As of Tuesday, the U.S. has recorded more than 9.2 million COVID-19 cases, including 231,566 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins data. The new COVID-19 surge in the U.S. has already doubled the seven-day cases average in a month.

However, neither the death toll nor the spike of the COVID cases can stop U.S. President Donald Trump from dismissing and belittling the virus and those who feared it.

At the White House, he shunned one of the simplest and most effective ways of preventing transmission – wearing a mask.

"Take that f---ing thing off," he demanded more than once to aides who showed up wearing masks in the early days of the virus, because "it doesn't look good."

According to the Bloomberg resource, when Trump's aide Hope Hicks fell ill on September 30, even Trump's family – including his oldest son Donald Jr., his son Eric, and daughter Tiffany, who all traveled with Hicks to the first presidential debate in Cleveland the day before – weren't notified.

As the virus tightened its grip on the U.S, the White House itself became an incubator for infection.

The infection list includes prominent advisers like Hicks, Kayleigh McEnany, Robert O'Brien and Stephen Miller; Secret Service agents, lesser-known staff members, valets and residence employees; First Lady Melania Trump, the president's youngest son, Barron, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, his oldest son's girlfriend; and of course, the president himself.

But in private, Trump dreads catching the coronavirus, and did get infected last month. According to a Bloomberg report, Trump once told his then-chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to "stay the hell home" from a trip to India in February because he didn't want to be around Mulvaney and his lingering cough.

Even before the virus, Trump was known to dart to the other side of the room if someone sneezed. He used medical wipes labeled "not for use on skin" to scrub his hands, along with the ever-present Purell.

At same time, Trump is still making baseless claims about the pandemic. Trump claimed that doctors from other countries list underlying diseases as the cause of death, while U.S. doctors are categorizing it as COVID-19.

"Our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, 'I'm sorry but everybody dies of COVID,'"Trump said at a rally in Waterford Township, Michigan, on Friday.

With no evidence at all, Trump charges the doctors are profiting from the COVID-19 deaths.

"He's jealous of COVID's media coverage and now he's accusing doctors of profiting off this pandemic—think about that," former President Barack Obama said. "He cannot fathom, he does not understand the notion that somebody would risk their life to save others without trying to make a buck."