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With an inept president in charge, America’s devastating second wave was inevitable

It seems that even during a pandemic, the president’s interests must come first. But with more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases a day – predicted to rise to 100,000 cases a day – voters aren’t buying what he’s selling anymore. Holly Baxter reports

Sunday 05 July 2020 20:55 BST
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MAGA rallies aren’t drawing the crowds like they used to
MAGA rallies aren’t drawing the crowds like they used to

At a Senate hearing on 30 June, the infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci delivered a sober description of the current situation in the US. Coronavirus cases are going up, he said, and the situation is spiralling rapidly out of control. While other countries have managed to bring the pandemic under control, a culture of dismissing masks and lockdowns as assaults on people’s freedom has led to a dangerous reality. States like New York – once the epicentre of the virus, and subject to quarantining orders by other, less affected southern areas – are now in cautious recovery, but more isolated states – Florida and parts of the south-west, such as Arizona – are seeing disease rates skyrocket.

“How many lives might be lost when all this is over?” asked Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren via video-link. Fauci, sat in the Senate alongside a handful of DC colleagues, replied: “I can’t make an accurate prediction but it will be very disturbing, I guarantee you that. Because when you have an outbreak in one part of the country even when other parts of the country are doing well, they are vulnerable… We can’t just focus on the area that has the surge. That miputs the entire country at risk.”

That week, Fauci said, the US was reporting 40,000 new coronavirus cases per day. By next week, he warned, it would be unsurprising for that number to continue along the same trajectory to 100,000 per day. As Democratic Senator for Washington state Patty Murray put it, “126,000 lives lost was once considered on the high end of the spectrum [for the entire pandemic] — but the year is just half over.” So bad is the current situation in the south that New York has now banned almost half of the American population from entering the state without a 14-day quarantine, an unthinkable development just a few short weeks ago.

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