As has become his way, Vice President Mike Pence opened his coronavirus task force briefing with a dose of good news — this time on the day the country passed 3 million cases recorded nationwide.
“And while we mourn with those who mourn, because of what the American people have done because of the extraordinary work of our healthcare workers around the country, we are encouraged that the average fatality rate continues to be low and steady,” he said.
It was the third time in three weeks that the White House task force had delivered a press briefing — and the third time it was held outside the White House. Other less formal question-and-answer sessions have also been held outside Washington as Pence toured the country to spread the message that America is getting back to business.
On Wednesday, the setting was the Department of Education, where Pence said it was “absolutely essential” for students to return to the classroom and announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would publish new guidelines next week for safely reopening schools in the fall.
He triggered a fresh row over whether the administration was racing ahead of the science and pushing too hard on reopening. Critics pointed out that he spoke soon after President Trump threatened to withhold funding if schools did not open and accused the CDC in its current guidance of asking schools “to do very impractical things.”
Missing from the task force briefing was the nation’s leading infectious diseases expert. Days earlier, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that a recent surge in cases showed no sign of abating. “We are still knee-deep in the first wave of this,” he said, rubbishing anyone championing a particular statistic.
“It’s a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death,” he said of the statistic favored by Pence and Trump. “There’s so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus.”
Even as the task force focused almost entirely on reopening, Arizona, Mississippi, and Texas all reported their highest daily death totals of the pandemic, and 32 states reported increasing numbers of cases. It is perhaps no surprise that the White House task force appears publicly anywhere but the White House these days.
Not for the first time, Fauci played the role of a scientific skeptic to Pence’s optimist. Last week, he warned that the rise in cases could hit 100,000 a day while the vice president touted the country’s readiness.
“We’re ready. We’re more prepared than ever before,” said Pence (this time at the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Headquarters in Rockville, Maryland).
That divergence in views has caused consternation among epidemiologists and virologists who want to know how the task force plans to tackle the rise in cases.
The likes of Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine, have repeatedly asked for a federal plan to suppress the spread of the coronavirus. They then throw up their hands when the task force hands responsibility over to states to open schools, for example.
“The problem is there is not the federal plan to make this happen. Instead, their unrealistic and tone-deaf strategy is to push for reopenings in the middle of massive COVID-19 resurgence in 30 U.S. states, and failing to understand why this will likely fail,” he said after the latest briefing.
At the heart of the difference is a divergence in how the two sides gauge the outcome of an intervention. What is its aim? Is it to contain and suppress the virus or to ensure that health services are not swamped?
While one side worries that gains from lockdowns are being squandered as rates around the country rise and call for new containment strategies, the other points to improved readiness. From the start, the White House has said the aim was to flatten the growth curve and buy time for health services to catch up, whether that meant closing travel from China in the early days or ramping up production of ventilators and PPE.
And so it was that Pence, in his latest briefing, focused on how the new hot spots were better prepared than ever.
“We are focused on the states where more than half of the new cases have arisen — Texas, Arizona, Florida, and California — and have received encouraging reports even through this morning: strong supplies of PPE in hospitals. Hospital capacity remains strong,” he said.
The result is a real-time experiment in public health.
