When Trump’s own medical advisers refuse to correct his misleading claim, the coronavirus trust gap grows
“I’m not going to get into who is right and who is wrong,” Hahn, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told Bash during CNN’s “State of the Union” when she asked him to explain the basis for the President’s claim and why he would be pushing the narrative that most Covid-19 cases are harmless when his public health experts are saying the opposite.
“What I’ll say is that we have data in the White House task force. Those data show us that this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously,” the FDA chief said, after Bash asked him for the fourth time to correct the misinformation from the President.
If Trump officials are afraid to correct basic facts in the midst of a pandemic — where the President seems to believe his reelection campaign is contingent on his ability to deliver good news about an economic revival and finding a vaccine to stop the spread of the virus — can Americans trust the information coming from Trump and the administration about the safety and effectiveness of a potential vaccine later this year or next?
While Hahn urged Americans to follow the guidance from the CDC and public health experts — noting that if they do not follow the guidelines from the CDC they are putting themselves and “your loved ones at risk” — he did not delve into the statistics that better explain why the President’s 99% claim is so misleading.
Beyond that, the World Health Organization has said that 20% of all people who are diagnosed with coronavirus are sick enough to need oxygen or hospital care. And cities like Los Angeles, Houston and other parts of Texas, Arizona and Florida are watching their hospitals fill up with Covid-19 cases as the virus spikes in those hotspots, once again raising concern about the availability of intensive care unit beds.
“We need to accept the fact that we’re in the second wave right now,” former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Sunday during CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “It’s not a clear line of sight on how we’re going to get this under control.”
CNN’s Maggie Fox contributed to this report.
