■ Donald Trump voted early in person in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Candidates contrast on status of country

DALLAS, Pa. — President Donald Trump assured supporters packed shoulder to shoulder Saturday that “we’re rounding the turn” on the coronavirus and mocked challenger Joe Biden for raising alarms about the pandemic. Meanwhile, Biden bemoaned to a smaller gathering the need to campaign at a distance but said he understood the public health reasons behind it.

With coronavirus infections reaching their highest peak of the pandemic as the election headed into the home stretch, Trump and Biden took different approaches to the public health crisis in appealing for votes in battleground states.

“We don’t want to become super spreaders,” Biden told supporters at a “drive-in” rally Saturday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, picking up a term that has been used to describe the Rose Garden event in late September in which Trump announced his Supreme Court nominee.

More than two dozen people linked to the White House have contracted COVID-19 since that gathering, as have campaign staff.

The former vice president pressed his case that Trump was showing indifference to the surging virus on a day he looked to boost his candidacy with the star power of rock legend Jon Bon Jovi, who performed before Biden took the stage at a second drive-in rally in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, in Lumberton, North Carolina, his tongue firmly in cheek, Trump called Biden “an inspiring guy” for raising alarm about the pandemic.

Trump at his rallies criticized the news media for focusing on the virus, which has killed about 224,000 people in the United States.

“It’s always cases, cases, cases. They don’t talk about deaths,” Trump told a crowd of several thousand at an outdoor rally in Circleville Ohio. “They’re trying to scare everybody,” he said.

Earlier, at a rally in North Carolina, Trump questioned the value of testing.

“You know why we have cases?” said Trump, who was scheduled hold another rally in Wisconsin in the evening. “’Cause we test so much. And in many ways, it’s good. And in many ways, it’s foolish. In many ways, OK? In many ways it’s very foolish.

“We’re rounding the turn … our numbers are incredible,” Trump said.

A record of more than 83,000 infections were reported on Friday alone.

Trump also criticized Biden for saying that the country was headed for a “dark winter” because of the pandemic.

“I thought Sleepy Joe was very dark,” he told his biggest crowd of the day at a night-time rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “How dark was that? How horrible was that?” he asked.

Biden, in an interview with Pod Save America that aired Saturday, said his first priority is to “get control of the virus” because the economy can’t move forward without stemming the disease.

“As I said before, I will shut down the virus, not the economy,” Biden said in Bucks County. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time and build back better than before.”