The major news media are fond of fact-checking Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden, not so much. So, I'm going to do a little for them.
Mr. Biden, in last night's debate held Mr. Trump responsible for the deaths of thousands by virtue of his management of the coronavirus epidemic. According to Biden, Trump should have known in February, before the administration's lockdown guidelines were made public in March, what would be the eventual outcome, and instead he played it down.
To be sure, on Feb. 9 Mr. Trump noted there were thousands of deaths annually from influenza as compared to, as of that date, a total of 15 cases with no deaths, all in foreign travelers,. The first case of local community transmission was not to occur until 2/26 and the first recorded death on 2/29.
But at the same time was Mr. Trump taking the problem seriously? Well, before the above comment, between 1/29 and 1/31 Mr. Trump had assembled his Coronavirus Task Force, had started the first of numerous conference calls with all the governors with the purpose of producing an action plan for the outbreak and had declared a public health emergency and imposed a ban on flights from China. Mr. Biden's response to that final measure, which even seemed drastic to me at the time, was to accuse Mr. Trump of "hysteria, xenophobia and fear-mongering." He said pretty close to the same thing after Mr. Trump also restricted flights from Europe on 3/12. And his Democrat colleagues were no more prescient, with Mrs. Pelosi urging people to visit and congregate in San Francisco's Chinatown on 2/24, and on 3/2 Mr. DiBlasio making the same case to visit NYC, where at the time there was only one known case.
Mr. Biden contends that Mr. Trump had special access to the official information and so should have known better. But is that true? Here are some public statements by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the President's chief medical advisor from the CDC:
On 1/21 Dr Fauci in an interview with Newsmax noted that, although we had to take it seriously the infection "is not a major threat for the people of the United States. And this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about." On 2/17 in an Interview with USA Today Dr. Fauci explained that the risk of coronavirus in USA is "minuscule" and that "Now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask." On 2/28 Dr. Fauci wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that "the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza or a pandemic influenza". On the next day in an interview on the Today Show he said in reference to community spread that "right now, at this moment, there is no need to change anything you're doing on a day-to-day basis." Then on 3/9 Dr. Fauci told reporters that young, healthy people can go on a cruise if they'd like. "If you are a healthy young person, there is no reason if you want to go on a cruise ship, go on a cruise ship."
This is not to denigrate Dr. Fauci, who spoke with the evidence he had available. By the last date I mentioned there were a total of 84 cases and 2 deaths in the whole country. However, I do criticize Mr. Biden a bit since he knew what was going to happen and said nothing to Dr. Fauci to warn him.
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