Soon-to-be former President Donald Trump once suggested several cures for the coronavirus. Among the unhinged Republican’s off-beat recommendations: sunlight.
“The whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s pretty powerful,” a wild-eyed Trump stated during an April 24 news conference.
Another suggestion by Trump which alarmed not just medical experts, but most reasonable thinking Americans: ingesting disinfectant.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute,” Trump bellowed back in April, clearly clueless about how to stop the pandemic. “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”
The president never developed a plan to combat the virus, which has as of Wednesday infected nearly 10 million Americans and claimed more than 240,000 lives.
With the dawning of winter and the arrival of flu season, the pandemic is worse today than when most U.S. states initially shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
President-elect Joe Biden said he has a plan.
He outlined it earlier this year, and, on Monday, Nov. 9, Biden began putting a team in place to battle the pandemic.
“Daily cases are skyrocketing,” Biden said in remarks from Wilmington, Del., just one day before being declared the president-elect. “I want everyone — everyone — to know on Day 1, we’re going to put our plan to control this virus into action.”
Biden’s coronavirus task force will be led by former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and Dr. David Kessler, who led the Food and Drug Administration during the 1990s.
Reports indicated that Biden also plans to name Dr. Anthony Fauci to coordinate the government’s response.
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have also indicated they will call for a national mask mandate, ramp up COVID-19 tests and PPE equipment production.
The Biden administration also plans to create a U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps they expect will mobilize approximately 100,000 unemployed people to fight the virus.
“The public will immediately notice a vast change in science messaging from the White House,” Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, told USA Today.
“The Biden administration will both convey pro-science messages and model the best behavior from among all White House and Cabinet staff.”
Biden said he plans to leave no stone unturned in his attempts to defeat the virus. He said his task force would contain “a group of leading scientists and experts as Transition Advisors to help take the Biden-Harris COVID-19 plan and convert it into an action blueprint that starts on January 20, 2021. That plan will be built on a bedrock of science. It will be constructed out of compassion, empathy and concern. I will spare no effort — or commitment — to turn this pandemic around.”