Trump Predicts Victory Over COVID-19 and Tells States to Open Faster

Evan Vucci/AP

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Addressing the nation from the Bioprocess Innovation Center in North Carolina, President Trump on Monday painted an optimistic picture of the United States’ recovery from the coronavirus pandemic—while dismissing one of the only proven ways to mitigate the spread of the virus in the first place.

“I really do believe a lot of the governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening,” he said in response to a question about whether the US economy would see a V-shaped recovery. Despite a recent surge in cases in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, whom Trump praised on Monday, has refused to shut down the state’s economy.

Trump also announced that the biotechnology company Moderna had entered phase 3 of vaccine development, meaning that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine is now being used in clinical trials. “We will achieve a victory over the virus by unleashing America’s scientific genius,” he said, flanked by screens bearing the words “Operation Warp Speed.”

If only there were another way.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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