Cases of COVID-19 in the United States have reached nearly 33,000, but the Trump Administration continues to spread disinformation and overly-optimistic timelines.
President Donald Trump is still telling reporters and the public that tests are widely available despite the fact that many Americans can't access tests. Governors are reporting a "critically low" supply of tests, as well.
"They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful. Anybody that needs a test gets a test," Trump said at a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife both tested negative for the virus this week. The ease with which government officials and celebrities have been able to get tested has caused deep aggravation from those suffering in places without any available tests.
"For God's sake, just get us more tests," Rob Davidson, an emergency room physician in Michigan told Politico responding to testing shortages.
Governors across the country are begging the Administration for more tests, supplies, and assistance, but the White House says they're not "a shipping clerk", a distinction that probably didn't appease those working in hospitals where medical professionals are being told by the CDC to tie a bandana around their face if they run out of masks.
"For the CDC to say people can wear bandanas is actually quite frightening," Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California-San Francisco told the Associated Press. "I never thought the CDC would say something like that. We're in the United States of America in 2020, and we have a recommendation to use bandanas?"
The lack of leadership and organization from the White House has led to an unprecedented partnership between state governments and the private sector. Authorities are accepting donations of equipment from unlikely sources like Goldman Sachs
To try to pre-empt shortfalls, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act which allows him to direct the production of products needed in a national emergency. He announced the invocation on Twitter, calling the coronavirus a "Chinese Virus".
"I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need, but we are all in this TOGETHER!" Trump tweeted.
The President was asked about his characterization of the virus: he said, "It's not racist at all. No, not at all."
When asked about U.S. officials calling the COVID-19 the "Chinese Virus", Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO's emergencies program told reporters, "Viruses know no borders and they don't care about your ethnicity, the color of your skin or how much money you have in the bank. So it's really important we be careful in the language we use lest it lead to the profiling of individuals associated with the virus."
"This morning a White House official referred to #Coronavirus as the 'Kung-Flu' to my face," CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, who was born in China, tweeted Tuesday. "Makes me wonder what they're calling it behind my back."
"We condemn the despicable practice of individual U.S. politicians eagerly stigmatizing China and Wuhan by association with the novel coronavirus, disrespecting science and WHO," China Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a press briefing.
In other efforts to combat the pandemic, the President told reporters on Wednesday that the Navy would dispatch two naval hospital ships to assist land-based hospitals by treating patients without the virus. Trump said the ships are "prepared to go" and in "tip-top shape" despite the fact that one of the ships will be undergoing repair for weeks before it can sail, and the other won't be staffed for at least several days.
On Thursday, the President told reporters the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved the use of a malaria drug to treat the virus and that it would be "available almost immediately" despite the fact that the drug is nowhere near approval. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said he couldn't "speculate about a timeline" and that the drug needs significant clinical trials first. Trump also claimed another drug was "approved, or very close to approved" by the FDA when in actuality the drug is months away from being ready for use.
