New: The Trump administration's insistence that containment should remain the primary way to confront COVID-19 - and repeated claims that it was working - ignored a series of alarm bells from experts inside & outside the US government
Latest w/ @wjhenn time.com/5797636/trump-…
Latest w/ @wjhenn time.com/5797636/trump-…
The White House's focus on stopping the coronavirus at the border - issuing drastic travel restrictions, imposing mandatory quarantines - should have been a way to buy time while aggressively ramping up community preparedness. That's where it broke down
Instead, WH officials telegraphed that such mitigation work would only be necessary if containment failed (“We have contained this...pretty close to airtight")
“Community mitigation work is not a failure, and part of the problem is not recognizing that" says Dr. @JenniferNuzzo
“Community mitigation work is not a failure, and part of the problem is not recognizing that" says Dr. @JenniferNuzzo
“Sending the message that we are stopping this at our border, keeping this from coming in from China, has a psychological impact not on just on the American people but on practitioners as well.”
time.com/5797636/trump-…
time.com/5797636/trump-…
Epidemiologists & public health officials testified to Congress on *February 5* that the travel restrictions/quarantines touted by the Trump administration wouldn't work unless they went hand in hand with aggressive mitigation measures. Worth reading now⬇️ foreignaffairs.house.gov/2020/2/the-wuh…
“Congress should press the administration for the science behind recently announced quarantines & inquire as to the effectiveness of the measures being implemented,” Ron Klain, who led Ebola response under Obama, told lawmakers on Feb. 5 docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA…
Feb. 5: “The current US policy to deny visas to travelers from China & quarantine returning Americans is not the right approach. I am deeply concerned these measures will make us less safe by diverting public health resources from higher priority disease mitigation approaches"
When it finally became indisputable an outbreak was underway, the admin was slow to catch up - not enough test kits, overwhelmed hotlines, lack of reliable statistics. Experts say the U.S. response is now likely weeks—if not months—behind schedule. time.com/5797636/trump-…
“What did you do with the delay? If you buy time, you need to use that time to prepare. It’s insane to me that they’re still harping on containment & travel & keeping the disease out when that is not going to be the driver of transmission at this point.”
Last week I went through all the key roles across the U.S. government that would usually deal with such a global health crisis that are empty. The long list of vacancies and scramble for expertise are other factors hampering the administration's response time.com/5792015/trump-…
Earlier today, Pence cast doubt that the administration would be able to fulfill its promise to deliver 1 million testing kits by the end of the week. “We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate the demand going forward." reuters.com/article/us-hea…
