Donald Trump is finding that his magical thinking does not work nearly as well when he is standing in front of a room fact-based reporters as it does in his campaign rallies. The more he puts himself in front of the television cameras, the less people tend to like him, new polls have indicated. Yet, he persists in spiraling his credibility down.
Tuesday, the president said that the nation would be doing five million coronavirus tests per day. These are the ones that indicate whether a person has the virus as compared to the ones that show antibodies. The latter indicate they had already recovered and might be less susceptible to a second round of the virus.
Assistant Secretary of Health Admiral Brett Giroir has headed up the federal testing effort. He indicated that his area has only conducted 5.7 million coronavirus tests in total, testing two percent of the country’s population. He hopes to take that number up to eight million by next month, The Time Magazine reported:
‘[T]here is absolutely no way on Earth, on this planet or any other planet, that we can do 20 million tests a day, or even five million tests a day.’
A Harvard study indicated that the nation had to be able to do a minimum of five million tests a day starting in the first part of June and 20 million by late July to recover the U.S. economy.
Giroir argued that was:
‘[A]n Ivory Tower, unreasonable benchmark,” that wasn’t needed, based upon current modeling projections, and that couldn’t be supported by current technology.’
Move five hours ahead. During a White House press briefing a journalist asked Trump whether the U.S. could make that goalpost. He answered:
‘We’ll increase it, and it’ll increase it by much more than that in the very near future…[we will] surpass 5 million tests per day. We’re going to be there very soon. If you look at the numbers, it could be that we’re getting very close.’
Then on Wednesday, the president claimed the country would produce five million CONVID-19 tests a day “very soon” and called the journalist’s question a “media trap,” according to Fox News:
‘Do I think we will [have 5 million tests per day]? I think we will but I never said it.’
The reporter asked again, and Trump went off before changing the subject:
‘I didn’t say it! I didn’t say it!’
Back on March 6, the president said:
‘Like a miracle, it will disappear…anybody that wants a test can get a test.’
Check out the president talking about testing below:
‘Watch: President Trump says U.S. will run 5 million daily coronavirus tests “very soon”
Watch: President Trump says U.S. will run 5 million daily coronavirus tests “very soon” https://t.co/PROHnvx5TW pic.twitter.com/XoCc0BjAcZ
— TIME (@TIME) April 29, 2020
Giroir said the government would “do testing in a smart way:”
‘If we do testing in a smart way, like all those who were symptomatic and contact-traced and you targeted asymptomatic screening, that’s really the way to go. It’s horribly inefficient to say that the government is going to buy all the supplies, recreate a distribution center, do 5,000 hospitals, maybe 10,000 laboratories in academic centers. What we really want to do is use the commercial supply chain.’
The admiral also claimed the federal government would be the “supplier of last resort:”
‘Like if you were relying on one swab type that’s only made in Italy, because that’s what the FDA does, it doesn’t matter what I do [in the U.S.] until you open the market and have different swab types.’
He added:
‘For swabs and tubes, it’s really the heaviest hand of the federal government. We buy it, we procure it, we know it’s there, we ship it. But over the course of the summer, by July, we think we’re going to move even the swabs and the tubes into a more directed traffic-controlled free market system, where we don’t buy it, but we assure the states can purchase what they need for every single line. Come this summer. We’ll be swimming in swabs.’
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
