Prestigious Medical Journal Slams Trump Admin COVID-19 Response In Editorial

Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaks during the daily briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, at the White House on April 17, 2020. (Photo by A... Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaks during the daily briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, at the White House on April 17, 2020. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The prestigious medical journal The Lancet took square aim at the Trump administration on Friday, urging Americans to elect a president “who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.”

The administration, the unsigned editorial argued, has enacted an “inconsistent and incoherent national response to the COVID-19 crisis” and marginalized public health experts.

The article focused on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has been unusually absent from the Trump administration’s public COVID-19 messaging. That started, as the Lancet noted, when the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Nancy Messonnier warned on Feb. 25 that “disruption to everyday life might be severe.”

“Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at White House briefings on COVID-19,” The Lancet noted.

The editorial took stock of some of the CDC’s missteps. In July 2019, the Trump administration eliminated a key CDC public health position in China — an American epidemiologist tasked with training others in the country — thus eliminating key eyes and ears on the ground. And the CDC bungling early testing for COVID-19 stateside, blurring the picture of the disease as it grew across the country.

That the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx reportedly said last week “there is nothing from the CDC that I can trust,” the Lancet argued, was “a shocking indictment of an agency that was once regarded as the gold standard for global disease detection and control.” (Birx, The Daily Beast reported separately, is one of several administration officials pressuring the CDC to change how it counts COVID-19 statistics. The proposed changes, which are championed by Trump himself, would reduce the official death toll.)

Still, according to the editorial, “punishing the agency by marginalising and hobbling it is not the solution.”

“The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets — vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear,” the editorial argued. “But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency.”

Latest News

Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for ghost ghost says:

    Just those elitist “scientists” with their stupid “facts” and “caring about lives.”

    Right, Donnie?

  2. We say it over and over but it still comes to mind… how did we get here? How do we get away from here? When will the world get back to normal. Will history call this the modern dark ages?

  3. Predicted responses from the Trump Administration:

    1. “Who’s Lancet?”
    2. “Fake news.”
    3. “Lancet is a left-wing conspiracy to undermine Trump.”
    4. “Lancet is a bunch of foreigners.”
    5. “Many people are saying that Lancet manufactured the covid-19 virus in its lab.”
    6. “Obama did it.”
  4. The Lancet, headquartered in “socialist” England.
    What do they know?

  5. Letting the days go by.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

204 more replies

Participants

Avatar for austin_dave Avatar for ghost Avatar for marby Avatar for meri Avatar for eggrollian Avatar for cervantes Avatar for steviedee111 Avatar for thebigragu Avatar for lastroth Avatar for pine Avatar for castor_troy Avatar for birdford Avatar for erratum Avatar for katscherger Avatar for kelaine Avatar for luckie Avatar for the_loan_arranger Avatar for dominic Avatar for kenga Avatar for occamscoin Avatar for rascal_crone Avatar for rucleare Avatar for Hatmama Avatar for LeeHarveyGriswold

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: