MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Breaks from Election Coverage to Highlight Alarming Covid Trends: ‘The Virus Doesn’t Care What We’re Doing’
In the lead-up to the election, President Donald Trump repeatedly suggested that somehow worry about the coronavirus would dissipate after the election, as though the global pandemic was being used as a political cudgel against him and would cease to be talked about as a concerning thing once the political fight was over.
Meanwhile, this week the number of daily covid cases again reached record high after record high, with the latest figures showing daily cases hitting around 120,000. Just this week the number of daily cases crossed that grim threshold into over 100,000. Over 1000 covid deaths were reported both on Election Day and the day after Election Day.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took a moment during wall-to-wall election coverage Friday to highlight this “awful record” we have reached.
“I feel like this is the background and we’re all focused on those results and the pandemic, the virus doesn’t care what we’re doing. It doesn’t care about our elections, it doesn’t care about what party people vote for,” he said.
The data he highlighted in particular was a chart showing an alarming increase in the number of people being hospitalized for covid.
NBC News correspondent Cal Perry reported from a testing site in Milwaukee, talking about Wisconsin reaching a record of its own and how the vast majority of ICU beds are full.
Hayes also spoke with infectious disease expert Dr. Michael Osterholm,who said, “We’re in a whole new ballgame with this virus right now. And what’s going to happen over the next 12 to 18 weeks is going to be the darkest weeks of this entire pandemic for us.”
“We have the convergence of several factors. Kind of the perfect storm. We have the issue of pandemic fatigue. A lot of people who have been basically trying to protect themselves and their families for the past six to eight months, now they are just tired,” he said. “The virus isn’t tired of them, but they’re tired. They are going to funerals, weddings, they’re going to bars, restaurants.”
He also brought up how a disturbing percentage of the country believe this is a “hoax” and reject simple basic safety measures.
Osterholm even gravely said, “With great pain, I say this, we will look back one day and say to ourselves, ‘Oh my, 120,000 cases that day? That was a good day. I wish we were back there.'”
Hayes subsequently took to Twitter to again emphasize how dire things are going to get:
We might hit 150,000 cases today and two weeks from now we’ll be *praying* to *only* have 150,000 cases.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 6, 2020
I know people are tired of Covid. I AM FUCKING TIRED OF COVID. But it doesn't care. And it's not done with us. And the failure of leadership is leading us into what could be the deadliest winter in American history.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 6, 2020
You can watch above, via MSNBC.
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