Background Briefing: May 7, 2020
Trump Rejects CDC Guidelines to Open Up the Country
We begin with a White House military aide who was President Trump’s valet testing positive for Covid -19 much to Trump’s annoyance, but although the president is a germaphobe who gets furious when anyone in the White House coughs or sneezes, he won’t let the staff wear face masks or practice social distancing. Andrew Noymer, Professor of Population Health and Disease Prevention at the University of California, Irvine whose research interests include mathematical models for disease transmission, health and mortality, joins us to discuss the growing numbers of infections and the rejection by the White House of the CDC’s guidelines for opening up the country. And as Trump opens up the country exposing millions more to the virus, we examine the shocking statistics emerging at the moment with 25,000 new cases per day and 9/11 death counts expected in June of over 3,000 deaths per day. Furthermore the official death counts we get every day are likely to be undercounted by 25% or more as many die at home from Covid-19 in what is listed as pneumonia or other causes.