With 20-20 hindsight, it’s easy to trace how we got ourselves behind the COVID-19 eight ball. China, the World Health Organization and our own Centers for Disease Control all contributed.
Chinese officials, fearing international repercussions, downplayed and covered up the initial outbreak. Not until March was China’s cover-up exposed by our intelligence community.
In January, the U.N.’s World Health Organization director praised China for the “transparency they have demonstrated.” In February, a WHO team of experts lauded China’s success in containing the virus. By adding its imprimatur to China’s manipulated data, WHO fostered undue complacency worldwide. Its director is now under intense pressure to resign.
In the January-February time-period, our Centers for Disease Control under-estimated the coronavirus threat in this country as shown in internal emails since made public.
It did begin preparing what turned out to be not nearly enough test kits but without enlisting private health care companies in the effort. Worse yet, the CDC’s early kits were contaminated and had to be recalled. Thankfully, private companies launched their own test kit development in parallel. We’ve needed more test kits from day one and are still behind.
You’d think that after studying recent large-scale, international epidemics like Ebola, SARS, MERS, and Zika, that both WHO and the CDC would know what might happen. But like Pearl Harbor and 9/11, those agencies failed to “connect the dots.”
As late as February 26th in testimony to Congress, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield downplayed the possibility that the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. was inevitable, saying the risk remained low.
Relying on the CDC’s advice – who else should it believe – the Trump administration attempted to soothe the public, only to find itself scrambling to catch up when COVID-19 cases began multiplying in March.
When an organization as large and complex as our federal government meets a poorly understood and poorly forecast pandemic like the novel coronavirus, chaos ensues. From that initial chaos, the government machinery has begun to find its footing.
In the last two weeks, the administration has been distributing ventilators from the government’s stockpile, initiating small-business loans, sending hospital ships to New York and Los Angeles, erecting temporary hospital beds in arenas and convention centers, revamping regulations to keep truckers on the road, streamlining FDA drug approval protocols, and filling the media with information about hygiene and social distancing.
Even President Trump has been, well, more presidential. He quickly agreed with Democratic calls for more stringent oversight of Congress’ relief legislation and defended Nancy Pelosi’s $25 million earmark, for the Kennedy Center.
Trump has rushed federal aid to blue states, even praising New York Governor Cuomo and California Governor Newsom. That praise has been reciprocated.
Last week, CNN’s Jake Tapper suggested to Newsom that he had praised Trump only out of fear that Trump would “punish” California citizens. Newsom stood his ground. “The fact is, every time I’ve called the president he’s quickly gotten on the line,” he said. “There are just too many Americans—40 million that live in this state—that deserve us to get together and get along.”
Cuomo sounded the same theme, saying of the president: “His team is on it. They’ve been responsive,” adding, “I want to say thank you.” Cuomo took issue with political partisans: “Not now,” he said. “The virus doesn’t attack and kill red Americans or blue Americans—it attacks and kills all Americans.”
Has the administration been a well-oiled machine? Certainly not, but Americans can join Newsom and Cuomo in acknowledging recent progress.
Sadly neither House Speaker Democrat Nancy Pelosi nor presidential candidate Joe Biden has heard Cuomo’s message. Pelosi started the fireworks claiming Trump has “cost American lives.” Pure irony coming from the person who delayed the stimulus bill for days by insisting it includes a potpourri of unrelated items from the progressive wish list.
In January when the president restricted travel from China, Biden made remarks he’s later tried to deny. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
Pelosi and Biden are playing a risky political game. Americans traditionally have rallied around their president and other elected officials in times of crisis. A recent poll found that 60 percent of Americans approve Trump’s virus response and he’s enjoying the highest overall approval ratings of his tenure.
Instead of ankle-biting Trump at every minor misstep – and there will be more – Democrats need to be articulating their vision for the future. If their negativity persists, it could come back to bite them in November.
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Opinion article vs. Fact:
Trump Administration:
“CDC training position partnering with China’s top disease control agency was slated for elimination last year, which led to the July (2019) resignation of the position’s last occupant, Dr. Linda Quick, months before an outbreak of the coronavirus began in China.”
President Trump’s leadership on COVID-10
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
Feb. 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.”
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Feb. 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
Feb. 26: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
Feb. 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Feb. 28: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
March 4: “If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. And the tests are beautiful. They are perfect just like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6: “I don’t need to have the numbers double b/c of 1 ship that wasn’t our fault.
March 10: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
A “STABLE GENIUS” or perhaps an unintelligent man with the beginnings of dementia?
Your timeline is exactly what I referenced when I stated clearly that until early March, the CDC was downplaying COVID-19. Who would you expect Trump to believe? The CDC is the government’s expert on communicable diseases. Thanks for backing up my point with your detailed timeline.
As for the CDC phase out in China, our representative would have been frozen out of any real information, just as those from other countries were. American journalists were expelled when they tried to cover the outbreak. Dictatorships do that kind of thing.
I don’t defend Trump as a person or his style. But there’s no evidence he has suppressed the CDC or taken any action since mid-March that has intentionally hindered our government’s response.