Across the country, coronavirus cases are soaring, hospital capacity is shrinking, and Americans’ moods are souring. Yet when you listen to Vice President Mike Pence, you would think the trends are all going in the right direction. So what makes Pence so optimistic?
Perhaps it’s that by disregarding the science of the pandemic, he can focus on wishful thinking.
Pence’s departure from reality is best evidenced by his opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal a month ago. In the piece, titled “There Isn’t A Coronavirus ‘Second Wave,’” the Vice President and Chair of the White House Coronavirus Task Force attempted to make the case that President Trump’s response to the pandemic has been successful and that the media that is unnecessarily worrying the nation.
“The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and these grim predictions of a second wave are no different. The truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success.” Pence wrote. “We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives, and we’ve created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future. That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering.”
Then, ten days later at the June 26th coronavirus task force briefing, Pence was equally optimistic.
“As we see the new cases rising, and we’re tracking them very carefully, there may be a tendency among the American people to think that we are back to that place that we were two months ago, that we’re in a time of great losses and great hardship on the American people. The reality is we’re in a much better place,” the Vice President said at the briefing. “The truth is we did slow the spread. We did flatten the curve,” Pence added.
Well, what a difference a month makes.
As of Saturday, the pandemic’s toll continues to grow at an alarming rate. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, there have been 3,670,005 coronavirus cases and over 139,480 deaths as a result of the deadly virus. New projections published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project that by August 8, the number of U.S. deaths could rise to 157,000.
TULSA, OKLAHOMA - JUNE 20: U.S. Vice president Mike Pence arrives at a campaign rally at the BOK ... [+]
Across the country states are reporting record or near-record case numbers. On Thursday ,the country reported 75,000 cases, breaking its daily increase record for the 11th time in the past 30 days. On Friday the nation reported an only slightly smaller number of 70,000. These staggering numbers come the same week that the Center for Public Integrity shared an unpublished report prepared for the White House recommending that a significant part of the country slow or reverse reopening measures. The report indicated that many states are in the “red zone,” qualifying as “statistical areas and counties that, during the last week, reported both new cases above 100 per 100,000 population, and a diagnostic test positivity result above 10%.” At the time the report was drafted, 18 states (over one-third of all states) in the country met that definition. And the case number have only risen across the country since.
In other words, Pence’s WSJ opinion was not only wrong, but it was dangerously misleading.
Yet, despite the troubling trends, the Vice President continues to ignore not only reports of rising cases, but also his government’s scientific guidelines. Echoing comments by President Trump about the urgency for schools to reopen in the fall, Pence is a vocal advocate for schools to resume classes, despite widely held scientific opinion suggesting that may not be a good idea. For example, during a visit to Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Tuesday, the Vice President made this jaw-dropping statement about schools reopening, acknowledging his own administration’s disregard for expert guidance form the nations. “We don’t want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don’t reopen their schools.”
As the Vice President ramps up his campaigning ahead of the November election, his comments about the coronavirus are more rare than his attacks on Joe Biden. But it is clear that Americans are focused the deadly trends that are sweeping the nation. In a new poll out Thursday by Global Strategy Group/GBAO and Navigator Research, three in five respondents disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic, with 51% strongly disapproving of Trump’s efforts. An increasing majority of respondents, including 42% of Republicans, think the worst is yet to come, and only one in five think the worst of the pandemic is behind us.
So if America is so pessimistic, what makes Pence so optimistic?
The Vice President has a long history of failing to acknowledge science, having previously refused to acknowledge evolution or climate change. While both of those positions are themselves troubling, Pence’s dismissal of data and expert guidelines now have real life-or-death impacts on Americans struggling to confront a deadly virus. As Americans become increasingly wary of a virus that shows no signs of abating, Pence’s optimistic act of sticking his head in the sand isn’t an act of social distancing; it’s an abdication of responsibility.
More than that, it’s not helping America stay safe; it’s actually making America sick…
Again.
