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Stock markets are tumbling (it was the largest single point drop in history Thursday), there’s a mysterious new case in California and the world map is lighting up with countries affected by the coronavirus outbreak. The White House responded by telling public health officials to coordinate the communications through the office of Vice President Mike Pence.
Pence tapped a health expert as his coronavirus coordinator, but it’s clear he’s going to have an important role as the public face of the administration’s response.
Trump’s views – President Donald Trump has already showed he personally does not grasp the facts of coronavirus after he incorrectly disputed the fatality rate of the disease in an exchange with CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta at Wednesday’s White House briefing.
“Trump has it backwards. Instead of silencing the experts and having more spin from the White House, we ought to silence the spin from the White House and hear from the experts,” said Ronald Klain, who coordinated the Obama administration’s Ebola response in 2014 and 2015, to Jake Tapper on CNN.
Everything you need to know on coronavirus
- Here’s a timeline of the outbreak
- Congress is close to approving a special spending package – it’s not yet clear if it’ll be in the $4 billion or the $8 billion range.
- A whistleblower alleges that US personnel were sent to help evacuees without proper equipment
- Previous efforts to shrink government could hamper coronavirus response
On the Daily DC podcast I talked to David Chalian about how the true test for politicians as leaders comes in the events that no one sees coming. Listen here.
Mike Pence and public health
The day after he was tapped to lead the task force, Pence took the time to give a political speech at CPAC, a conservative gathering, in Washington.
“While the risk to the American public remains low, like the President said yesterday, we’re ready. We’re ready for anything,” he said. Trump had directed him “to lead a whole of government approach” to the disease, Pence said. He also said this not a time for partisanship, right before trying to tie Democrats to socialism.
That speech came as his previous experience in this area is under serious scrutiny.
Slow to address an HIV outbreak in Indiana – His slow action and moral opposition to needle exchanges may have contributed to a crisis in Indiana in 2014.
Said smoking doesn’t kill – There is also some head scratching about his insistence in 2000 that smoking doesn’t actually kill people.
Said encouraging condom use endangers lives – During a CNN town hall back in 2002, he said condoms are a poor way to stop the spread of sexually transmitted disease and actually endanger the lives of millions of young people.
At issue back in 2002 was then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s endorsement of condom use for sexually active people.
Pence: Well, Wolf, I think it was — given the enormous stature that Colin Powell rightly has, not only in America but in the world community, it was a sad day. I don’t think any administration has had a worse day since boxers and briefs on MTV. And the truth is that Colin Powell had an opportunity here to reaffirm this President’s commitment to abstinence as the best choice for our young people, and he chose not to do that in the first instance, but — and so I think it’s very sad. The other part is that, frankly, condoms are a very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases, and in that sense, Wolf, this was — the secretary of state maybe inadvertently misleading millions of young people and endangering lives.
None of the things above have anything directly to do with coronavirus. But they all very much raise questions about Pence’s openness to the input of public health professionals.
Interesting side note about Democratic candidate Mike Bloomberg and abortion rights: In reading about Pence and condoms, I came across mention of him in a 2002 CNN town hall as the then-Republican New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg working to make abortion services more accessible nationally by offering training to OB-GYNs at New York public hospitals … just an interesting note given the criticism Bloomberg faces in the Democratic primary now for being a Republican back then!
Regardless of who wins the Democratic primary, there’s going to be a clear difference between one side and the other. Read it here.
The 1918 flu pandemic shows why officials must tell the truth
Remember the Spanish Flu? It actually may have started in the US. It’s the global flu pandemic that killed more than 670,000 Americans and tens of millions of people worldwide about 100 years ago.
Worst Case. It’s basically the worst case scenario for what could happen with a pandemic outbreak. There’s no indication that coronavirus will turn into that.
Tell the truth. But John M. Barry, who wrote a book about that outbreak, has studied the issue extensively. He wrote in Smithsonian Magazine a few years ago that one reason that pandemic was so devastating is that, in the early stages, health officials didn’t tell the truth.
It was illegal to criticize the government back then. There were a number of reasons for that, including that the US was in the midst of World War I and Congress had passed a law – the Sedition Act, since largely repealed – that made it illegal to criticize the government.
“Against this background, while influenza bled into American life, public health officials, determined to keep morale up, began to lie,” Barry wrote, pointing to examples of officials spreading happy talk and the press at the time not pushing them for the truth.
“In my view, the most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth,” he says at the end of the piece.
Get ready for your daily life to be impacted
Officials at the CDC have warned that it’s not a question of if, but when the novel coronavirus will spread in the US. How could the possible spread change our daily lives? Telework could be urged or required. Schools could be shut down. This could get very real.
“We expect we will see community spread in this country,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a press briefing Tuesday.
“We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare in the expectation that this could be bad.”
What are we doing here?
The American system of government has been challenged to deal with a singular President and a divided country that will decide whether he should get another four years in the White House.
Stay tuned to this newsletter as we keep watch over the Trump administration, the 2020 presidential campaign and other issues of critical interest.