Just days after US President Donald Trump’s controversial photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, a picture of his campaign staffers in neighboring Arlington, Virginia, has become the subject of scandal.
"Stopped by to see the great men and women of the Trump-Pence Team today!" Pence wrote in the June 11 tweet showing dozens of staffers condensed into one photo. "Thank you for all of the hard work, keep it up!"
Virginia, currently in phase one of reopening, advises employees “utilize face covering” where possible and attempt to maintain six feet of physical distance. If the defined social distancing is not possible then “employers should provide face covering to employees,” according to the current guidelines.
The deletion of this post by Pence, who heads the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, comes amid a new spike in COVID-19 novel coronavirus infections within the US.
Dr. Tom Frieden, former Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned on Thursday that the US cannot rely on the current identified cases as the ultimate judge of nationwide COVID-19 infections.
“Based on the .8% infection fatality rate which is our best estimate in the US, we would expect 112,000 deaths to result from 14,000,000 COVID-19 cases (112,000/.008),” read the June 11 report from PreventEpidemics.org. “This suggests that only 14% of US COVID-19 (2,000,000/14,000,000) cases have been detected.”
While the US has a clear need for increased testing, the touring of Puritan Medical Products factory in Guilford, Maine, by a maskless, gloveless Trump forced the facility to run limited production on June 5 and ultimately resulted in the destruction of medical swabs for COVID-19 test kits.