WASHINGTON – After several months of mixed messages about the coronavirus pandemic, the White House is deciding on a new one: learning to live with it.
Administration officials plan to step up what they hope is a sharper, less conflicting message from the pandemic next week, according to senior administration officials, after struggling to offer clear directions amid a devastating surge in cases across the country. the country. On Thursday, the United States reported that more than 55,000 new coronavirus cases and infection rates were reaching new records in multiple states.
At the heart of the message, authorities said, there is an acknowledgment by the White House that the virus will not disappear any time soon, and that it will be present until the November elections.
As a result, President Donald Trump’s top advisers plan to argue, the country must figure out how to move forward despite it. Therapeutic drugs will show up as a key component in doing that, and the White House will increasingly emphasize the relatively low risk that most Americans have of dying from the virus, authorities said.
For nearly six months, the administration offered a series of predictions and pronouncements that were never fulfilled. From Trump promising that “the problem will go away in April” and predicting “crowded churches across our country” on Easter Sunday to Vice President Mike Pence’s claim that “by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind we “until Jared Kushner’s pronouncement the country would be” really rocking again “in July because the Americans were” on the other side of the medical side of this. “
All of this followed the initial message from the White House in January that the virus was not a threat at all. When asked if he was concerned about a pandemic, Trump said at the time: “He is a person who comes from China and we have him under control. He will be fine.”
The message was later transformed into the idea that the virus would be quickly crushed by a robust federal response. “WE WILL WIN THIS WAR,” Trump tweeted in March.
Soon after, the president demanded that governors open their states and said he had the authority to compel them to do so. “FREE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” he wrote on Twitter in April. Within days, he decided to shift responsibility for the pandemic to governors, saying: “The federal government will closely monitor them and be there to help in many different ways.”
In recent weeks, the message has been that the country has returned, that facial coatings and social distancing are optional, even as the number of coronavirus cases increases across the country.
“We have to get back to business. We have to live our lives again. I can’t keep doing this,” Trump said in an interview with Axios last month before his campaign in Tulsa, where almost no one distanced himself socially. and few wore masks. “And I think it is safe. I think it is very safe.” Several Trump campaign employees and Secret Service agents hired COVID-19 in Tulsa.
Eager to move the economy forward and reopen amid a recession and impending presidential election, the White House is now pushing for it to be accepted.
“The virus is with us, but we have to live with it,” is how one official said the administration plans to send a message about the pandemic.
As is often the case with plans devised for Trump by his aides, the question being asked about this effort is whether he will stick to the script. Trump said this week that he is “all for the masks,” after months of resisting pressure to hug the covers of his face. However, in that same interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, the president said the virus “will just go away, I hope.”
That’s not the message that senior administration officials said they were preparing, and some of the president’s allies cringed when he spoke in the past about the disappearance of the virus, only to later see how it spreads further.
Next week, administration officials plan to promote a new study they say shows promising results in therapeutics, officials said. They did not describe the study in more detail because, they said, its disclosure would be “poignant on the market.”
Authorities also plan to emphasize high survival rates, particularly for Americans who are within certain age groups and who do not have underlying conditions. The overall death rate for COVID-19 in the US has been declining. More than 130,000 Americans have died from the virus.
Trump is expected to be briefed by Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the most visible members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, before Monday about her assessment of the new hotspots she visited this week, including the what governors have said they need and how The new increase is affecting minority communities, authorities said. Birx was in Florida, Texas and Arizona this week.
One of the officials said that the coronavirus working group meetings and public briefings will be more frequent, a change that is already underway this week. Those meetings and briefings were daily for much of March and April, but declined when Trump turned to focus on the need to reopen the economy. Nearly 20 million Americans are now unemployed, and the unemployment rate remains double-digit, despite a record drop in the past month.
The recent public working group sessions, so far, have taken place outside the White House complex. Members of the coronavirus task force, led by Pence, have answered reporters’ questions five times in five different locations, from the Department of Health and Human Services to various Solar Belt coronavirus hot spots.
An official said moving the information sites is an attempt to minimize questions from the White House press corps. Another said it was also designed to prevent Trump from being tempted to take over the briefings.
Some of Trump’s allies regretted that he was hurting himself politically by sometimes spending two hours on the podium battling reporters and often straying from the topic, rather than conveying a specific message about the pandemic.
However, in recent days, Trump personally requested the task force to resume briefings, but decided not to participate in them, according to three White House officials.
The change comes as several recent national polls show Trump follows presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
On Thursday, the president claimed that when Pence made a recent call with the governors and asked state executives what they might need, none of them requested federal assistance.
“No governor needed anything. They don’t need anything. They have all the medical equipment they can have. Thank you, United States government,” Trump said.
But as Pence toured the country this week, visiting places with virus outbreaks like Dallas, Phoenix, and Tampa, he was quick to take note of several requests from the governors of those states in real time. For example, Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Sunday expressed his desire to continue federal funding for test sites in his state that was established in late June.
Pence agreed and promised to extend “everything Texas wants,” noting that “this is all practical” during a press conference with other members of the coronavirus task force.
In Arizona on Wednesday, Pence noted that Governor Doug Ducey requested additional medical personnel during his meeting and the vice president subsequently “instructed the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security to withdraw immediately by providing the additional doctors, nurses, and technical personnel.”
Throughout his travels, Pence has been accompanied by Birx, a trend that is expected to continue in the coming weeks, according to a person close to the task force.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, meanwhile, has issued dire warnings about the future of the pandemic from other hangers. He testified on Capitol Hill this week that if current trends continue, Americans could see up to 100,000 new cases daily.
In an interview with BBC Radio on Thursday, Fauci said: “What we have seen in recent days is an increase in cases that go far beyond the worst peaks we have seen. That is not good news, we have to control it or we risk an even bigger outbreak in the United States. “
