DONALD Trump took to Twitter to slam the media for applauding Anthony Fauci’s handling of the Covid pandemic, while giving the president “no credit.”
This came after Fauci appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday to discredit Trump’s claims that the number of coronavirus-related deaths in the US is being exaggerated.
“Something how Dr. Fauci is revered by the LameStream Media as such a great professional, having done, they say, such an incredible job, yet he works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given credit for my work,” Trump wrote.
“Gee, could this just be more Fake News?” he added.
Earlier on Sunday morning, Trump took a shot at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), claiming they have been misrepresenting the Covid death toll in the country.
“The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, porposely, very inaccurately and low,” Trump wrote.
“‘When in doubt, call it Covid.’ Fake News!”
Responding to these allegations, Fauci — the nation’s top infectious disease expert — stressed how dire the Covid situation remains.
“The deaths are real deaths. I mean, all you need to do is to go out into the trenches, go to the hospitals, see what the health care workers are dealing with,” Fauci said.
“They are under very stressed situations in many areas of the country, the hospital beds are stretched.
“People are running out of beds, running out of trained personnel who are exhaustive right now. That’s real. That’s not fake. That’s real,” he continued.
According to the latest data, there have been about 20.5million Covid-19 cases recorded in the United States and more than 350,000 deaths.
In Fauci’s Sunday morning TV appearance, he also spoke about the country’s apparent lag when it comes to administering Covid vaccines.
The government had initially estimated that 20million people could receive a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine by the start of 2021, but only around 2.1million had been administered by December 31.
Fauci said that there were, naturally, some glitches in getting the vaccines shipped, distributed, stored and administered to people in the early days of the massive vaccination campaign, but the process has been running more smoothly in the past 72 hours.
“In the last 72 hours, they’ve gotten 1.5million doses into people’s arms, which is an average of about 500,000 a day, which is much better than the beginning when it was much, much less than that,” Fauci said.
“We are not where we want to be,” he added. “There’s no doubt about that, but I think we can get there if we really accelerate, get some momentum going.”
Trump, for his part, has blamed the lag in vaccine distribution on the states.
“The vaccines are being delivered to the states by the Federal Government far faster than they can be administered,” he tweeted, also on Sunday morning.
The president has received flak from many, including Republican Sen Mitt Romney, who think that the federal government needs to come up with a more concrete vaccine distribution plan to give to state and local governments.
