The Coronavirus

[Eric the Green]

(06-26-2020, 06:17 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN writes that Trump's post-Covid bubble is popping

The happy talk strategy is turning into a disaster.

(CNN)America's single worst day of new coronavirus cases obliterated President Donald Trump's fantasyland vision of a post-Covid America -- even as he sowed new diversions in an effort to hide the reality of his leadership void in a deepening national crisis.

More than 37,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The numbers superseded the previous darkest day of the pandemic, on April 24. The new data suggests that the sacrifices made by tens of millions of Americans who stayed at home, that cost many of them their jobs, might have been in vain. It also suggest that the aggressive state re-openings championed by Trump, who wants a quick economic reboot to boost his reelection hopes, exacerbated a situation that now seems close to tipping out of control across a swathe of southern states.

A total of 30 states are now reporting a rise in new daily cases of the novel coronavirus while others keep setting new records in each 24-hour period. And while the President lives in a bubble of his own obsessive political feuds and the embrace of conservative media that rarely dwells on the virus, the reality of a pandemic that may still be in its early (stages) is beginning to squeeze in on his world.

In a sign that the White House needs to get control of the worsening situation, Vice President Mike Pence will chair the first public briefing of the White House coronavirus task force on Friday in two months. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, told CNN's Jim Acosta on Friday that the task force is "seriously considering" pool testing for Covid-19 in an effort to better isolate hot spots.

But senior government public health officials have largely faded from the scene in recent weeks as Trump has tried to send a message that the US has "prevailed" over the virus and is reopening.

On Thursday alone, Texas -- the poster child for Trump's reopening strategy -- paused its transition to restoring normal life, alarmed by rising hospital admissions and a surge in new infections. Apple closed stores across Texas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina to protect customers and workers from virus spikes. Dozens of Secret Service agents are now self-isolating after several of their colleagues were found to have the virus after traveling to the President's rally in Oklahoma over the weekend. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/politics/...index.html

Multiple Trump campaign staffers have taken the same step, after eight of their co-workers tested positive in the latest sign that Trump's plans for a full resumption of campaign rallies are not only reckless but may prove logistically impossible.

Across the country, as California struggles through an awful time, Disneyland put back its plans to reopen, a symbolic illustration of the plight of an entire state -- and indeed a nation that has seen leisure and frivolity disappear amid the worst domestic crisis since the Second World War.

There are more signs that the rocket-like economic recovery that Trump has been projecting is not materializing either. Top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Thursday that unemployment could dip below 10% by the end of the year, meaning that it would be still at an elevated level when Trump faces reelection in November. And US retail giant Macy's announced it would cut around 3,900 jobs as part of a restructuring effort amid an economic crisis that Trump's early denial about the pandemic and mismanagement of it when it arrived in the US may have exacerbated.


Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 9:35 PM ET, Fri June 26, 2020