WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s chief of staff said on Sunday that “we’re not going to control the pandemic,” drawing a rebuke from the Biden campaign that “they are admitting defeat.”

Chief of staff Mark Meadows was speaking amid a sharp resurgence of the coronavirus across the US, with case numbers setting daily records and the death toll fast approaching 225,000.

When a CNN interviewer asked Meadows why the administration would not get control of the virus, he replied, “Because it is a contagious virus just like the flu.” He then qualified that, saying, “We are making efforts to contain it.”

Democrat Joe Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris was asked during a campaign stop in Michigan about Meadows’ comments and said, “They are admitting defeat, and I’ve been saying that, and Joe Biden has been saying that since the beginning.” She criticized Meadows for likening the coronavirus to the flu, according to a pool report.

“This is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of America,” she said.

Biden and Harris have been hammering Trump over his handling of the pandemic, which has seen the US suffer roughly one-fifth the world death total though its population is only four percent the total.

The disease has reached deep inside the White House itself.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2020