While advisers have pressed Mr. Trump to more fully acknowledge the severity of the virus’s spread, he again offered a dissonantly upbeat assessment.
Mr. Trump declared “large portions of our country” to be “corona-free,” even though no region in the United States is actually free of the virus. While he noted concern over high case levels in California, Arizona, Texas and Florida, he said: “That’s starting to head down in the right direction. And I think you’ll see it rapidly head down very soon.”
Table Of Contents
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 27, 2020
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Should I refinance my mortgage?
- It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
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- The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
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Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
However, a new federal report found that the number of states with outbreaks serious enough to place them in the “red zone” has grown to 21. It called for more restrictions on social activity. Those states include the ones named by Mr. Trump, along with Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin. All had more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people in the past week.
The findings in the new report were sent to state officials by the White House’s coronavirus task force and obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Trump reiterated that he had a “very good relationship” with Dr. Fauci while repeating his now routine complaint that Dr. Fauci had opposed his ban in January on most air travel from China into the United States. (Dr. Fauci initially doubted the idea but supported the final decision.)
The president, who said he was invoking the Defense Production Act for the 33rd time since the outbreak of the virus — this time to provide a $765 million loan to Kodak to produce pharmaceuticals, part of a new effort to achieve “American pharmaceutical independence” from China and other nations — insisted that he deserved more credit in relation to Dr. Fauci for his administration’s efforts to procure more ventilators and personal protective equipment and to enable more virus testing nationwide.
“He’s got this high approval rating, so why don’t I have a high approval rating with respect — and the administration — with respect to the virus?” Mr. Trump asked. “So it sort of is curious.”