Virus Outbreak<\/a><\/div>\nThe county is a farming region along the Mexican border that, at one point, had California\u2019s highest infection rate. Its 180,000 residents are largely Latino and low-income, groups that have suffered disproportionately from the virus. Cases overwhelmed its two hospitals in May.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president has access to the best medical care in the world, along with a helicopter to transport him to the hospital as needed,\u201d Dr. Janet Baseman, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington\u2019s School of Public Health, wrote in an email. \u201cThe rest of us who don\u2019t have such ready access to care should continue to worry about covid, which has killed a million people around the world in just a handful of months.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Carla Dundes, whose mother died of the coronavirus in a nursing home in April, the dichotomy was striking between a 94-year-old dying all alone and a powerful man, surrounded by the best medical care, trying to use the virus to his benefit.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was deliberately careless but my mom was helpless,\u201d said Dundes, a retired 66-year-old from Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania. \u201cTo have him try to spin this as if he\u2019s been heroic, that\u2019s just shameful and I think it\u2019s heartless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of Trump\u2019s supporters said they wouldn\u2019t be swayed by the White House outbreak: Wearing a mask is a choice, and to mandate its use limits freedom, said Melissa Blundo, chairwoman of the \u201cNo Mask Nevada\u201d PAC.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying the coronavirus isn\u2019t real. I\u2019m not saying that it isn\u2019t a pandemic,\u201d she said. \u201cI believe tuberculosis could be called a pandemic when it kills a person every 21 seconds, but we haven\u2019t shut down the entire world. I just find it interesting that we are taking this particular pandemic and shutting down economies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control show 8,920 cases of tuberculosis in 2019. In 2017, the most recent year it reported deaths, 515 died from the bacterial lung infection.<\/p>\n
Candy Boyd, the owner of Boyd Funeral Home in Los Angeles, which serves many Black families, said Trump\u2019s comments were infuriating and an \u201cexample of him not living in reality.\u201d The funeral home receives fewer virus victims now than it did in the spring, when it was several a day, but people continue to die, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have people dying and this is a joke to him,\u201d Boyd said. \u201cI don\u2019t take that lightly. This is sad. This is absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Prengaman reported from Phoenix. Associated Press reporters Matt Sedensky in New York, Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Michelle Price in Las Vegas and Report for America\u2019s Sam Metz in Carson City, Nevada, contributed.<\/em><\/p>\nAssociated Press<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gene Johnson and Peter Prengaman, October 6, 2020 SEATTLE (AP) \u2014 Dizzy with a soaring fever and unable to breathe, Scott Sedlacek had one thing going for him: He was among the first people to be treated for COVID-19 at Seattle\u2019s Swedish Medical Center, and the doctors and nurses were able to give him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10907,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899\/revisions\/10907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}