Trump Administration Addresses ‘Community Spread’ of Coronavirus
Vice President Mike Pence said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will release new guidance soon for how different regions of the country should respond to the spread of coronavirus.
“We are working very closely with California, Washington state, New York, [and] Florida to develop community-specific recommendations for those areas where we’ve had what is known as community spread—a number of coronavirus cases that is being transmitted,” Pence said Tuesday at the daily coronavirus briefing at the White House.
“In the next 24 hours, working with those states, we’ll be publishing the CDC’s recommendations for what ought to be done,” the vice president said.
Pence, head of the administration’s coronavirus task force, also announced that private insurance companies agreed to waive all co-pays for coronavirus testing and treatment.
The vice president said testing will be available at LabCorp and Quest Diagnostic locations and 4 million additional test kits will be sent out by the end of the week. He also said the administration is working with Congress to address reforms to ensure that more masks are available.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was blunt about the challenge.
“As of this morning, there were 712 [cases], I believe with 27 deaths,” Fauci said. “I guarantee by the time of this evening that is going to be up and there will be several more, and tomorrow there will be several more.”
Still, he said, as a nation, the risk is relatively low.
“There are parts of the country right now that are having community spread in which the risk there is clearly a bit more than that: Washington [state], California, New York, and Florida,” Fauci said.
Fauci said the federal government needs to be where the infection is going to be as well as where it is to get ahead of other community spread.
“As a nation, we can’t be doing the kind of things we were doing a few months ago. It doesn’t matter if you are in a state that has one case or no cases,” Fauci added. “You have to start taking seriously what you can do now that if and when the infections will come. And they will come—sorry to say, sad to say—when you’re dealing with an infectious disease.”
People have many legitimate concerns about the coronavirus, including mitigating the spread, manufacturing enough test kits to detect the virus in sick people, finding an effective treatment, preventing shortages of protective gear for medical personnel, and offsetting potential costs to the taxpayers and to the economy, among many others.
As Virginia’s former secretary of health and human resources, I know how critical it is for federal, state, and local governments to work together in public health emergencies like this one.
It’s imperative that governments can easily share where outbreaks are occurring, coordinate containment in outbreak areas, and disseminate public information about proper hygiene to avoid further spread.
It’s also critical that they can quickly disburse federal dollars to state and local health departments to pay for diagnostic tools, treatments, and quarantines.
The Trump administration and Congress have taken some decisive steps, including passing a comprehensive funding package that provides state and local governments with direct financial support and funding to help hospitals and health centers increase their ability to handle a potential influx of coronavirus cases.
The bill also contains money for the research and development of a vaccine and diagnostic tools. President Donald Trump and administration officials have also met with drug companies to push for a vaccine and look for ways to ease regulatory obstacles to finding one.
In addition, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has more than 50 teams prepared to assist states and territories, and the administration is considering using a program that helps victims of natural disasters to cover the hospital costs of uninsured Americans who contract the coronavirus.
The administration has worked to slow the spread of the illness with travel restrictions, mandatory quarantines and screenings, and public information about commonsense public hygiene practices.
It suspended entry into the United States for most non-U.S. citizens coming from China and Iran, as they may pose a more serious risk of transmitting the disease. Both countries are suspected of covering up the extent of the outbreak.
The administration has also instituted a mandatory quarantine of Americans returning from China and added screenings for travelers from Italy and South Korea.
The administration should also focus on producing and deploying test kits and ensuring the preparedness of the health care system, which could be stressed in the coming months due to the outbreak.
Vice President Mike Pence is the natural choice to lead the federal response. It’s essential to have a coordinated effort among all the federal agencies that have a part in responding to the outbreak. As vice president, Pence has the cross-departmental authority the task requires, and as a former governor, he has the necessary management skills.
As the battle gets into full gear, now is the time for national unity, not playing politics with public health. Unfortunately, far too many politicians are using this situation for partisanship rather than problem-solving.
Additionally, if more federal funding is needed, Congress shouldn’t see the coronavirus epidemic as an opportunity to add extra spending that isn’t pertinent to solving the crisis.
The funding bill that passed last week contained more than a billion dollars for foreign aid programs and subsidies for private businesses with financial losses stemming from the outbreak.
The federal government’s priority should be providing the resources needed to mitigate the spread of coronavirus and find a treatment—not to load up a must-pass bill with unrelated wish-list items.
While people are looking to government for solutions, we also have to realize that a huge part of fighting COVID-19 can be found in exercising personal responsibility—good personal hygiene and commonsense social practices will go a long way in helping to prevent further spread of the virus.
Based on current projections, a majority of people who contract the virus will only experience mild-to-moderate flu-like symptoms. The elderly and those with compromised immune systems seem to be the most affected.
As of March 9, the coronavirus has infected slightly more than 540 people in 34 states and Washington, D.C., with 22 of those patients dying from the illness. Because there aren’t enough test kits to meet current demand, the number of cases detected will likely increase as testing capacity grows.
Subduing this epidemic will require the combined efforts of government at all levels, the private sector, and the American people. While there are many unknowns right now and the outcome is uncertain, we’ve survived far worse, and together, America will do so again.
4 Things to Know About Chinese Origins of Coronavirus
Before MSNBC personalities were calling it “racist” and “astoundingly gross” to note the origin of the new coronavirus, NBC News reported in January on what it called the “Wuhan coronavirus.”
In recent days, the Chinese government has sought to cast doubt on whether the virus, in fact, originated in the city of Wuhan after initially acknowledging that the disease emerged from Wuhan, known as “South China Seafood City.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., prompted outrage from China’s communist government and the mainstream media in the U.S. for using the phrase “Wuhan virus.”
