Pence to lead virus response
Trump — risk ‘very low’ — and experts disagree on possibility of domestic outbreak
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump on Wednesday named Vice President Mike Pence to coordinate the government’s response to the coronavirus, and he repeatedly played down the danger to the United States of a widespread domestic outbreak of the virus that is rapidly spreading across the globe.
Trump’s announcement, at a White House news conference, followed criticism that the administration’s response has been sluggish and after two days of contradictory messages about the virus, which has infected more than 81,000 people globally, killing nearly 3,000. The president expressed confidence that scientists would develop a vaccine, but he provided no details.
“The risk to the American people remains very low,” he said. “We have the greatest experts, really in the world, right here. We’re ready to adapt and we’re ready to do whatever we have to as the disease spreads, if it spreads.”
But top health care experts standing by the president’s side offered a much more sober assessment of the future risks to the health of Americans. Dr. Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned Amer
icans there would be more infections.
“Our aggressive containment strategy here in the United States has been working and is responsible for the low levels of cases that we have so far. However, we do expect more cases,” she said, insisting as Trump stood behind her: “The trajectory of what we’re looking at over the weeks and months ahead is very uncertain.”
Moments later, Trump contradicted that line, telling reporters that “I don’t think it’s inevitable.”
He left the door open to travel restrictions beyond China, to other hard-hit countries such as South Korea and Italy.
Earlier in the day, Trump condemned the news media, accusing journalists of making the situation “look as bad as possible” even as government health experts warned that the coronavirus threat in the United States is only beginning. Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, confirmed Wednesday afternoon a new American case, bringing to 60 the total number of infections that have been counted in the United States. Azar said that health officials were still figuring out how the new person became infected.
The politics of coronavirus shifted drastically Tuesday when Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters that “It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen.” She said that hospitals and schools should begin preparing for an outbreak, and that she had even spoken to her own family about “significant disruption of our lives.”
That message contrasted with reassuring tweets from Trump, who has been reluctant to give in to what he considers an “alarmist”
view about the virus, an administration official said. The president has repeatedly said that, like the flu, the new coronavirus will dissipate with warmer, more humid weather. Trump’s aides say he has focused on that possibility since he was first briefed on the virus, even though officials have warned him that relatively little is known about the virus, and it may not behave as others do.
The possibility of the virus spreading in the United States comes as the administration grapples with budget cuts and personnel moves that critics say have weakened the system for dealing with such health crises. The White House in 2018 eliminated a dedicated position on the National Security Council to coordinate pandemic response, the same year that the Trump administration narrowed its epidemiological work to 10 countries from 49.
In November, a task force at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which included five current and former Republican senators and House members, warned that “the United States remains woefully ill prepared to respond to global health security threats” and recommended the reinstatement of an NSC coordinator and a recommitment of funding and attention to global health programs.
Instead, the president’s budget request this month for the fiscal year that begins in October would cut the CDC’s budget by almost 16%, and the Health and Human Services Department’s by almost 10%. The proposal’s $3 billion in cuts to global health programs included a 53% cut to the World Health Organization and a 75% cut to the Pan American Health Organization.
It has fallen to Azar to make the case that the government is up to the task of containing the virus as anxiety grew around the world about vulnerability to a still-mysterious affliction that does not respect international borders.
New cases popped up across Europe, dozens of infections in Iran raised fears of an unbridled spread through the Middle East, and the first confirmed case was reported in Latin America — a Brazilian man who had returned from Italy just as Brazil is in the midst of its Carnival celebrations.
For the first time, more new cases were reported outside China — where the outbreak began two months ago — than inside, according to figures from the World Health Organization.
The Chinese authorities cautioned that the falling infection rate might be only temporary, while South Korean officials scrambled to contain the largest outbreak of cases outside China — including a U.S. soldier deployed in South Korea. Across the United States, universities began bringing students home from abroad and canceling overseas study programs.
Trump has privately expressed frustration to numerous officials about his administration’s efforts to confront the virus, and has discussed appointing a “czar” to manage the response, according to someone familiar with his comments.
But a spokesman denied that Trump was looking to hire a White House coronavirus coordinator, saying the president was “pleased” with Azar’s work as the head of a coronavirus task force.
Still, as recently as last weekend, the president grew furious that he had been sidelined from a decision to return some Americans infected with the virus to the United States, and he made his anger to Azar known. Officials in the White House have since wrestled with how best to present Trump with information during a fast-moving situation, one aide said.
The White House’s muscular internal messaging efforts kicked in Wednesday.
Supporters were pelted with multiple emails assuring them that Trump was overseeing an “aggressive coronavirus response,” and that the “full weight of the U.S. government” was working to safeguard Americans from illness, according to one message.
Trump’s attempts to calm the American public have also occasionally been laced with a degree of alarm, with Trump telling reporters at a news conference in India on Tuesday that “there’s a very good chance you’re not going to die.”
The White House in 2018 eliminated a dedicated position on the National Security Council to coordinate pandemic response, the same year that the Trump administration narrowed its epidemiological work to 10 countries from 49.