Trump has had to finally admit the pandemic in the US is getting worse

Donald Trump has been a lone voice ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States. He said it would go away and that he, the president, would make sure it didn't turn into anything too horrible. Then it WAS horrible in the US and America became the worst-affected nation in the world. But instead of accepting that, Trump changed his focus to getting the country back to normal, opening up again, going back to work, renewing the economy and largely dismissing the impact of virus spikes all over the country. Throughout this period his popularity ratings have dropped significantly. And then suddenly he had his light bulb moment: his statements and claims on coronavirus and his poll ratings were linked. In other words, he had to admit to himself that the Trump way of handling the pandemic wasn't working and the people were increasingly blaming him. The White Huose and his reelection campaign team have been panicking for weeks as they saw the way the polls were going. In an election year, polls are everything. They are watched over, analysed, interpreted every which way, and the conclusion was: it's looking very bad for the president. If things didn't change, Trump was going to be slaughtered by Joe Biden in November. So, casting aside his dismissive tone of the last four months, Trump decided to admit to the country that things will get worse before they get better. Well, actually, things have already got worse. There's no "will" about it. It's staring you in the face, Mr President. Then he showed how he had got used to wearing a mask as he revived his daily virus briefings at the White House. It was a true deja vu moment. The daily briefings had stopped because Trump was confident the crisis was all over. It must have taken a lot of persuasion from Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff, and others to get him back on the rostrum facing reporters once again asking questions he generally doesn't like to answer. Now he and the White House will have to see whether Trump's sudden conversion to the realities of the pandemic will pay dividends in the next opinion polls. It might be too late. Many voters may have already made up their mind that they can't trust Trump to be in charge of the pandemic. Or anything else.