President Donald Trump says that the US is “in the process of developing a strategy” for managing the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump noted that the plan of action has “developed as we go along.”
Trump’s statements came more than six months after the coronavirus hit the US. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the coronavirus pandemic has killed 141,000 people in the US and infected more than 3.8 million people.
“We’ve learned so much about this disease and we know who the vulnerable are, and we are going to indeed shield them,” Trump said during the White House briefing.
The virus “is a vicious and dangerous illness, but we’ve learned a great deal about it and who it targets,” he stressed.
“We are in the process of developing a strategy that’s going to be very, very powerful. We’ve developed as we go along,” he noted. “Some areas of our country are doing very well, others are doing less well.”
Trump presented a list of programs his administration has implemented, such as expanding the accessibility of tests for the virus and deploying National Guard members to states hit by the most severe outbreaks.
“Ultimately our goal is not merely to manage the pandemic but to end it,” Trump said. He mentioned that a “top priority” of his administration is coming up with an effective Covid-19 vaccine.
However, Trump admitted that the coronavirus pandemic will probably “get worse before it gets better.”
“That’s something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is, it’s what we have,” said Trump. “You look over the world, it’s all over the world.”
Moreover, Trump reiterated that “the virus will disappear. It will disappear.”
Denial of science
Former Secretary of State John Kerry said early in June that Trump’s coronavirus response shows “denial” of science.
The former government official said the country has “reneged on its role as leader of the free world” under Trump. Kerry also said it failed in its response to the coronavirus crisis.
Kerry criticized Trump’s “reckless” coronavirus response during the CogX conference in London on Monday. He added that the president failed to demonstrate international leadership through the outbreak.
“The odds were against us in the beginning because you had China, which is always somewhat secretive and which clearly began to manage the news in the beginning, and you had the United States with a leader who has no ability to tell the truth, or face it, or to lead,” he said.
Like Kerry, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized the administration of President Donald Trump on its coronavirus pandemic response, saying he is disappointed with the president.
“At this point, it is clear that the trajectory in the U.S. is significantly worse than many other countries and that our government and this administration have been considerably less effective in handling this,” Zuckerberg said during a live-streamed chat with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert.
Zuckerberg said the new surges of coronavirus cases in July could have been avoided.
“It’s really disappointing that we still don’t have adequate testing, that the credibility of our top scientists like yourself and the CDC are being undermined and until recently parts of the administration were calling into question whether people should even follow basic best practices like wearing a mask,” he said.
