On a CNN panel Wednesday evening, anchor Erin Burnett and her guest, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, erupted over White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s callous dismissal of the massive coronavirus spikes being seen around the country as mere “embers.”

The CNN host and medical advisor for President George W. Bush pulled no punches in firing back at McEnany, who had clearly downplayed an obvious resurgence of the public health crisis during her Wednesday’s press briefing.

“Dr. Reiner, certainly, at this point that is blatantly clear,” Burnett said. “This thing is going to keep spreading around the world, you can’t keep it anywhere. If you look at the other countries succeeded in doing, all of the curves go up and down. Our goes up and surges up again. It doesn’t look like anybody else’s.”

Dozens of states are seeing significant rises in new Covid-19 cases and the latest surge set yet another single-day record on Wednesday, surpassing 50,000 — nearly 150% higher than the new daily cases in the first week of June.

“And now [Trump’s] press secretary today described what we are seeing in states where you’re seeing record in hospitalizations surge and deaths starting to tick up as ’embers.’ ‘Embers,'” a dismayed Burnett said to Reiner. “What do you make of that?”

“Six hundred to 800 Americans per day are dying because of those ’embers,’ 6oo t0 800 Americans,” Reiner pointed out. “Let me ask you this. If 600 to 800 American soldiers were killed every day on the battlefield would the President of the United States say ‘This will just end and go away by itself, I hope.’ No. We would put that down. We would go on the offensive. We have the ability to do that. Now we need to get every American to wear a mask and to social distance and to cancel all outdoor mass gatherings and to ramp up the testing like crazy. In places where the ’embers’ are burning brightly, we need to shut down.”

Burnett then returned to the term “embers,” calling it out as “offensive and inaccurate,” before playing a clip of Trump reprising on Wednesday, almost word for word, his absurd prediction from February 27 — when the U.S. death toll was two — that the coronavirus would eventually “just disappear.”

“Sometimes Sanjay it’s a just a basic question: ‘Disappear. Sure, I do, I do,’ Burnett reiterated in disbelief. “It’s the nonchalance. the blatant confidence, no reticence or hesitance.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/3gmm0R5