The president said we’re “more prepared” than any
other country. We’re so not.
By Jackie MogensenMarch 12, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - On Wednesday night, Donald Trump announced that he
would restrict travel from Europe—excluding the
United Kingdom—beginning on Friday, for the next 30
days. “Anything coming from Europe to the United
States is what we are discussing,” he said.
The
president also attempted to reassure the country by
saying the United States is “more prepared” to fight
the pandemic than any other nation. “The virus will
not have a chance against us,” he said.
Public health officials beg to differ. Our
hospitals,
experts say, are severely underprepared for the
expected number of coronavirus cases.
According to biologist Liz Specht, writing in
STAT, the United States has about 2.8
hospital beds per 1,000 people, and if 10 percent of
coronaviruses cases require hospitalization, beds
will be at capacity by early- to mid-May. (And,
given the
lack of testing in the US, it’s not clear how
many Americans have been infected in the first
place.) On top of that, as my colleagues Will
Peischel and Jessica Washington
reported last week, in 2018 Trump cut most of
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s
funding for fighting pandemics. That same year, the
head of the National Security Council’s global
pandemic team left his post, followed shortly after
by the entire team. The positions remain empty.
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Trump has also been criticized for his
slow response to the coronavirus outbreak, and
for his efforts to downplay the risk associated with
it. In one memorable moment last week, Trump
appeared to suggest that he didn’t want passengers
trapped aboard the Grand Princess cruise
ship, some of whom had become infected with the
virus, off the coast of San Francisco to come ashore
because it would make him look bad: “I don’t need to
have the numbers double because of one ship that
wasn’t our fault,”
he said.
He has also compared COVID-19 to “the regular
flu,” suggesting the flu was
more dangerous than the coronavirus (Indeed, the
flu kills
tens of thousands of people every year, but the
coronavirus’ estimated
mortality rate is higher than the flu,
suggesting that a large-scale coronavirus outbreak
in the United States would be
very bad.)
It’s not even certain Trump’s travel restriction
will be effective, now that we’re dealing with a
global pandemic. Last month, Anthony Fauci, director
of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, told
CNBC, “When it was focused only on China, we had a
period of time, temporary, that we could do a travel
restriction that prevented cases from coming into
the US.” He added, “When you have multiple countries
involved, it’s very difficult to do; in fact, it’s
almost impossible.”
Watch Trump’s remarks:
"Source"
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