Covid-19: Donald Trump again scorns science on masks and vaccines

The president's comments put him at odds with the CDC, the world's premier public health agency, over the course of a pandemic that he keeps insisting is "rounding the corner" to an end

US President Trump on Wednesday rejected the professional scientific conclusions of his own government about the prospects for a widely available coronavirus vaccine and the effectiveness of masks in curbing the spread of the virus as the death toll in the United States from the disease neared 200,000.

In a remarkable display even for him, Trump publicly slapped down Dr Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the president promised that a vaccine could be available in weeks and go “immediately” to the general public while diminishing the usefulness of masks despite evidence to