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      in US Politics

      Trump's Covid-19 response a 'life and death betrayal' of Americans, says Biden – video

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      Joe Biden took the offensive against Donald Trump during a campaign event in Warren, Michigan after CNN released audio of Trump telling the journalist Bob Woodward in February that he knew coronavirus was ‘deadly’ and airborne.
      Biden said the president had ‘failed to do his job on purpose’ as he knew the danger of Covid-19 but downplayed the severity of the virus for months
      Trump ‘wanted to play down’ Covid despite knowing deadliness, Bob Woodward book says – live

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      in Elections

      Crowds eschew masks at Trump rally as president mocks Biden over social distancing

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      A packed crowd of hundreds gathered in North Carolina for a Donald Trump campaign rally on Tuesday, with many people forgoing masks, in defiance of state guidelines capping gatherings at 50 people.Ahead of the president’s visit to Winston-Salem, the chair of the local county commission, a Republican, urged Trump to wear a face mask. The state has a mask requirement in place to slow the spread of coronavirus.“It’s been ordered by the governor,” said Dave Plyler, the Republican chairman of the Forsyth county board of commissioners, according to the Winston-Salem Journal. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in North Carolina, do as the governor says.”Trump “is a citizen of the United States, but he is also a guest in our county”, Plyler said. “Without a mask, he could get sick, and he could blame the governor.”However Trump did not wear a mask, and used the event to mock his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, for following social distancing guidelines. “You ever see the gyms with the circles?” he said, an apparent reference to a Biden event held in a school gymnasium with attendees observing social distancing guidelines.Nearly 178,000 people in North Carolina have tested positive Covid-19, with more than 1,000 cases reported on Tuesday – though the number of cases and deaths are slowly trending downward.Recent polls have found Trump locked in a close race with Biden in North Carolina. As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the president has often sought to focus on the economy and policing rather than the virus.While supporters waited for Trump to arrive, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door played over the loudspeakers, making for an inadvertently dark soundtrack.Deriding the mass demonstrations across the country against racism and policing, Trump told the jam-packed, cheering crowd: “We decided to call our rallies peaceful protests.”The president has previously used the phrase to describe gatherings of his supporters, saying that if protestors against police brutality are allowed to gather then his supporters should be able to as well.“Because they have rules in these Democrat-run states that if you campaign you cannot have more than five people,” the president said. “You can’t go to church, you can’t do anything outside. If you are willing to riot, running down the main street, if you want to riot and stand on top of each other’s face and do whatever the hell you want to do, you are allowed to do that because you are considered a peaceful protester.”His claims, however, are an exaggeration. In North Carolina, governed by Democrat Roy Cooper, gatherings are currently capped at 50, and masks are mandated. Going outside is allowed in North Carolina (as it is in all states), and churches are allowed to conduct services, though officials recommend that worshippers follow social distancing and wear masks.There have been more than 6.3 million cases of coronavirus in the US, with the country approaching 190,000 deaths. Trump’s rally comes as health experts warn the hunt for a vaccine has become increasingly politicized, with the Trump administration rushing to release one ahead of the November election.Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading White House infectious disease expert, who has been increasingly at odds with Trump, stressed on Tuesday that a coronavirus vaccine would be unlikely to be ready “by the end of the year”. Fauci contradicted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has signaled that health officials might expect a vaccine to be ready before the election.“It’s unlikely we’ll have a definitive answer” on whether a vaccine is safe and effective by the election, Fauci said at the Research! America 2020 National Health Research Forum. More

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      in US Politics

      As our former lives dissolve into uncertainty, facts are something solid to cling to | Lenore Taylor

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      I have always worked with facts. I have sifted them for relevance, assembled them to make sense of things, and used them to construct an argument or to disagree with another point of view. Facts are, for journalists, the essential ingredient, like flour for bakers or clay for sculptors. So I recall very clearly how disconcerted I felt when I first sensed they were turning to liquid and sliding through my hands.It was during Tony Abbott’s campaign against the Labor government’s carbon pricing scheme – the policy he dubbed a “great big tax on everything”. There were, for sure, some factual arguments that could have been deployed against that policy, or alternative ideas that could have been raised. The then opposition leader opted for neither of these methods. Instead, he travelled the country saying things that were patently nonsensical. But most news outlets reported them uncritically, and this firehose of nonsense proved impossible to mop up. More

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      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris says she wouldn't trust Trump on safety of Covid vaccine before election

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      Kamala Harris said that she would not trust Donald Trump’s word on the safety of any coronavirus vaccine approved for use in America before the November election.In an interview with CNN – excerpts of which were released on Saturday – the Democratic vice-presidential nominee warned of the potential for political interference by the US president over the approval of a coronavirus vaccine in order to boost his re-election chances.Asked if she would personally take any vaccine given the green light in the US before the November poll, Harris replied: “I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about. I will not take his word for it.”There have been widespread reports of pressure being put on administration health officials to accelerate the development and approval of a vaccine that could halt or blunt the impact of a pandemic that has cost more than 185,000 American lives and wreaked havoc on the economy not seen since the Great Depression.Harris said she expected that medical experts would not be allowed to make decisions on a vaccine without interference from above.“If past is prologue that they will not, they’ll be muzzled, they’ll be suppressed, they will be sidelined,” Harris told CNN. “Because he’s looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days and he’s grasping to get whatever he can to pretend he has been a leader on this issue when he is not.”Concerns over potential politicization of a Covid-19 treatment and vaccine began in the spring, when Trump touted anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as the cure for Covid-19 despite weak evidence that the drug was effective against the virus.The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal agency in charge of approving vaccines and treatments for public use, carried out an emergency use authorization (EUA) order to allow the use of the drug without the testing and trials that are usually accompanied with a drug rollout.The EUA for hydroxychloroquine was revoked in June, with the FDA saying the drug has not proven effective against Covid-19 and can have severe side effects.In late August, Trump announced another EUA for convalescent plasma, a type of blood therapy where blood plasma from a recovered Covid-19 patient who has developed antibodies is given to a patient trying to fight the illness.While one study conducted on the therapy suggested that the treatment could be helpful, public health experts, including Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said that there needs to be larger, randomized trials in order to ensure the efficacy of the treatment.Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked states to expedite approval for vaccine distribution sites by 1 November. Stephen Hahn, the head of the FDA, indicated that he would be willing to authorize a vaccine before phase three trials were complete – a controversial move that has been taken by China and Russia. Hahn insisted he would not expedite a vaccine to appease the president.Moncef Slaoui, the co-chief of the White House initiative to release a vaccine, said that it was possible but unlikely that a vaccine would be ready by 1 November. “There is a very, very low chance that the trials that are running as we speak could [be completed] by the end of October,” Slaoui told NPR.For weeks, Trump has been touting that a vaccine is right on America’s doorstep, an optimism that is not shared by public health experts. Trump told a cheering crowd at the Republican national convention last week that “we will have a safe and effective vaccine by the end of the year”.The Trump administration has dismissed accusations that its claims of confidence in a vaccine in the next few months are a way to boost Trump for election day on 3 November.“I think it’s very irresponsible how people are trying to politicize notions of delivering a vaccine to the American people,” Alex Azar, the health and human services department secretary, told CBS on Thursday.Trump himself has denied that any motivation to get a vaccine out around election day has anything to do with the election itself. “I’m optimistic that it will be around that date … It wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “I’m not doing it for the election. I want it fast because I want to save a lot of lives.” More