Chuck Todd interviews Dr. Michael Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

Todd: President Trump’s Tulsa rally came one day after the United States recorded the most new cases of COVID-19 since May 3. And at a point when, according to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. is doing a far worse job of controlling the pandemic than the European Union is doing – basically similar size, if you will. Look at that graph. . . .

Dr. Osterholm, welcome back…. How do you explain that the United States have 25% of the globe’s cases and we’re sadly number one with the rocket ship? …

Osterholm: … At this point we don’t really have a national plan that really puts together what we’re trying to do. We have 50 different states, the District of Columbia, the territories – all kind of with their own plan. And you’ve seen in the past week how disjointed that is.

What are we trying to do? We’re at 70-percent of the number of cases today that we were at the very height of the pandemic cases in early April. And yet I don’t see any kind of a – This is where we need to go and this is what we need to do to get there kind of effort. And that’s one of our challenges.

Todd: Is this a failure of testing and tracing – is that where this failure is? Or is this just across the board?

Osterholm: Well, we have to understand, as I’ve said to you on multiple occasions, We’re not driving this Tiger, we’re riding it. And while other areas have done much better around the world in stopping it after a difficult period of time with it, we haven’t done that.

And part of that is the fact that we have not really, I think, gotten the message across to the public yet that this is a very serious issue; that we can’t shut down our economy, but we just can’t suddenly say, We’re done with it.

This virus is operating on its own time, under its own rules, not anything we impose on it. And we’re now trying to act like somehow we can policy-wise impose our will on this virus. And that’s what’s happened.

Other countries have been much more aware of the fact that the virus is going to do what it’s going to do. And so you have to basically stay locked down. You have to limit transmission in areas that we’re not doing. And that’s why I think you’re seeing right now is increases in a number of states, because everybody’s back to a pre-pandemic mindset.

Dr. Osterholm: “… we have not really, I think, gotten the message across to the public yet that this is a very serious issue.”

The Messenger in Chief, of course, is Donald Trump. And that is not the message that he is communicating. So, it is Republicans, who look to him as their leader, who are least likely to have gotten the message.

Consider one aspect of the public health message that the public hasn’t gotten — wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus and protect other people. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that

Democrats are almost twice as likely as Republicans (70% v. 37%) to say they wear a mask “every time” they leave their house and while most people (72%) think President Trump should wear a mask when meeting with other people, only about half of Republicans (48%) agree. The partisan difference in opinion and behavior regarding masks is largely driven by Republican men. About half of Republican men report wearing a protective mask at least most of the time when leaving their house to go someplace where they may come into contact with others (49%) and smaller shares say President Trump should wear a mask when meeting with other people (43%).

Trump’s policy on the coronavirus is denial. And numbers make the President look bad. In Tulsa, the President said, “When you do testing to that extent you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’ They test and they test. We got tests for people who don’t know what’s going on.”

White House officials insisted that Trump was only kidding. But when asked on Tuesday about his comments, Trump replied, “I don’t kid.”

And there is evidence to back up Trump’s serious intent: “The Trump administration is planning to end federal support for some coronavirus testing sites across the nation at the end of the month — including seven in Texas, where confirmed cases of COVID are spiking.”

As a campaign strategy denial doesn’t look very promising, but that, clearly, is the strategy the Trump campaign is running with now. Trump said in February, “It’s going to disappear.” Trump told Sean Hannity last week, “It’s going to fade away.”

Trump’s most fervent followers, especially Republican men, are ready, willing, and able to accept the President’s wishful thinking.

The policy of wishful thinking is the reason the United States is Number 1 in the world in coronavirus infections and deaths. It is the reason that the coronavirus is not going to disappear. The virus will “operate on its own time, under its own rules.” And Donald Trump refuses to do anything to stop it.