As Fauci becomes more vocal, Trump’s aides are moving to undermine him.
President Trump’s advisers anonymously weakened the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, over the weekend. providing details to various media outlets about statements he had made at the start of the outbreak that they said were inaccurate.
The move to treat Dr. Fauci as a warring political rival comes as he has become increasingly vocal in his concerns about the national surge in coronavirus cases. You have also noted your lack of access to Mr. Trump.
Attendees of Mr. Trump published in The Washington Post and other media a list of comments that Dr. Fauci made about the virus when it was in its early stages. He made several comments that White House aides had privately complained about for months.
An official told The Post that several other officials were concerned about how often Dr. Fauci had been wrong.
For example, White House officials pointed to a statement he made in an interview on February 29 that “right now, there is no need to change anything you are doing day by day.”
But they omitted a warning that Dr. Fauci issued right after.
“Right now the risk remains low, but this could change,” he said in the interview, conducted by NBC News. “When you start to see the community spread, this could change and force you to be much more vigilant about doing things that would protect you from the spread.”
Dr. Fauci works for the Trump administration, but the list of his statements was presented in the style of a campaign opposition research paper.
A survey conducted for The New York Times by Siena College last month showed that 67 percent of Americans trusted Dr. Fauci when it came to the virus; only 26 percent trusted the president.
In an interview with FiveThirtyEight.com last week, Dr. Fauci said that some states had the virus under control but that “as a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we are doing it.” Excellent. I mean, we just are not.
Last week, Trump told Fox News that Dr. Fauci had been wrong about many aspects of the pandemic. Dr. Fauci “is a good man, but he has made many mistakes,” said the president.
In Texas, county leaders called for orders to stay home to be returned in response to an increase in new cases of coronavirus there. Minnesota reached its highest daily totals since May. And with more than 15,000 new cases, Florida reported the highest total in a single day of any state since the start of the pandemic.
The outbreak of the United States, once centered on the densely populated centers of northeast New York and New Jersey, is now growing in 37 states, from worsening hot spots in the south and west to emerging ones in the midwest . Restrictions on business operations, mass gatherings, and wearing masks have become a topic of debate in an increasingly polarized election year.
In Miami-Dade County, Florida, six hospitals have reached capacity as virus cases increase. The increase in cases caused Mayor Carlos Giménez to revoke the reopening plans by imposing a curfew and closing restaurants to eat inside.
“We have definitely had a sharp increase in the number of people going to the hospital, the number of people in the ICU, and the number of people on respirators,” he said. “We still have capacity, but it causes me a lot of concern.”
In Houston, elected leaders hope a renewed stay-at-home order will curb the city’s outbreak, one of the worst in the country. “Not only do we need an order to stay home now, but we must keep it this time until the hospitalization curve goes down, not only does it flatten,” Lina Hidalgo, judge and executive director of Harris County for the most populous county in Texas he wrote on Twitter
In Atlanta, the mayor has said the city is preparing to return to a phase of staying mostly at home. But the Georgia governor’s office described that as “merely a guide.”
In the Midwest, cases have been trending upward in all states except Nebraska and South Dakota.
As Covid-19 infections in South Africa begin to increase, the country’s president announced the reinstatement of the ban on the sale and distribution of alcohol.
“As we move toward the peak of infections, it is vital that we do not burden our clinics and hospitals with alcohol-related injuries that could have been prevented,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a televised speech on Sunday.
South Africa has seen an increase in cases as the country enters its coldest month, with more than 264,000 known cases and nearly 4,000 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
“There is now clear evidence that the resumption of the sale of alcohol has resulted in considerable pressure on hospitals, including trauma and ICU units due to car accidents, violence and related trauma that are alcohol-induced,” he said. Ramaphosa.
The government is also reintroducing a night curfew.
In other developments around the world:
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Australian Citizens and residents returning from abroad to New South Wales, which includes the city of Sydney, will be charged for their mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine starting Saturday, the state prime minister said. Mandatory hotel quarantines at a similar cost are already in place in Queensland and the Northern Territory, and other parts of the country are likely to start charging travelers as well amid a new outbreak in Melbourne, the second-largest city in Australia. The border has been closed to non-residents since March.
