Updated: March 5, 2021
The United States has passed six million confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 183,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic 221 days ago, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In the past one week alone, more than 6000 Americans have died from COVID-19, even as President Donald Trump has continued to declare victory and patting himself on the back over his response to the pandemic.
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Health experts have warned that more Americans could die in the fall when coronavirus and common flu hit the country at the same time.
The United States has the worst death rate and highest number of infections in the world, the result of a bungled response by Donald Trump, who for months, described the virus as a hoax, undermined health experts, rejected wearing of masks, held big gatherings with no social distancing and no masks, like the one he held at the White House on Thursday.
Mr. Trump’s opponent in the November presidential election, Joe Biden, has taken a different approach. He’s wearing a mask, social distancing, recommending wearing of face masks to others, social distancing measures and listening to science.
Biden has also accused Trump of giving up on the U.S.’s efforts to control the disease’s spread, saying that the president “raised the white flag.”
“He has no idea what to do. It’s zero. It’s only one thing he has in mind – how does he win reelection? And it doesn’t matter how many people get COVID and or die from COVID because he fears that if the economy is strapped as badly as it is today that, in fact, he is going to be in trouble,” the former vice president told MSNBC.
Biden and Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris have both said they would listen to science if elected to defeat the greatest health crisis America has faced in more than 100 years.
In a recent Axios interview, President Trump claimed the virus was “under control as much as you can control it” in the U.S. “They are dying, that’s true. And you have – it is what it is,” Trump said earlier in August. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague.”
The World Health Organization said last week that during the 1918 flu pandemic, more people in the United States died during the second and the third wave.
Mr. Trump has failed to come to an agreement with Democrats over a new coronavirus relief bill that could prepare the country to get ready before fall as well as mitigate pains for the unemployed. The result may be catastrophic in just a few months.
Even if Mr. Trump loses in November as the polls suggest, Joe Biden would inherit a country deeply in crisis, with a health crisis still raging, an economy in great recession and high unemployment numbers.
Biden would need to move fast on those issues even as he deals with police reforms and a racial crisis in itself another pandemic that has lasted centuries.
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