White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday that the Trump administration is preparing for the possibility of the anticipated second wave of Covid-19 could hit the United States in the fall.
What We Know:
- Navarro’s comments come as Vice President Mike Pence, who’s leading the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, has downplayed the threat of a second wave that public health experts are warning about.
- “We are filling the stockpile in anticipation of a possible problem in the fall. We are doing everything we can beneath the surface, working as hard as we possibly can,” Navarro told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union”.
- In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, Pence blamed the media for inciting “panic” regarding a second wave of coronavirus. “In recent days, the media has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a ‘second wave’ of coronavirus infections. Such panic is overblown,” he wrote.
- Pence has followed President Donald Trump’s downplaying of the virus’ threat since the start of the outbreak. His administration struggled to get medical supplies to frontline workers and distribute testing kits. Many argue the first wave is yet to even finish.
- During a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, Trump said he told officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing because of the rising number of cases in America.
- Some states, like Florida, Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina, have seen an increase recently in positive coronavirus cases. The administration and state leaders say the rise in cases is due to more testing availability. Which is true in a sense, since epidemiologists argue case numbers should go down with greater testing, because it locates and neutralizes the spread of the virus.
In regards to the weekends most notable from Trump himself, Navarro also told Tapper on Sunday that the President’s remark was very “tongue in cheek” and a “light moment for him at a rally”. Tapper pushed back, saying, “I don’t know that it was tongue in cheek at all”, insinuating that Trump has been saying this for months.
