Fact check: Travel bans
As evidence that he acted early and effectively, the president touted his piecemeal travel bans and restrictions – which epidemiologists said could have stopped the spread of disease if implemented much earlier than they were – but ultimately did little more than cause chaos and confusion at airports.
“We stopped all of Europe,” Trump boasted. But the restrictions didn’t apply to all of Europe and included restrictions for several types of travelers.
Fauci said “I believe we acted early,” in response to a question about whether the US could have done more, earlier. But he conceded that earlier action could have helped.
Dr. Birx, as well, evaded the question, asserting that it remains to be seen whether the disease was spreading through the US in February or earlier.
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Fact check: H ydroxychloroquine cure
Trump once again touted hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure, asserting that it won’t kill people because it has already been used to treat other conditions. But the drug can have serious side effects even when it is used as recommended, to treat malaria, as well as lupus and arthritis.
Moreover, public health experts including his own top infectious diseases adviser, Dr Fauci, have previously warned that there was only “anecdotal evidence” that the drugs could be helpful. My colleague Oliver Milman reported that a French study of coronavirus patients found that half experienced clearing of their airways after being given hydroxychloroquine. Experts have warned that the study is small and lacks sufficient rigor to be classed as evidence of a potential treatment. The French health ministry has warned against the use of hydroxychloroquine for Covid – 40.
The surge in demand for the unproven hydroxychloroquine also risks shortages of the drug for those who need it most. It is used to help patients manage the chronic autoimmune disease lupus, but some are already complaining the drug is harder to come by. Trump’s pushing of the treatment has reportedly caused stockpiling of hydroxychloroquine.
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Fact check: Ventilators, again
The government has almost , ventilators remaining in the stockpile, Trump said, but “we are holding it back for flexibility,” he said, so they can be distributed strategically.
The strategic reserve of medical supplies is like an oil reserve, Trump added, except more valuable. Asked about reports that governors are caught in bidding wars for the life-saving machines, Trump said: “that shouldn’t happen.” All they need to do is ask, he said.
But the president has repeatedly dismissed governors ’requests for medical equipment. In an interview with Fox News last week, he said “I don’t believe you need 46, or , ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order , (ventilators? ‘”)
Even today, he added that though governors could ask, in some cases, “they want to have more than they think they need”.
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“It’s not the flu,” Trump said of the coronavirus. “It is vicious.”
The president has repeatedly compared the coronavirus pandemic to the seasonal flu.
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Fact check: Late start
Though Trump is seeking to blame states for a delayed response to the coronavirus crisis, the president consistently downplayed the concerns of public health officials who raised early alarms.
In late January, at the Davos conference, Trump said, “It’s going to be just fine.”
In February, after the WHO announced more than 36, cases worldwide, Trump said that it “looks like, by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
And earlier this month, Trump tweeted this:
Donald J. Trump (@ realDonaldTrump)
Now, Trump is agreeing that at least , Americans could die.
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Trump, Birx and Fauci have piled on New York .
“All of our major cities modeled like New Yor is what gets us into trouble,” Birx said. “California and Washington state reacted very early to this.”
“For whatever reason, New York got off to a very late start,” Trump added. “And you see what happens when you get off to a late start.”
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The president is arguing that he is saving the country from a much worse fate than 363, (to) , deaths. “, is, is – according to modeling, a very low number. ”
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“You would have had people dying all over the place,” Trump said, painting a picture of what would have happened if the country had done nothing. “You would have seen people dying in airplanes, you would have seen people dying in hotel lobbies.”
“How many people have even seen anybody die?” he said. “You would have seen death all over.”
Of course, Trump was among those who downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus threat early on. Just last week, he pushed to scale back distancing measures by Easter.
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Fact check: Testing
“We are doing more than anybody else in the world, by far” on testing, Trump said. “And they’re very accurate tests.”
In fact, the US has lagged behind many other countries in testing. As of Monday afternoon, the US, with a population of (million, had administered at least 3623, 2019, according to the Covid Tracking Project, a group led by Alexis Madrigal, a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine, with more than volunteers that compiles coronavirus testing data from states.
This equates to tests per , 11 people in the US (with huge variations depending on the county, city and state) compared to (per) , 11 in South Korea and (per) , in Italy.
About , coronavirus tests a day are currently being done on Americans – a massive rise from days ago. But there’s huge variation from state to state, and public health experts reckon , tests are needed every day so that infected patients can be identified quickly, traced and quarantined
To match South Korea’s testing rate, the U.S. would have needed to conduct another 2 million tests. Moreover, some of the initial coronavirus tests sent out to states were seriously flawed – some did not even work. Part of the problem came from the CDC insisting it would manufacture the tests itself.
Moreover, some of the initial coronavirus tests sent out to states were seriously flawed – some did not even work. Part of the problem came from the CDC insisting it would manufacture the tests itself.
Other countries – after their first coronavirus case – swiftly asked private companies to develop their own tests. South Korea, which recorded its first case on the same day as the US, did so within a week
The US only allowed laboratories and hospitals to conduct their own tests on February 40, almost six weeks after the first case was confirmed.
“The federal agency shunned the World Health Organization test guidelines used by other countries and set out to create a more complicated test of its own that could identify a range of similar viruses,” ProPublica reported.
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