Trump Campaign Plans on Holding Rallies Before Election Despite Warnings from Public Health Experts

The Trump campaign is not backing down from its pledge to hold rallies in the months leading up to the presidential election, despite warnings from public health experts that massive gatherings of the sort should be put off until next year.

“This coronavirus will pass and the president is looking forward to getting back out on the campaign trail and holding rallies,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told ABC News.

The Trump campaign has reportedly weighed the possibility of holding rallies in states that are considered “low risk” while also implementing social distancing guidelines. It is unclear how the campaign would determine which states would be considered “low risk” and which ones would not be.

But some health experts warn that the country may not be able to withstand large rallies in enclosed spaces until “the later part of 2021,” depending on how many Americans are able to get tested for the virus and when a vaccine is mass-produced.

“We hope by that time we’ll have a vaccine, which might be an ambitious timeline, but that seems the earliest that one might think of [holding large gatherings],” Dr. Nasia Safdar, the medical director of Infection Control at the University of Wisconsin, told ABC News.

“Initially it was restrictions on 500 or more people, then it was it ten, and so on. The easing up I think has to follow the same path. You do a little bit of loosening, see the effect of that, and if all looks good, you can be a little bit [bolder],” she said.

President Trump’s last campaign rally was in North Carolina on March 2, eleven days before he declared a national emergency over the pandemic.