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Xu Zhangrun, Professor of Law at Beijing Who criticized the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, was released on Sunday, a week after police took him away.
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In Hong Kong, a Health Department spokeswoman said the latest outbreak in China was worse than a peak in March due to a growing number of cases with unknown origins and groups related to housing estates, senior homes and restaurants. Hong Kong recorded 38 new infections and 20 preliminary positive cases on Sunday. Authorities on Monday canceled the city’s annual book fair, which is scheduled for Wednesday and generally draws large crowds.
The United States can proceed with an execution despite the pandemic, a court ruled.
The execution of a man convicted of the murder of a family may take place on Monday, a federal court ruled on Sunday, despite the victims’ relatives protesting that the pandemic would prevent them from attending.
A federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that the Justice Department can go ahead with the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, who was sentenced to death decades ago for his role in the murder of a family of three in 1996.
A federal judge suspended the execution on Friday night, but Sunday’s decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit resumed it.
Several relatives of Mr. Lee’s victims have asked the Justice Department to commute his sentence to life in prison. But in a lawsuit filed last week, they argued that their pre-existing conditions, including congestive heart failure and asthma, made traveling hundreds of miles from their homes to the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, especially risky.
Diane S. Sykes, chief judge of the appeals court, wrote in a ruling for the appeals panel that the family did not have the protected right to witness Mr. Lee’s execution, but were only allowed to attend.
Mr. Lee will become the first federal prisoner in 17 years to be executed, after the Trump administration announced a campaign last year to recover the federal death penalty from what had been a de facto moratorium.
When the coronavirus hit New York City, many New Yorkers who had the means to leave the city did so. The small neighborhoods stopped producing so much garbage. Mail forwarding requests skyrocketed.
That exodus occurred just as the census began once a decade. Now, census officials say Manhattan’s wealthiest neighborhoods are unexpectedly showing some of the hardest to reach.
Some of these census tracts include the city’s most exclusive real estate stretches, such as the Fifth Avenue corridor between 70th and 35th streets, which the planning department said was “home to some of the lowest levels of self-response. in the city”.
Only 46 percent of Upper East Side households have completed their census forms, according to a June 25 report distributed by chief demographer of the City Planning Department, Joseph J. Salvo, well below the rate. The neighborhood’s final response rate in 2010, and below the city’s current rate of nearly 53 percent.
Only about 38 percent of households in Midtown Manhattan have completed their census forms, the second worst response rate in all of New York City, after North Corona, Queens, which is around 37 percent.
The rate is only slightly better in the area encompassing SoHo, Tribeca, and Little Italy, which is home to wealthy residents and many college students; Those treaties have response rates of around 46 percent.
The low count could have a dramatic effect, according to the department report. “The lack of a single person in the city could cut education funding by $ 2,295 and job training by $ 281,” he said.
Authorities expect many of the coronavirus evacuees to return in late October, the new extended deadline for final responses to the census.
After closing in March due to the pandemic, two of Walt Disney World’s main parks, the Magic Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom, welcomed a limited number of temperature-controlled visitors over the weekend, with some attractions and Character interactions not available as security precautions.
Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios were due to reopen on Wednesday.
“I am so overwhelmed with emotion,” said a tearful Sonya Little, who flew to Orlando, Florida, from Birmingham, Alabama, with two friends. “The past few months have been very difficult. We have felt so defeated. Being here gives me the strength to continue. “
The reopening comes as the coronavirus continued to rage in Florida, with officials reporting more than 15,000 new infections on Sunday, a daily record for any state.
To avoid germs, Disney now leaves rows of empty seats on the rides, which employees constantly disinfect. Face masks are a must and, for some visitors, the linings quickly got wet with sweat.
“It would be so much more fun without having to wear one,” said Ivan Chanchavac, 14, as he jumped off the Jungle Cruise.
The reports were contributed by Brooks Barnes, Chris Buckley, Sheri Fink, Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, Hailey Fuchs, Maggie Haberman, Rick Rojas, Dana Rubinstein and Mitch Smith.
