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After weeks of refusing to cover his face in public, Donald Trump has posted on Twitter a black-and-white photo of himself wearing a mask and encouraged Americans to do the same as the nation’s death toll from coronavirus exceeds the 140,000.
The president, calling Covid-19 “China’s Invisible Virus,” said that “many people say it is patriotic to wear a face mask when you cannot socially distance yourself.”
“There is no one more patriotic than me, your favorite president!” added.
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Her message appeared hours after US Surgeon General Jerome Adams appeared on Fox News, pleading with Americans to wear masks in public as infections in the US increased, outpacing 3.7 million, with 1 million new cases in the last month alone.
The president has resisted calls from health officials and medical experts urging Americans to wear face masks in public when they cannot physically keep their distance from others.
On April 3, following new guidance from federal health officials, the president, without warning, said, “I don’t think he will.”
He said, “It is just a recommendation … I am choosing not to.”
In May, the president refused to wear a mask inside a Honeywell facility that made masks despite warnings posted on the site telling workers and visitors to do so.
Vice President Mike Pence has also been criticized for not wearing a mask inside the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
The president was photographed wearing a mask for the first time during a visit with administration staff to Walter Reed Hospital on July 11.
He wore a mask during a visit to a Ford factory in May, although he told reporters that “he did not want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.”
“Cloth face covers are recommended as a simple barrier to help prevent respiratory droplets from traveling in the air and on other people when the person wearing the cloth covering face coughs, sneezes, speaks, or raises his voice.” according to the recommendations of the Centers. for Disease Control and Prevention. “This is called source control. This recommendation is based on what we know about the role respiratory droplets play in the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19, along with emerging evidence from clinical and laboratory studies showing that Cloth covers reduce spray mist when used over the nose and mouth. “
CDC Director Robert Redfield also suggested that the virus could be adequately controlled within “four to eight weeks” if everyone in the United States wore masks.
As infections began to spread in recent weeks, state officials, once reluctant to impose strict quarantine efforts or mask mandates, began to order residents to use them in public, signaling their ability to minimize risk. of transmission.
But the president has been reluctant to follow the same steps or send a message to Americans to follow CDC guidelines, suggesting instead that wearing masks is a politically correct gesture.
The issue has become political, seen by many of the president’s supporters as a crackdown on civil liberties.
In May, the president teased his Democratic rival Joe Biden for wearing a mask by retweeting a post by Fox News political analyst Brit Hume sharing a photo of the former vice president wearing sunglasses and a black mask on Memorial Day.
“This could help explain why Trump does not like to wear a mask in public,” wrote Hume.
Biden wore the mask during a visit to the Delaware Memorial Bridge in Wilmington.
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