the problems early on and missed testing opportunities, the federal government was finally ready to launch an attack on the epidemic with all its might.
Trump quickly declared himself a “wartime president” and March 31 gloomily told the Americans that they needed to prepare for two “very, very painful weeks.” They began comparing his daily briefings at the White House on the fight against coronavirus with pre-election rallies, because sometimes they lasted more than two hours, and authoritative experts like Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci spoke on them, who adopted graphics and scientific statistics .
However, on April 23, Trump stated with an important look that covid-19 patients should be given an injection of a disinfectant, causing bewilderment and becoming a laughing stock throughout the world. Briefings have undergone changes, and last week they were replaced by bravura events on the theme of economic revival.
Trump’s Sunday speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington entitled America Together: Getting Back to Work, which Fox News showed, was very revealing. There he was accompanied not by Burks with Fauchi, but by Vice President Mike Pence and Finance Minister Stephen Mnuchin.
The presenters began to ask questions to the president, who says coronavirus is no worse than regular flu, doubts the benefits of physical distance and believes that stopping the economy, which cost the country at least 30 million jobs, shows that the medicine is worse than the disease itself.
On Saturday, the Washington Post wrote that the White House conducted an internal analysis and urged Trump to step aside from the covid-19 crisis and take action to boost the economy. The same analysis said that in mid-April, mortality will peak, and then significantly decrease. The newspaper emphasized that Trump in his work and decisions “is guided mainly by the desire to be elected for a second term.”
However, the University of Washington’s Institute of Indicators and Health Assessment, whose model is preferred by the White House, on Monday changed its forecasts for coronavirus mortality, increasing it from 72,000 to 134,000 at the beginning of August. The institute substantiated its numbers by saying that states prematurely cancel social distance measures.
Critics say that Trump, apparently, is ready to give up on such losses, attributing them to collateral damage, and now hears more attention not to Burks and Fauci, but to the head of his campaign headquarters Brad Parscale.
Wilson, who wrote the book “Everything Trump Touches Dies Dies,” warns: “In the end, everything can end disgustingly. The second wave in the summer and the third wave in the fall. “The economic problems will be much more serious than if we had just taken our bitter medicine and remained in self-isolation until we went through the early stage of this crisis.”
There is no escape from the gloomy news, but the administration hopes that its economic signals will make it possible to somehow reprogram the situation.
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