Wallace said the economic recovery from the pandemic has been faster than expected but the two candidates argued about the “shape” of the economy.
If the economy was charted on a graph would it be a “V” where it goes down from where it was before and then rebounds, as Trump claims? Or will it be a “K” shape, where the fortunes of a few continue to increase while those in lower incomes and jobs more exposed to coronavirus risks continue to decline?
Experts say that the recovery is a tale of two diverging recoveries. After soaring to Great Depression levels during pandemic lockdowns, unemployment has fallen to 8.1 percent in the most recent report. Stock indexes are hitting historic highs. Mortgage rates are rock bottom and sales of new homes have hit 13-year highs.
But over 30 million Americans face the risk of eviction and many temporary layoffs are turning into permanent job losses as the pandemic drags on. Without a widely available vaccine, large portions of the economy, such as travel, hotel and restaurants, will not be able to fully recover.
“The ‘V-shaped’ recovery is a mirage,” Nick Mazing, director of research at data provider Sentieo told NBC News. “We are seeing a permanent reduction in the size of several sectors in the economy.”
Fact check: Trump on the Obama administration’s response to swine flu
“Well you didn’t do that well on swine flu, H1N1, you were a disaster. Your own chief of staff said you were a disaster,” Trump said to Biden Tuesday night.
“We did every possible thing wrong — 60 million Americans got H1N1,” he said at a biosecurity summit in May 2019. “It is purely a fortuity that this isn’t one of the great mass casualty events in American history. It had nothing to do with us doing anything right. It just had to do with luck.”
Klain later told Politico his comments referred to the administration’s difficulties producing enough of the vaccine they developed, and argued the Obama team quickly adapted to the pandemic — quickly responding and distributing supplies from the federal stockpile, for example — and made very different choices than the Trump administration.
It’s also worth noting that the swine flu is estimated to have killed 12,000 in the U.S., far smaller than the more than 200,000 who have died of Covid-19 to date. The Obama administration also received generally high marks for its response to the swine flu. While government reports after the fact identified room for growth they also highlighted successes, like rapid research and development of a vaccine that arrived in less than six months. There’s little contemporaneous reporting on the Obama administration response that portrays the kind of unmitigated disaster Trump is suggesting occurred.
Jane Weaver, Sara G. Miller and Jane C. Timm
Fact check: Trump says his pandemic response was ‘great.’ The U.S. leads in cases and deaths.
Trump boasted about his pandemic response on Tuesday, saying, “We’ve done a great job.”
This is false, according to all available metrics. The U.S. is still struggling badly with the Covid-19 pandemic. The U.S. has more cases than any country, with more than 7 million, and more deaths than any country, recently surpassing 200,000. The U.S. has an uncontrolled outbreak, reporting just shy of 37,000 new Covid-19 cases Monday. For comparison, far smaller countries, like Italy, Germany, and Japan, are reporting between a few hundred and 3,000 new cases a day.
Other countries are struggling — India is the most affected country by caseload, while Brazil is the third most affected — but the U.S. remains the second-worst documented outbreak. It would be more accurate to say the U.S. has done worse than most other countries. As of Tuesday, Sept. 29, the U.S. has the fifth highest number of deaths per 100,000 people in the world, according to Johns Hopkins.
Most countries in Africa have fared significantly better than other parts of the world, particularly the U.S. South Africa, the hardest-hit country on the continent, has recorded more than 671,000 cases and 16,508 deaths as of Tuesday. That represents 28 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to more than 62 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S.
For European countries, the U.S. is doing better than Spain, which has experienced just over 67 deaths per 100,000 people, but worse than Italy (59.3), France (47.4) and Germany (11.4)
American voters do not approve of Trump’s response to the pandemic: 57 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the pandemic, according to a September NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
This content was originally published here.
