Biden tells Trump to 'do your job' as coronavirus
fails to 'just disappear'
Democrat says virus has killed 25,000 Americans since
Amanda
Holpuch in New York
@holpuch
Tue 4 Aug
2020 14.43 BSTLast modified on Tue 4 Aug 2020 16.25 BST
The
Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden: ‘Mr President, step up and do your
job before even more American families feel the pain of losing a loved one.’
The
presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, told Donald Trump “to
step up and do your job” on Tuesday, highlighting that it had been a month
since Trump most recently predicted the coronavirus would “just disappear”.
“He was
wrong – and more than 25,000 Americans died due to the virus last month,” Biden
tweeted on Tuesday morning. “Mr President, step up and do your job before even
more American families feel the pain of losing a loved one.”
More than
4.7 million people in the US have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and at least
155,471 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. While the US is home
to 4% of the world’s population, the country accounts for more than a quarter
of global confirmed infections.
More than
30 million Americans are unemployed because of the business closures to stop
the spread of coronavirus. The White House and Congress are negotiating a new
economic relief package, but two key relief measures ended last week, leaving
millions of families with a sudden drop in income and fewer protections from
evictions.
Amid these
colliding crises, Trump on Monday floundered in an interview with the Axios
news site, where he repeatedly insisted the US was doing better than other
countries, brandishing several pieces of paper with charts to make his point.
Axios’s
national political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, then realized Trump was
talking about how many deaths the US has had in relation to identified cases.
Swan then explained the deaths as a proportion of the population was where the
US was doing badly in comparison with the rest of the world. Trump responded:
“You can’t do that.”
Covid-19
deaths rose for a fourth week in a row to more than 8,500 people in the
seven-day period that ended Sunday, according to a Reuters analysis.
A surge in
cases has been identified in midwestern states for the first time while fewer
cases and hospitalizations were recorded in some of the country’s most
populated states: Arizona, Florida, Texas and California.
California
has had more cases identified than anywhere in the country, but Governor Gavin
Newsom said on Monday the weekly average of cases was down 21% from the
previous week. He also cautioned it was too early to celebrate.
“This virus
is not going away,” Newsom said. “It’s not going to take Labor Day weekend off
or Halloween off or the holidays off. Until we have a vaccine, we are going to
be living with this virus.”
The
nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, on Monday praised the
state of Connecticut, which has one of the lowest infection rates in the
country, because of its slow, staggered reopening process. “You are in a
situation that you now, in many respects, have the upper hand, because you have
such a low rate that when you do get new cases, you have the capability of
containment as opposed to mitigation,” Fauci said.
New York,
which has also been slow to reopen compared with much of the rest of the
country, also had a case positivity rate lower than 1% this past weekend. But
the densely populated state and its neighbor New Jersey have seen an increase
in cases in recent days.
The
disparate situations across the country prompted teachers from dozens of school
districts, including Chicago, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, to lead protests from
their cars on Monday asking for instruction to be online in the fall.
Health
experts have warned the decision to return to in-person instruction must first
prioritize the safety of school staff and students. The Trump administration
has been aggressive in its push to force all the country’s schools to open for
instruction in the fall, however.
“OPEN THE
SCHOOLS!!!” Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning.
About 260
employees of a school district in Gwinnett county, Georgia, have either tested
positive for Covid-19 or are quarantining because of possible exposure after
returning to work last week to prepare for the start of the school year.
Hundreds of the school district’s teachers had asked to be able to work from
home for the fall. The school district said the cases were mostly from
community spread.
The United
Nations secretary general, António Guterres, on Tuesday said at least 40
million children were missing out on education and urged schools to reopen once
local transmission of coronavirus was under control.
Guterres
warned the world faced “a generational catastrophe that could waste untold
human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched
inequalities”.
Deaths in
the US have disproportionately affected black, Latino and Native communities,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The resulting
economic crisis has also affected women more than men, for the first time in
the history of a US economic crisis.
When
employment figures rebounded slightly in May, they did so for every population
except black women, one in six of whom were unemployed that month, according to
an analysis by the National Women’s Law Center.
To address
the financial crisis, the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and White House
chief of staff, Mark Meadows, are due to meet again with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck
Schumer, the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate respectively, on
Tuesday.
It is
unclear if the parties will be able to reach a deal before the Senate is
scheduled to take a month-long recess at the end of the week.
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