- The start of a new week brought one coronavirus update after another, including everything from the Trump administration now acknowledging the surge in coronavirus cases happening around the country to congressional leaders meeting at the White House to begin work on a new coronavirus stimulus bill.
- On Twitter over the weekend, meanwhile, former Obama administration health official Andy Slavitt posted a remarkable Twitter thread, comprised of nothing but images from people who sent photos to him representing how the coronavirus pandemic has changed their lives, along with a caption for each one.
- The images range from the humorous to the deeply moving and capture a broad spectrum of life in the US as the coronavirus pandemic has raged this year.
The Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has consistently been behind the curve to some degree, with Monday alone offering more incontrovertible evidence of that fact. President Trump, for example, has apparently regarded the wearing of face masks as a sign of weakness up to this point, declining not only to recommend their usage but to be seen in one himself (until recently). On Monday, however, he tweeted a photo of himself wearing a face mask, along with the following tweet, which reads, in part: “Many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance. There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!”
Earlier in the day, meanwhile, another Trump administration official decided to finally acknowledge what’s been apparent to everyone for a couple of weeks or more now — that coronavirus cases are surging around the US. “We are having more cases than we did a week ago, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, four weeks ago,” said Admiral Brett Giroir, the US assistant secretary of health. “That is very clear.” They’re the kinds of things we’ve known all along — as an incredible Twitter thread makes painfully clear.
Former Obama administration health official Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt on Twitter), who has more than 539,000 followers on the service, recently put out a call asking people to send him one photo along with a caption “that best summarized their life during the pandemic.”
What he got, and what he’s presented in the form of an emotional Twitter thread, is a pretty incredible tapestry of humanity that will tell you more about the coronavirus pandemic than you will ever learn by, for example, watching the evening news. The photos range from the humorous to the tear-inducing, and you can see a selection of them below:
Like father like son. pic.twitter.com/6tZQJ2rrDJ
— Andy Slavitt 🇺🇸💉 (@ASlavitt) July 19, 2020
Love from a distance. pic.twitter.com/vP0saXlpLl
— Andy Slavitt 🇺🇸💉 (@ASlavitt) July 19, 2020
The dog keeping my husband from depression and helping my kid learn how to take care of another being. pic.twitter.com/CB0y1lQriw
— KeebsPDX✍🏻 (@KeebsPdx) July 19, 2020
My husband of 30 years died in May. No funeral. pic.twitter.com/hrFcIHad7x
— Don’t Tell Me Things Can’t Change (@VSE4me) July 19, 2020
Our neighbors replaced one of our fence boards with plexiglass so that the kids could stay connected. pic.twitter.com/VqgpRQko4O
— GloriaPDX (@GloriaPDX) July 19, 2020
In terms of the current impact of the virus in the US, the latest data from Johns Hopkins University shows there have now been more than 3.8 million coronavirus cases identified here since the pandemic began. Additionally, there have been more than 140,000 deaths.
