The president of the United States, Donald Trump, recently assured that the country is “three or four weeks away” to get a coronavirus vaccine.
“If you want to know the truth, the previous Government would have taken years perhaps to have a vaccine because of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and all the permits. And we are just a few weeks away from getting it (...) it could be three or four weeks,” he said during an event organized by ABC News with undecided voters.
Trump also claimed that the virus would go away on its own, but the vaccine would speed up the process. "It is going away. It is going away. I keep saying it,” he emphasized, despite the fact that the scientific community believes that it is unlikely that the virus will disappear definitively even with a vaccine.
This criterion is based on similar experiences such as pandemic influenza viruses of the past and milder human coronaviruses that cause "colds." Experts believe that as the pandemic subsides, it may synchronize with a seasonal pattern with less severity over time due to mutations and reinfection.
During the exchange, Trump defended his management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the North American country, saying that he did not minimize the threat it posed and that, instead, he "reinforced" control actions.
According to Trump, the virus “will probably go away much faster now because of the vaccine.” “It would go away without the vaccine, but it will go away much faster with the vaccine,” Trump said. “Sure, over a period of time. Of course, over time it goes away,” he insisted.
The president has also suggested that there is no consensus on the use of masks to prevent the spread of the disease. “People don't want to wear masks. “There are a lot of people [who] think masks are not good,” he said.
However, It is now almost unanimous among health experts, including some of the president's own appointees, who have encouraged the American people to wear masks to reduce infections.
Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have issued statements urging people to wear masks in public places.
However, Trump maintains that some workers such as waiters could be against the use of masks. “They come and serve you, and they have a mask. They are playing with the mask (…) and then they are playing the plate. "That can't be good," he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that “universal mask wearing is one of five or six things that are very important in preventing the rise of infection.”
“We know that during the first wave of the pandemic, countries that implemented masking early were more successful than others in reducing the spread of the virus,” noted research from Stanford University.
Previously, Trump had assured that the United States would have a coronavirus vaccine ready before November 3, the date on which the presidential elections are held. By a wide margin, the North American nation has been the hardest hit by the outbreak, reporting more than 6.6 million infections and 196,436, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
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