President Trump’s preposterous weekend claim that 99% of Covid-19 coronavirus cases are “totally harmless” shocked local officials from coast to coast — and stirred protests from health experts.
But the administration isn’t backing down.
Asked about Trump’s assertion, the new White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told Fox News that older people and those with what are called “co-morbidities,” like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart issues are most at risk of dying from the virus.
If you leave such people out of the equation, Meadows said, “the president’s right … and the facts and statistics back us up there.” But if there really are such facts and statistics, he didn’t cite them.
But wait a minute. How can leave such people out when assessing whether the virus is “harmless” or not?
According to Dr. Craig Spencer, a New York City ER doctor, such co-morbidities are very common across the U.S. — in fact, he writes, a majority of American adults have them:
Outside the White House Monday morning, Meadows said that “when you look at the facts, when you look at, really, what we’re dealing with, a lot of these cases are asymptomatic.”
Tell that to the families of the nearly 130,000 Americans who have died from Covid-19.
According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker, 2,888,915 people in the U.S. have contracted the virus; 129,948 have died. That yields a death rate of about 4.6%.
In addition, notes the New York Times, those numbers leave out“a multitude of thousands who have spent weeks in the hospital or weeks at home with mild to moderate symptoms that still caused debilitating health problems.”
Furthermore, the Times says, “many who have recovered are still struggling to regain their pre-disease lives, and may face long-term health issues.”
A total of 32 states are reporting a rising number of coronavirus cases, Johns Hopkins says — particularly Texas, Arizona and Florida.
And in yet another worrisome trend, the recent surge of cases has included a growing number of younger patients — and a rapidly shrinking number of available intensive-care hospital beds.
Sunday, on CBS, Martha Brennan asked Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner if he believes Trump’s “99% harmless” claim.
“No, that’s not the case,” Turner said. “I will tell you, a month ago, 1 in 10 people were testing positive. Today, it’s 1 in 4. The number of people who are getting sick and going to the hospitals has exponentially increased. The number of people in our ICU beds has exponentially increased.”
Similarly, reports Politico, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez, a Republican, insisted that the coronavirus “is not harmless. No, absolutely not.” If it were, he added, “I wouldn’t be taking the steps that we’re taking here in Miami-Dade.”
Also on Sunday, FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn sidestepped questions about Trump’s claim.
Asked by ABC’s Martha Raddatz to estimate the number of “harmless” cases, Hahn simply said: “This is a very rapidly moving epidemic, rapidly moving pandemic. And any death, any case is tragic. And we want to do everything we can to prevent that.”
On CNN, host Dana Bash asked if Hahn thinks Trump is right.
“I’m not going to get into who is right and who is wrong,” he said, adding: “We have seen the surge in cases. We must do something to stem the tide.”
No argument there: we must do something. But what?
