‘Feeling great’: Trump seeks campaign comeback from COVID-19
Washington, US - US President Donald Trump rallied hundreds of supporters for a comeback event at the White House, jumping back into the election race nine days after being stopped in his tracks by COVID19 - a disease his doctor says he is no longer at risk of spreading.
“I am feeling great!” Trump declared as he stepped out to a White House balcony on Saturday - tugging off his mask to address the crowd, most of them masked under their red ‘Make America Great Again’ hats, but with little social distancing.
“Get out and vote - and I love you,” Trump told supporters, who chanted ‘USA’ and ‘Four more years’ throughout the address lasting just under 20 minutes. Badly trailing his 77 year old Democratic rival Joe Biden in the polls less than four weeks from election day, Trump has been counting the days until he can hit the trail again.
The White House doctor announced late Saturday the president was ‘no longer considered a transmission risk’.
Tests showed there was ‘no longer evidence of actively replicating virus’ and that Trump’s viral load was ‘decreasing’, Sean Conley said - though he did not state that the president was virus-free.
Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that, for mild or moderate COVID-19 cases, isolation and precautions can be discontinued 10 days after symptom onset, and once patients have been fever-free for 24 hours. However, the severity of Trump’s illness has not been confirmed.
Saturday’s event set the stage for a full-fledged campaign rally Monday in Florida - followed immediately by two more in battleground Pennsylvania on Tuesday and Iowa on Wednesday.
Biden has slammed as ‘reckless’ Trump’s determination to rally huge crowds during the pandemic - but the President has brushed the concerns aside, insisting America has the upper hand against the virus despite a death toll of 213,000 and rising.
“I want you to know our nation is going to defeat this terrible China virus,” Trump said.
“It’s going to disappear. It is disappearing.”
Athens, Greece - Only about half of Greece’s periptera, the little kiosks selling cigarettes and newspapers in town squares across the country, survived the economic crisis.
Now, those still standing face a fresh threat, from the coronavirus pandemic - and adding masks and gels to their inventory might not be enough to see them through.
A feature of the urban landscape and social life since 1911, many went out of business during the financial crisis that devastated the country between 2010 and 2018.
“During the financial crisis, out of 11,000 kiosks all over Greece, just 5,500 remained, 500 among them in Athens,” said Theodoros Mallios, the president of the kiosk owners union in Athens.
“These last months, I see more of them shutting down,” he added.
“The lockdown and the restrictive measures taken afterwards by the government, might prove really difficult to overcome for our profession.”
Late in September, because of the spike in the number of coronavirus cases, mainly in big towns, the government ordered the kiosks to close from midnight to 5:00am.
The idea was to discourage after-hours bar crowds from gathering at squares to buy liquor from the kiosks, most of which stay open into the small hours.
Panagiotis Karatsas, for one, keeps his open 24/7 at a spot near Athens’ central Syntagma square in a corner of the National Garden.
The new, enforced midnight shutdown has hit him hard, he said.
“With that measure, I’ve lost around 20 per cent of my turnover, after already having endured two months of shutdown during the lockdown,” he added.
With the average Greek having less money to spend these days, and periptero owners facing heavy taxes, 40 year old Karatsas said he had thought about giving up.
“Many of my colleagues have shut down their kiosks in the centre of Athens. I have endured, but for how long? The coronavirus is one more hardship for us.”
A few metres away, fellow kiosk owner Spiros Karagiorgis faced a similar struggle.
“We are worried for our future,” he said.
“In the centre of Athens, in Syntagma, the situation is worse than in other areas, because there are no residents,” he explained.
“Normally, we have as clients those working in offices, but now many of those are teleworking - and tourists, who this year have not visited the Greek capital,” he said.