An ember is defined as a small piece of burning or glowing coal or wood in a dying fire. Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, echoed her boss’s insistence on Wednesday that America is seeing mere embers of the coronavirus pandemic, even as daily cases rocket to a record 48,000.
At the press briefing, I asked through my face mask why she keeps referring to cases as embers when the latest surge more closely resembles a wildfire. McEnany replied: “I use the word ‘embers’ because that is what the president acknowledged that would happen around the country. You would see spikes across the country.
“He said at times you would see a fire across the country. Embers, fires, but at the same time, I would note the sixfold increase in testing, you identify more cases. I would also note that Secretary Azar said that we’ve seen nationwide fatalities at a two month low.”
She added: “So this is a different situation... We believe we’re equipped to handle what we see on the horizon.”
McEnany was also reminded that Trump recently repeated his infamous claim that the virus will just disappear. She insisted: “The president’s confident that it will disappear. He’s confident that he’s put together a revolutionary, first class team that is going to break through bureaucracy and get us a vaccine.”
The White House has been much criticised for trying to wish the pandemic away. McEnany began Wednesday’s briefing with an attention deflecting claim that Seattle had been “liberated from anarchists” – a reference to police clearing protesters away from the city’s autonomous zone.
Past press secretaries became accustomed to defending Trump’s social media posts with the phrase “the tweet speaks for itself”. Questioned about the president’s deleted retweet of a video in which a man shouted “white power!”, McEnany said without irony: “The deletion speaks for itself.”
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Trump still thinks coronavirus is just going to go away somehow, hopefully
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The president told Fox Business just now that “I think we’re gonna be very good with the coronavirus. I think that at some point that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.”
Aaron Rupar (@atrupar)Trump ludicrously claimed to Fox Business just now that "I think we're gonna be very good with the coronavirus. I think that at some point that's going to sort of just disappear, I hope." (The virus will not disappear on its own.) pic.twitter.com/ZkLtjKUEDu
July 1, 2020
New infections are at record levels in the US, an all-time high, as everyone has been reporting for days and public health experts have been warning for weeks.
And, again, this:
Trump does an about-face on masks - sort of - as Republicans shift
Donald Trump, who has avoided being seen in public wearing a face covering, said today that he would wear a mask - if he were in close quarters with other people, in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“I’m all for masks,” Trump told Fox Business Network, Reuters reported. “If I were in a tight situation with people I would absolutely” wear a mask, he added.
But he doesn’t believe in mandating the wearing of masks nationwide, “because you have many places in the country where people stay very long distance.”
Trump has only been photographed wearing a mask around others once, behind the scenes on a factory tour in May.
NBC News (@NBCNews)President Trump wears a mask during his tour of the Ford Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where ventilators, masks and other medical supplies are being manufactured. https://t.co/UCqBVUEuBZ
May 22, 2020
📷 Anonymous pic.twitter.com/eiIFVNPVIh
Since the new surges of new coronavirus cases across southern and western states, after hasty reopening, that has brought the US to a new all-time high of daily infections, a change of outlook is slowly happening in GOP circles.
Top congressional Republicans hauling themselves belatedly onto the mask wagon this week include Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy. And Mike Pence, who has been wearing a mask more of late, but has been wishy-washy on the topic of mandating, saying it’s up to local authorities.
Vice President Mike Pence, right, is greeted with an elbow bump by Arizona governor Doug Ducey, left, as he arrives today in Phoenix to discuss the record surge in coronavirus cases. Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP
And senior Republican senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee joined a plea to Trump to wear a mask, as he chaired a hearing in Congress yesterday where public health expert Anthony Fauci gave dire warning about the virus being out of control.
Alexander pleaded with Americans to take politics out of it and stop associating be For Trump with not wearing a mask and being Against Trump with wearing one.
And McConnell said yesterday “we must have no stigma” about wearing masks.
Here are some things the president has previously said about face masks, having early on dismissed any idea that he would or should wear one.
7 May: Trump tells aides that wearing one would “send the wrong message”.
21 May: Says he wouldn’t wear a mask in public because he “didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it”.
26 May: “Oh, OK, you want to be politically correct,” to reporter who declines to remove mask during White House press conference.
20 June: “There was a time when people thought it was worse wearing a mask. I let people make their own decision … if people want to wear masks I think that’s great. I won’t be. Not as a protest but I don’t feel that I’m in danger.”
Fauci has urged mask-wearing repeatedly. In late May he said: “I want to protect myself and protect others, and also because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that’s the kind of thing you should be doing.”
Read more here about how Trump and his public health experts diverge on science and health re Covid:
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Coronavirus continues to scorch Sunbelt
Arizona recorded more coronavirus deaths, infections, hospitalizations and emergency-room visits in a single day than ever before in a crisis, in a day across the Sunbelt that sent a shudder through other parts of the country and led distant states to put their own reopening plans on hold.
Vice President Mike Pence waves as he arrives to meet with Arizona governor Doug Ducey to discuss the surge in coronavirus cases. Photograph: Ross D Franklin/AP
In Florida, hospitals braced for an influx of patients, with the biggest medical center in Florida’s hardest-hit county, Miami’s Jackson Health System, scaling back elective surgeries and other procedures to make room for victims of the resurgence underway across the South and West, The Associated Press reports.
Vice President Mike Pence, head of the White House coronavirus task force, planned to visit Arizona today, where cases have spiked since stay-at-home orders expired in mid-May.
Arizona reported record single-day highs of almost 4,900 new Covid-19 cases, 88 new deaths, close to 1,300 ER visits and a running total of nearly 2,900 people in the hospital.
Florida recorded more than 6,500 new cases down from around 9,000 on some days last week, but still alarming and a running total of over 3,500 deaths.
Ahead of the Fourth of July, counties in South Florida are closing beaches to fend off large crowds that could spread the virus.
The run-up in cases has been blamed in part on what New Jersey’s governor called “knucklehead behavior” by Americans not wearing masks or obeying other social-distancing rules.
“Too many people were crowding into restaurants late at night, turning these establishments into breeding grounds for this deadly virus,” Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said in forbidding restaurants with seating for more than eight people from serving customers inside from midnight to 6am.
Health experts say the virus in Florida and other Southern states risks becoming uncontrollable, with case numbers too large to trace.
Marilyn Rauth, a senior citizen in Punta Gorda, said Florida’s reopening was “too much too soon.”
“The sad thing is the Covid-19 spread will probably go on for some time though we could have flattened the curve with responsible leadership,” she said.
“Experience now has shown most people won’t social distance at beaches, bars, etc. The governor evidently has no concern for the health of the state’s citizens.”
Some distant states and cities that seemed to have tamed their outbreaks, including Colorado, Virginia, Delaware and New Jersey, hit pause or backtracked on some of their reopening plans for bars and restaurants.
And New York and New Jersey are asking visitors from 16 states from the Carolinas to California to quarantine themselves for two weeks.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is delaying its resumption of indoor dining at restaurants, and not because of any rise in cases there.
The number of confirmed cases in the US per day has roughly doubled over the past month, hitting 44,800 on Tuesday, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
That is higher even than what the nation witnessed during the deadliest stretch of the crisis in mid-April through early May.
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