President Trump said Monday the U.S. will have a vaccine in “just a few short weeks,” while Democratic rival Joseph R. Biden vowed to protect Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top government scientist who has fallen out of favor at the White House, capping a campaign that began with barbs over trade, socialism and the “soul of the nation” before it — like everything else — got infected by the coronavirus.
Storming through four states, Mr. Trump said business restrictions in states such as North Carolina and Michigan are America’s biggest worry because his administration is on the cusp of approving shots that will immunize the nation.
“It will quickly eradicate the virus and wipe out the China plague once and for all,” he told supporters in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Mr. Biden, pointing to alarming COVID-19 trends, argued Mr. Trump has “given up” on the pandemic and is making matters worse by entertaining the idea of firing Dr. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“Last night, Trump said he was going to fire Dr. Fauci. Isn’t that wonderful?” Mr. Biden said in Ohio. “I got a better idea: Elect me and I’m going to hire Dr. Fauci and we’re going to fire Donald Trump.”
A year ago, voters thought they had an unobstructed view of the 2020 contest. The former vice president accused Mr. Trump of “shooting holes in the Constitution” with his soon-to-be-impeached-over Ukraine call while the White House rode an economic juggernaut.
Instead, the coronavirus has given a new meaning to “political science.” The overriding questions for voters on Tuesday are who wears a mask, where business shutdown orders remain in place, and whether children can go to school.
Mr. Biden has bet his cautious — some say timid — approach to the campaign trail will resonate with Americans whose lives likely will be upended well into 2021, while Mr. Trump tells Americans he’s gotten the nation through the pandemic and governors need to “open up.”
Polls suggest the economy is top-of-mind for many voters. Mr. Trump is highlighting last week’s report that said the gross domestic product rebounded at a record annualized rate of 33.1% in the third quarter as employers recovered from coronavirus lockdowns and a 31.4% second-quarter drop in the GDP.
Rising coronavirus numbers and hospitalizations are making Wall Street investors skittish, though the White House insists the economic snapback will not be fleeting. Still, the pandemic is weighing on Mr. Trump’s prospects as he barnstorms the country for a second term, with most Americans saying they disapprove of his response.
Efforts to control the pathogen have eliminated hugs and handshakes and forced grandparents to have playdates over Zoom. Beer-on-tap is a distant memory, and Americans requested mail-in ballots in record numbers to avoid crowds at the polls. Most shockingly, the virus has killed close to a quarter-million Americans, a world-leading and once-unfathomable amount.
The crisis forced Mr. Trump to campaign through nostalgia at times, evoking the record unemployment, tax and regulation cuts and his efforts to redraft trade deals before the “plague from China” hit. He says happy days will be here again soon.
“Normal life, that’s all we want,” he told Arizona supporters at a recent rally. “Next year will be the greatest year in the history of our country.”
On the trail, Mr. Trump highlighted his decision to restrict travel from China early, saying it saved countless lives, and efforts to build a surplus of ventilators in the face of doubters. He says big wins are on the horizon, including a vaccine, though he says the nation is “rounding the turn” regardless.
It’s a stark contrast to Mr. Biden, who is predicting a bleak winter. The trend line in the U.S. is worsening heading into the colder months, with the seven-day rolling average of daily cases reaching a record 80,000 and rural hospitals in parts of the Midwest and Rockies filling up with patients. Leaders in Chicago and parts of the Northeast are imposing new business restrictions.
Mr. Biden says the president is disregarding his basic responsibility to mitigate the virus through universal mask-wearing or a more deliberate testing strategy to break up chains of transmission.
“The first step to beating the virus is beating Donald Trump,” Mr. Biden told Ohioans in Cleveland.
The candidates are practicing what they preach about the pandemic, more or less. Mr. Biden’s team replaced large events with drive-in events, remarks in high-ceiling gymnasiums and outdoor soirees with circles drawn on the ground to maintain physical distancing.
“They can’t even fill up the circles,” Mr. Trump likes to tell his supporters, insisting that Mr. Biden is a lousy draw while MAGA-world will not let the virus interfere with their First Amendment right to political speech and raucous assemblies featuring “YMCA” and rotating chants of “Lock them up,” “We love you” and “Four more years.”
Mr. Trump said the virus is a worldwide problem and, while some nations have won plaudits for their nimble responses, flare-ups from Europe to Latin America underscore the pesky nature of the pathogen.
The U.S. has a case-fatality rate — the share of people who test positive and then die — of 2.5%, putting it in better stead than countries such as Mexico, Italy and the United Kingdom, and on par with France, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
However, the U.S. has done a poorer job of avoiding deaths as a share of the population, with nearly 71 people per 100,000 dying from the virus.
That’s far better than the 103-per-100,000 in Belgium or 77 in Spain and 76 in Brazil, yet worse than Italy (64) or France (55), and far worse than Germany (13) or South Korea (0.91), which have struggled with flare-ups but have been heralded as exemplars of smart testing.
Mr. Trump focuses on the case-fatality number during his rallies. He says the declining rate, which hit about 6% in the spring, is a testament to how much the U.S. has learned about the virus, from protecting the vulnerable to improving treatments.
“Through the profound resilience of the American people and the ingenuity and dedication of our frontline medical workers, clinicians, and scientists we now have more information on how to better treat patients and protect the most vulnerable through increased care, cutting-edge therapeutics, state-of-the-art testing, mitigation techniques to prevent community spread, and hospitals that can better prepare for and respond to health threats,” White House spokesman Michael Bars said.
The case-fatality rate is a slippery number, however. It can be driven down by a large denominator, when milder cases are detected and recorded — the same data-capture that Mr. Trump often complains about, saying those cases don’t mean much and are unflattering.
Widespread transmission inevitably means more funerals, as some share of the infected see bad outcomes. The U.S. accounts for 4.25% of the world’s population but nearly one-fifth of the world’s deaths, with more than 231,000.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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