As Trump played down virus, health experts’ alarm grew

WASHINGTON >> Public health officials were already warning Americans about the need to prepare for the coronavirus threat in early February when President Donald Trump called it “deadly stuff” in a private conversation that has only now has come to light.

At the time, the virus was mostly a problem in China, with just 11 cases confirmed in the United States.

There was uncertainty about how the U.S. ultimately would be affected, and top U.S. officials would deliver some mixed messages along the way. But their overall thrust was to take the thing seriously.

“We’re preparing as if this is a pandemic,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters on Feb. 5. “This is just good commonsense public health.”

Trump, however, had a louder megaphone than his health experts, and in public he was playing down the threat. Three days after delivering his “deadly” assessment in a private call with journalist Bob Woodward, he told a New Hampshire rally on Feb. 10, “It’s going to be fine.”

Mixed safety messages added to confusion. There was considerable discussion about mask-wearing in the early days of the pandemic, with leading experts advising the public against it, saying to leave the masks for health care workers.

Trump himself told Woodward on March 19 that he had deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said. “I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Critics have long noted how Trump’s public comments failed to sync up with those of public health officials, contributing to confusion among Americans.

As Trump left for India on Feb. 23, he told reporters that the virus was “very much under control” and that the small number of infected people in the U.S. were “very well confined.”

But two days later, the CDC’s Messonnier told reporters, “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but more really a question of when it will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

Stocks plunged following her remarks and, soon after, Trump appointed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the White House coronavirus task force. At the news conference announcing Pence’s selection, Trump was asked if he agreed with the inevitability of COVID-19 in the United States.

“Well, I don’t think it’s inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared,” Trump said.

Dr. Howard Koh of Harvard’s school of public health said unflinchingly communicating what’s known as soon as possible helps build trust that will be necessary as the pandemic progresses.

Koh said the role of the White House in a pandemic is to galvanize national attention for public health officials and then step out of the way. But that hasn’t been the case under Trump, said Koh, who was at the Department of Health and Human Services under President Barack Obama.

As the fallout played out last week, Trump got some backup from Fauci, who told Fox News that he didn’t get the sense that Trump had distorted anything. But in an interview with MSNBC, Fauci noted the discrepancies between his own comments and the president’s.

“As you know, there were times when I was out there telling the American public how difficult this is, how we’re having a really serious problem, you know, and the president was saying it’s something that’s going to disappear, which obviously is not the case,” he said.