President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and top administration officials on the White House’s coronavirus task force met Tuesday with executives from the insurance industry, who Trump said were taking strong actions to address the challenge.
“The biggest companies in our country, probably the biggest companies in the world, I can’t imagine being much bigger,” Trump said of the businesses represented by his guests during the Roosevelt Room meeting at the White House.
“But these are … the great health insurance companies and I think tremendous progress is being made. They’re willing to do things for the people and their customers and probably, in a true sense, beyond their customers that normally, I don’t think, they’d be doing.”
Trump didn’t address the issue of the disease’s Chinese origin, but here are what some other officials are saying about it.
1. What Chinese Officials Have Said in Denial
“Some in the media say this coronavirus is a China virus. This is extremely irresponsible and we firmly oppose that,” Zhao Lijian, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said March 4. “We are still tracing the origin of the virus and there is no conclusion yet.”Confirmed cases of #COVID19 were first found in China, but its origin is not necessarily in China. We are still tracing the origin.
“The COVID-19 first appeared in China. That doesn’t mean its origin is in China,” Zhao said.
Lin Songtian, China’s ambassador to South Africa, expressed a similar view in a tweet over the weekend.
2. How the Chinese Blame America
More than just dodging responsibility, the Chinese government reportedly has pushed propaganda that the United States started the virus.
The Washington Post reported last week that China’s communist government was promoting conspiracy theories online about U.S. involvement.
“In recent days, the run-of-the-mill mockery of the White House has taken a darker turn as the Chinese internet became inundated by the theory, subtly stoked by the Chinese government, that the coronavirus originated in the United States,” the newspaper said. “The U.S. government, one version of the theory goes, has been covering up mounting cases, and perhaps thousands of deaths, by classifying them as regular flu.”
There have been false internet rumors in the United States about China as well, but there is a clear difference, said Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow for Asian studies at The Heritage Foundation.
“The problem here is that this seems to be echoes of Soviet information warfare,” Cheng told The Daily Signal. “America has a free press, from CNN to Alex Jones, The New York Times, and the National Enquirer. China’s press is state-run. So these rumors are not random charges.”
The goal of the Chinese government is to define the virus as being as distant from government leaders and the Communist Party as possible, Cheng said.
Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Information, studies China’s internet.
“Go on WeChat, go on Weibo, look on Baidu search, and it’s full of ‘look at all the other countries getting sick,’ or ‘the virus came from the United States,’ or all different levels of conspiracy theories,” Qiang told the Post.
NBC News reported March 6: “In recent weeks … Chinese officials have appeared eager to float the idea that the virus did not necessarily start in their country at all.”
3. What Chinese Officials Used to Say
During a press briefing Friday, Pompeo sought to prevent China from escaping responsibility.
“The Wuhan virus that began at the end of last year is something that this administration is taking incredibly seriously,” Pompeo told reporters. “The State Department has been very involved from the beginning when we worked diligently to get hundreds of Americans out of Hubei province, out of Wuhan, and get them back to the United States safely.”
Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, in central China.
A reporter later said to Pompeo: “You called it the Wuhan virus, and I haven’t—that’s an accurate way to depict where it’s coming from.”
The secretary of state responded: “The Chinese Communist Party has said that this is where the virus started. So don’t take my word for it; take theirs.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping, in Feb. 3 speech to the Politburo, talked about Wuhan.
“After the outbreak of the new coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, on Jan. 7, when I presided over a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, I made a request for the prevention and control of the new coronavirus pneumonia,” Xi said.
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said Dec. 31:
Recently, some medical institutions found that many of the pneumonia cases received were related to South China Seafood City. After receiving the report,… the commission immediately launched a case search and retrospective investigation related to South China Seafood City in the city’s medical health institutions.
Twenty-seven cases have been found, of which 7 are in serious condition, and the remaining cases are stable and controllable. Two patients are expected to be discharged in the near future.
The clinical manifestations of the cases were mainly fever, a few patients had difficulty breathing, and chest radiographs showed bilateral lung infiltrative lesions. At present, all cases have been isolated for treatment, follow-up investigations and medical observations of close contacts are ongoing, and hygiene investigations and environmental sanitation disposals for South China Seafood City are ongoing.
4. What the Media Has Said
Cheng noted the Chinese government doesn’t have 100% control of the internet in China, and citizen journalists have been able to report what is happening in the country with the virus, though the government typically cracks down within a number of days.
“The Chinese are savvy in their observation of U.S. media and how parts of the punditry react,” Cheng said.
MSNBC anchor David Gura tweeted March 8: “FYI: Calling #COVID19 the ‘Wuhan Virus’ is racist.”
Several times in January, however, NBC News stories referred to the “Wuhan coronavirus.”
NBC wasn’t alone.
On Feb. 9, CNN posted a headline reading: “Wuhan coronavirus kills 97 more people in one day as death toll tops SARS.”
On Feb. 4, CNN posted a story headlined: “Confirmed Wuhan coronavirus cases top 20,000 as China marks the deadliest day.”
The New York Times ran a Feb. 4 headline saying: “Even Without Symptoms, Wuhan Coronavirus May Spread, Experts Fear.” The Times also ran a Feb. 2 piece headlined, “Wuhan Coronavirus Looks Increasingly Like a Pandemic, Experts Say.”
The Washington Post ran an opinion piece Feb. 2 with the headline: “What the Iowa disaster and the Wuhan virus have in common.”
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