How Trump covered coronavirus goofs

By ROBERT P. BOMBOY
By Robert P. Bomboy

Whenever Donald Trump starts beating his gums about terrible insults to the United States, you can bet he has something to hide or cover up. Misdirection is part of his playbook as a demagogue. Make a big fuss about something. Get the voters all riled up. By the end of the day Trump’s little problem will be forgotten.

That is the game he was playing last week, when he suddenly lashed out at the World Health Organization, launching broadsides of suspicion and acrimony, Strum und Drang, lightning and thunder.

His chapter and verse was that the World Health Organization was the Devil incarnate, conspiring with China not only to cause the deadly disease that he kept calling the “China virus,” but also delaying our counter-attack on the virus so badly that it would literally make us sick.

He wouldn’t stand for it. Didn’t they know he was rich! He would break them for it, take away the $500 million from their budget.

The real issue last week was that a larger and larger segment of the public had been asking why so many Americans were dying from the coronavirus and testing against the pandemic had been delayed so long and applied so ineffectively.

In his nightly press conferences and briefings – which he has commandeered as virtual campaign rallies that have sometimes lasted as long as two hours – Trump has shot his arrows in almost every direction seeking excuses for a devastating failure to get widespread and comprehensive coronavirus testing. The blame rightly goes to his administration’s lack of preparation, delays, and poor execution.

Scientists know that accurate testing is critical to stopping an epidemic: When one person gets a confirmed diagnosis, he or she can be isolated and won’t spread the disease further. Then their contacts can be identified and quarantined – so that they don’t spread the virus if they have become infected, too. That is particularly important for the coronavirus, which seems able to spread before people show symptoms, or when their symptoms are mild.

After problems arose with a test devised by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, public health officials could have switched to using successful tests that other countries were already using. But the Trump administration refused to do so, because it would have required changing bureaucratic procedures.

The federal government could also have eased regulations on American hospitals and laboratories, to allow them to create and manufacture their own tests. But federal officials did not do so for weeks. A Seattle laboratory with a promising test was blocked by existing regulations and red tape while other countries ramped up much earlier and faster.

These delays meant that the United States wasted much of the first two months. In January and February, China bought the world time with its aggressive action to contain the viral outbreak within its borders. The testing fiasco in the U.S. indicates we didn’t use that time well.

On Jan. 11 – a month and a half before the first coronavirus case not linked to travel was diagnosed in the United States – Chinese scientists actually posted publicly the genome of the mysterious new virus, and within a week virologists in Berlin produced the first diagnostic test for the disease. Soon after, researchers in other nations rolled out their own tests, too. By the end of February, the World Health Organization had shipped tests to nearly 60 countries. Because of our boneheadedness, the U.S. was not among them.

As in The Wizard of Oz, when Trump makes the lightning and thunder, it is high time to look behind the curtain.

Robert P. Bomboy has written for more than 60 national magazines and is the author of six books, including the novel “Smart Boys Swimming in the River Styx.” He taught for more than 30 years in colleges and universities, and he has been a Ford Foundation Fellow at the University of Chicago and in Washington, D.C.