Global case tally above 34 million — with U.S. accounting for a fifth — as Dr. Fauci hits back at Trump’s mask claim
The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 worldwide rose above 34 million on Thursday, with the U.S. accounting for about a fifth of that total, as Dr. Anthony Fauci hit back at claims made by President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s presidential debate on face masks.
Trump said Fauci, who is head of the Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said “masks are not good — and then changed his mind.”
In a podcast recorded for ABC News, Fauci rebutted that claim.
“Anybody who has been listening to me over the last several months knows that a conversation does not go by where I do not strongly recommend that people wear masks,” he said. The podcast will be available in full later Thursday, according to ABC.
Fauci reminded listeners that early on in the pandemic, he and other health experts recommended against face coverings out of concern there would be a shortage of medical-grade masks for frontline workers, but later changed that view once it was clear the virus was transmissible by asymptomatic patients.
“I have been on the airways, on the radio, on TV, begging people to wear masks,” said Fauci. “And I keep talking in the context of: Wear a mask, keep physical distance, avoid crowds, wash your hands, and do things more outdoors versus indoors.”
Experts are dismayed at how face masks have become politicized during the crisis, with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence frequently appearing in public without one, and holding political rallies where few in attendance wear them, either. Trump has taunted reporters and election rival Joe Biden for wearing them.
Yet at the same time the White House is quietly encouraging state governors to implement mask mandates and even to impose fines on those who refuse to wear them,
according to a report in Kaiser Health News.
On Sept. 20, the task force recommended statewide mask mandates for Iowa, Missouri and Oklahoma, according to the report, which links to weekly memos made public by the
Center for Public Integrity. The task force recommended fines in Alaska, Idaho and Montana.
“At some point, we have to turn the corner on this ridiculous separation of what we’re being told is best practice and being guided by science and data, and what the actual practices are by the people who issue them,” Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told Kaiser Health News.
Trump is planning to hold rallies in Wisconsin this weekend, even as the task force has called for increasing social distancing “to the maximal degree possible,” as new cases rise,
the Washington Post reported. Two cities where the rallies are expected to take place, La Crosse and Green Bay, have been designated COVID-19 “red zones,” the paper said.
Meanwhile, House Democrats are making another push to provide a fresh round of federally funded unemployment benefits to replace the $600-a-week federal benefit that expired in July. On Monday, Democrats unveiled a scaled-down version of the HEROES Act, their proposed relief and stimulus package that passed in the House in May and was never acknowledged by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate. Originally the package had a $3 trillion price tag. The revised version would cost $2.2 trillion.
A vote scheduled for late Wednesday was postponed until Thursday to leave time for last-ditch talks with the Trump administration. The vote comes as the Labor Department revealed that
837,000 Americans applied for jobless benefits in the latest week, in a release that did not include California, where the state has stopped accepting new claims as it investigates potential fraud.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/c...ci-hits-back-at-trumps-mask-claims-2020-10-01
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