Political divisions reborn in the United States over the need for new restrictions and the obligation to wear masks, while the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic in certain states including Texas and Florida is causing a rush to the sites screening.
Several states broke their record for the number of new daily cases this weekend, including Florida, and more than half of the country, largely in the South and West, sees the curve of contaminations going up rather than going down.
The number of daily deaths continues to decline, and the government of Donald Trump minimizes the new outbreak. But the number of cases newly detected every day in the United States is higher than at any time since the appearance of the Sars-Cov-2 (more than 40,000), and admissions to resuscitation are increasing in several hot spots like Houston ( Texas) and Phoenix (Arizona).
“It is scandalous, the situation is critical in many places in the United States, and all these beautiful speeches and wishful thinking can not change anything. So we are acting vigorously so that people wear masks,” said the governor. Washington State Democrat Jay Inslee on CBS Sunday.
His state is one of those to have made it mandatory to wear the mask in public in the last two weeks, along with California, Nevada and North Carolina; all ruled by Democrats.
But in other states that have very active foci of the new coronavirus, such as Texas, Florida and Arizona, the governors are Republicans, allies of Donald Trump, and are content to recommend its port.
The mask has thus become a partisan affair: refused by Donald Trump and by many of his supporters, but worn by any Democratic official, starting with his opponent for the White House, Joe Biden. The latter tweeted these three words on Sunday: “Wear a mask”.
It is therefore in relative disorder that the authorities are trying to contain the new wave of cases, recalling the dispersed order in which, in the absence of federal leadership, the country had put in place the great containment in March, then had it raised in May.
However, hundreds of cars lined up in Florida on Sunday outside convention centers or stadiums for testing.
– “They are young…” –
When the governors refuse to order the wearing of masks, it is the cities and the counties which take their responsibilities. In Florida, Miami and Palm Beach have done it.
The magnificent beaches of Miami will be closed for the long weekend which arrives of the national holiday, but the decision came from the mayor, who is republican – at the local level, the officials seem to emancipate themselves more easily from the partisan pressure.
Donald Trump never wears a mask in public. Presidential team sends mixed messages: Vice President Mike Pence canceled two meetings scheduled for this week in Florida and Arizona, but attended an election meeting at a church in Dallas on Sunday a hundred singers sang, full blast – while it is known that singing or speaking loudly projects droplets and postillons far, and that 53 members of a choir near Seattle were contaminated by a single person at the start of the pandemic, two of whom died.
Three-quarters of American Democrats say they regularly wear a mask in shops, against half of the Republicans, according to a Pew poll.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has blamed the rise in social activity among 25-34 year olds.
“We can’t stop them,” he said on Sunday. “They are young, they do what they want.”
This fatalism leaves the experts speechless: if it is true that total mortality remains relatively low, they hammer that the cases of today will make the dead of tomorrow.
“It will keep getting worse for weeks,” said Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, on Fox. “What begins in young adults does not stay in young adults.”
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