COMMENT:
More than 100 days into the coronavirus pandemic, here's where things stand in the United States: 2.3 million people have been infected, and some 120,000 people — more than in any other country — have died. Early epicentres like New York and New Jersey appear to have gotten their outbreaks under control, but several new hot spots have emerged, including in Florida, Texas and Arizona, where daily case counts are higher than ever. Overall, the number of new cases a day is rising, and the rest of the world is taking note: The European Union is mulling travel restrictions that would prohibit Americans from entering any nation in the bloc because the United States has failed to contain the pandemic.
None of these developments have put an end to the denialism that has prevailed at the White House from the start. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal last week, Vice President Mike Pence argued that reports of a coming second wave of infections were exaggerated. That argument was seconded by Larry Kudlow, the administration's top economic adviser. Scientists do not agree: On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, told a House panel that the country has yet to clear the first wave of the pandemic and that a second wave of outbreaks is possible. "We're still in the middle of a serious outbreak," he said. "There is no doubt about that."
A few days after the publication of Pence's op-ed, President Donald Trump noted at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that the nation's case counts would not rise quite so egregiously if the US stopped testing so many people for the virus. "When you do testing to that extent, you're gonna find more people; you're gonna find more cases," he told the crowd. "So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.' " Administration officials later insisted that the president was joking about requesting a testing slowdown, but it's difficult to see the humour in that punchline: If the US reduces testing, case counts will decrease, but death counts will undoubtedly increase.