This far into the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing should be crystal clear to the American people: Our federal leadership badly bungled a crisis. The president says he and his team have down a great job, but the facts belie that claim.
China confirmed its first COVID-19 case in December. The Chinese were late to inform the world, but almost immediately took draconian steps to slow the spread. South Korea and the United States both received their first confirmed case on Jan. 21. South Korea immediately and aggressively responded, bringing businesses and scientists into action to contain the outbreak. South Korea is not even on the list of the top 10 nations infected.
What did the United States do after it learned of the China problem and the first American confirmed case? Next to nothing for weeks. Trump banned foreign nationals from China entering the country, but not Americans. It was reported that over 430,000 people entered the U.S from China after the outbreak was announced. Nearly 40,000 of those arrived after the travel ban. For far too long, the president of downplayed the pandemic and gave false information to the American people. After weeks of making claims such as “we have it totally under control”; “the coronavirus is very much under control”; “CDC and my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling coronavirus”; “We’re going substantially down, not up,” and other wholly inaccurate statements, he declared that keeping American fatalities to 100,000 would be a success.
As of this writing this nation holds the dubious distinction of leading the world in COVID-19 cases, and the numbers are rising dramatically. Our hospitals are woefully under-supplied, and testing was still lagging South Korea. Vice President Mike Pence laid the blame on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it certainly must take some of the blame. Rather than go to the World Health Organization, which we partially fund, it decided to rely solely on its own testing capabilities. They badly botched their testing, and that resulted in not knowing where the coronavirus was in the United States in order to take appropriate action.
President Trump wondered who could have known, but in May of 2019 he was warned by the administration’s biodefense preparedness adviser that a flu pandemic was our No. 1 threat and that we were not prepared. With this advice the president disbanded the pandemic unit in the National Security Council. Eleven days after WHO declared a global pandemic, Trump proposed a 16% cut in CDC funding. Finally, Trump announced a task force to spearhead our efforts, but rather than scientists or health experts to lead it, he named Pence and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The result of Trump’s ignoring experts; of downplaying the crisis; and lack of leadership has led not only to our becoming the most infected nation on Earth, but one with a drastic shortage of personal protective equipment, lack of hospital beds, and a serious lack of ventilators. In comparison, South Korea began producing tests and respirators in January. Trump, who ordered a mere 400 ventilators to New York, now the global epicenter of COVID-19, told governors to get their own supplies. As Jeremy Koryndyk, who led the government’s response to international disaster at the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2013 to 2017, said, “We are seeing the emergence of 50-state anarchy, because of a total vacuum of federal leadership.”
Thankfully, most State and local leaders have stood up to the challenge. Most governors took swift action, as did hundreds of mayors. Without their efforts, the lack of federal leadership would be far more damaging.
Michael Adkins formerly was chair of the Hancock County Democratic Party. Send comments to [email protected].
