by Alexandra Jaffe and Will Weissert
WILMINGTON, Delaware (AP) — Joe Biden is calling for a nationwide protective mask mandate, citing health experts’ predictions that it could save 40,000 lives from coronavirus over the next three months.
“Wearing the mask is less about you contracting the virus,” Biden said. “It’s about preventing other people from getting sick.”
The Democratic presidential candidate also responded to those who push back against such mandates.
“This is America. Be a patriot. Protect your fellow citizens. Step up, do the right thing.”
“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months at a minimum — every governor should mandate mandatory mask wearing,” Biden declared.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said at a press briefing that his administration was sending 125 million reusable masks to school districts across the nation. He urges Americans to wear masks but has opposed the idea of a national requirement and declined to wear one for months. He has worn one on occasion more recently.
On Thursday he again dismissed critics who say he was too slow to react to the pandemic in the U.S., saying on Fox Business Network that “nobody blames me.”
“Look, we got hit by the China plague and we’re not going to forget it. We got hit by the China plague,” he said.
On Wednesday, when the U.S. reported 1,499 new coronavirus deaths, the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in a single day since May, Trump pushed for schools and businesses to continue opening, and called for college football to go on despite several leading leagues’ leaders deciding to cancel this year’s season.
Biden and running mate California Sen. Kamala Harris spoke briefly Thursday in the same Wilmington hotel ballroom where they held a virtual fundraiser after appearing together as running mates for the first time Wednesday. They were briefed by public health and economic experts on the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused the deaths of more than 166,000 Americans and plunged the global economy into the worst economic recession since World War II.
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Alexandra Jaffe and Will Weissert are reporters for The Associated Press.
About the Headline Photo: Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden joined by his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., replaces his face mask after speaking at the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Del., Thursday, Aug. 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Such a revealing photo, too, a perfect illustration of the confused state of mind that this poor man is now living with.
Please, let’s not just accept those death figures at face value. We know too much about how deaths WITH covid were counted as deaths FROM covid, at the instruction of the CDC. With the “bounty” paid for a hospital covid diagnosis, only the naive would imagine that this would not affect the number of positive “cases” discovered. We also know how unreliable the tests are, with very high false positive rates. As sensitive as they are to any contamination, only rigorously trained personnel are likely to perform as necessary. Nor are the tests always properly validated for each location.
Our dear governor provided an excellent illustration of their unreliability by testing positive in the morning, and negative by nightfall. Not many people have the opportunity to experience this, as they have to wait days or a week to get the results of one test, and then likely a week or two more before they can get tested again.