The New York Times
Contrary to President Trump’s recent comments, specialists say, recent increases are real, and the virus is like a “forest fire” that will burn as long as there is fuel. Public health experts warned on Sunday that the coronavirus pandemic is not going away anytime soon. They directly contradicted President Trump’s promise that the disease that has infected more than two million Americans would “fade away” and his remarks that disparaged the value of evidence from coronavirus tests. A day after Mr. Trump told a largely maskless audience at an indoor rally in Tulsa, Okla., that he had asked to “slow down the testing” because it inevitably increased the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, infectious disease experts countered that the latest rise of infections in the United States is real, the country’s response to the pandemic is not working and rallies like the president’s risk becoming major spreading events. Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the spikes in confirmed cases in many states in the South and West are not simply a result of increased testing. Data show that the percentage of tests that are positive is increasing, he said, and in some states is accompanied by increased hospitalizations. In states like Arizona, Texas, North and South Carolina and Florida, he said, “That’s a real rise.”