Criticism over virus secrecy
Trump administration blasted China for secrecy
Where President Donald Trump has criticized Chinese leader Xi Jinping over secrecy that led to the spread of coronavirus, critics are slamming Trump for lack of transparency regarding the virus’ spread at the White House.
For months President Donald Trump has insisted that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration needs to be held fully accountable for what he has declared is the “secrecy, deception and cover-up” that enabled COVID-19 to spread all over the world.
In the early days of the pandemic, China arrested and then silenced doctors who expressed concern about a strange new respiratory illness that appeared to be upending patterns of life and work across the sprawling city of Wuhan.
Now it’s the Trump administration that appears to be hush-hush when it comes to revealing information about how coronavirus spread all over the White House.
In addition to Trump and the first lady, a growing number of senior government officials and aides have tested positive for the virus. Trump has returned to the White House after spending three nights in the hospital. There are discrepancies in accounts of how sick he is. He says he feels better than he did “20 years ago,” though he appears to be out of breath in video footage of his return to the White House. He urged Americans “don’t be afraid of Covid” – public health messages that critics and health experts have slammed as woefully irresponsible and dangerous for the leader of a country that has surpassed 210,000 coronavirus deaths and 7.4 million infections.
But many questions remain unanswered: The White House says Trump started to feel unwell on Thursday and tested positive later that evening. When did he last test negative before that? The answer could reveal whether Trump was being tested as regularly as his administration has claimed. It could indicate, for example, whether he tried to conceal his condition and participated in a campaign rally in Minnesota on Sept. 30 while knowingly unwell. Although the White House later issued a statement claiming he “misspoke,” Trump’s physician Sean Conley said Saturday that the president’s initial diagnosis came “72 hours ago” – a Sept. 30 time frame.
A code of silence or at least confusion has reigned over questions to do with Trump’s health. His doctors and aides and Trump himself have offered a wide range of possibilities. On Friday, his symptoms were said to be “mild.” The next day, reporting revealed that Trump had been running a high fever and received supplemental oxygen for breathing difficulties. Conley said he was “very happy” with Trump’s progress, while Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told The Associated Press that the president’s vital signs were “very concerning” and that he “was not a clear path to recovery.”
As Trump briefly left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Sunday for a ride in an SUV past supporters cheering him on, his doctors confirmed he was taking dexamethasone, an aggressive steroid the World Health Organization says should be prescribed only for “severe and critical” COVID-19 cases. Trump was “not yet out of the woods,” Conley said Monday, the same day the president painted an optimistic view of his condition, saying in remarks from the White House shortly after he arrived from the hospital: “Now I’m better, and maybe I’m immune, I don’t know.”
Thomas J. Bollyky, director of the global health program at the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations think tank, noted in a post on Twitter that “Don’t be afraid of #Covid19. Don’t let it dominate your life” may not be “the obvious lesson to draw from a 3-day hospitalization of a U.S. President, an experimental drug having to be given to save him & an outbreak that has now engulfed WH staff + associates.”
But other voices defended Trump. “If the president bounces back onto the campaign trail, he will be an invincible hero, who not only survived every dirty trick the Democrats threw at him, but the Chinese virus as well. He will show America we no longer have to be afraid,” wrote Miranda Devine in a column for the New York Post that was retweeted by the president.
(As the coronavirus began to spread across the U.S., Trump repeatedly called it the “Chinese virus,” which many called racist and dangerous to Asian Americans.)
Trump has not been alone in criticizing China’s initial response to its coronavirus outbreak, in particular questioning whether Beijing’s attempt to quiet whistleblowing doctors in Wuhan allowed the disease to spread more rapidly in China and ultimately overseas. Beijing has also faced allegations that it has not been fully transparent over the origins of the virus and may have hidden early evidence of human-to-human transmission from World Health Organization scientists and other experts.
The Trump administration has also accused Beijing of providing false information about the pandemic to WHO.
The White House has stressed that Trump and others in his orbit had regular coronavirus screening. However, recommended coronavirus prevention measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing have not always been adhered to, as Trump’s many public appearances at political rallies and his comments at odds with the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, testify.
In fact, the Trump administration has downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic for months.