COVID-19 is still very much a problem for the United States, but there are signs that the White House is no longer prioritizing efforts to fight the virus. The Wall Street Journal writes that “More than a dozen U.S. states have seen confirmed cases increase in the past week at a pace faster than in the week prior, according to Johns Hopkins data.” But even with that news, CNN reports that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, said he hasn’t spoken to or met with President Donald Trump in two weeks.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, added that his contact with the President has become much less frequent.Their last interaction was May 18, when Trump invited Fauci to provide medical context during a teleconference with the nation’s governors. The Task Force last met on May 28 and last held a White House press briefing on May 22.
And just a few days after Joe Biden remarked that “Donald Trump still doesn’t have an effective national testing strategy,” NPR writes that the Trump administration’s testing czar, Adm. Brett Giroir, is leaving his position in mid-June, returning to his old post at the Department of Health and Human Services.
David Corn, the DC bureau chief of Mother Jones tweets that “Trump has given up. He has surrendered to the pandemic that is still killing Americans.”
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) told CNN’s Erin Burnett that Trump is trying divert attention away from the nation’s health crisis now saying, “He wants to change the subject from his failure over coronavirus, a miserable failure.”
Former Obama administration health care guru Andy Slavitt says “Declaring victory May 30 is no better than declaring the virus a hoax January 30 was.”
He went on to say:
It’s not time to take the summer off. Global pandemics don’t happen all the time and we are still in the middle of one. It’s hard to sustain patience through a long uncertain process. If we sleep through the events & the planning needed in June, we will pay the price.“
More than 105,000 people have now died in the U.S. as a result of coronavirus.