WILMINGTON, North Carolina: Democrat Joe Biden reiterated on Wednesday (Oct 28) he will tackle the COVID-19 pandemic from Day 1 if elected president but warned there is no magic "switch" to end the pandemic, as Donald Trump insisted he will still win easily and dismissed his opponent as a Covid alarmist.
Less than a week before decision day, Biden cast his presidential ballot in his home state of Delaware and met with health experts, as he fine-tuned his pandemic response plan, seeking to reassure voters that he would use science to fight the contagion.
"Even if I win it's going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic," the former vice president said in Wilmington.
"I'm not running on a false promise of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch," he added. "But what I can promise you is this: We'll start on Day 1 by doing the right thing. We'll let science guide our decisions."
Biden, 77, continues to campaign cautiously ahead of next Tuesday, holding low-key events with small, socially distanced crowds that look nothing like the traditional scene in the closing days of a White House race.
READ: Democratic US presidential nominee Biden votes early in Wilmington
On Saturday, Biden is to get some star power when he is joined on the stump in Michigan by Barack Obama, whom he served as vice president. It will be their first joint in-person appearance of the 2020 race, though Obama has been delivering strategically timed broadsides at Trump throughout.
STATE BY STATE
Trump is finishing his campaign in an extreme test of endurance, with final pitches to voters both in swing states and also states that he won in 2016 yet now has to defend.
After rallying supporters in three states Tuesday, Trump, 74, overnighted in a fourth - Nevada - then flew to Arizona for two more rallies.
In all, Trump plans to visit 10 states in the last week of the campaign and will host 11 rallies in the final 48 hours, a campaign official said.
"It's going to be a great, great red wave," Trump boomed in Arizona, referring to the Republican colour.
"We love you! We love you!" the enthusiastic crowd chanted back. At another rally, in Goodyear, Arizona, Trump predicted he would repeat his 2016 upset, saying "we're going to have an even bigger surprise in six days".
More than 75 million people have cast early in-person and mail ballots, according to data compiled by the US Elections Project at the University of Florida. That is a record-setting pace and more than 53 per cent of the total 2016 turnout.
On Tuesday, Biden visited Georgia, traditionally Republican territory, and he has said he would travel to Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan in the race's closing days.
All are states that Trump won in 2016 but which are up for grabs this year.
READ: Trump or Biden's big economic challenge: Millions of struggling Americans
"NORMALITY" BY LATE-2021
Trump has repeatedly stressed that the US is "rounding the turn" on the pandemic, but figures do not bear that out: More than 227,000 Americans have died and daily case averages have risen.
On Wednesday, Trump kept up his scorn for Biden's focus on health safety, saying that the Democrat would destroy the country through more lockdowns.
"'Sleepy Joe' wants to keep everyone locked down forever," he said, referring to his challenger.
"If I weren’t president, if you had Sleepy Joe as your president, it would have taken you four years to have a vaccine. You would have never had a vaccine," Trump said.
A number of drugmakers are competing to bring a coronavirus vaccine to market, but one is not expected to be ready before next week's election.
But Trump's own chief infectious disease specialist, Anthony Fauci, warned Wednesday that even if a Covid-19 vaccine is released this year, it will take to "the end of 2021 and perhaps even into the next year" to reach "some semblances of normality."
Biden blasted the president, calling his administration's response to the pandemic "an insult to every single person suffering from COVID-19 and every family who's lost a loved one."
With American and European COVID-19 cases rising and no agreement yet on a new US pandemic rescue package in Congress, the Dow Jones on Wednesday sank 3.4 per cent.
The White House said meanwhile that it was closely following the situation in Philadelphia, where a second straight night of unrest and looting has set the city on edge following the fatal police shooting of a Black man, the latest to spark anger in the United States.
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https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMic2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNoYW5uZWxuZXdzYXNpYS5jb20vbmV3cy93b3JsZC9iaWRlbi1zYXlzLWhhbHRpbmctY292aWQtMTktd2lsbC10YWtlLWhhcmQtd29yay1hcy10cnVtcC1zdHVtcHMtMTM0MDA0ODLSAQA?oc=5
2020-10-29 00:11:15Z
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