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Questioning authority critical in crisis
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Questioning authority in times of crisis is not unpatriotic. It’s critical. We want our leaders to be successful, that means holding them accountable. This makes our country stronger.
This week, we’ve done just that. Last Friday, President Donald Trump defended the nation’s response to the pandemic: “This administration inherited an obsolete, broken, old system that wasn’t meant for this. We discarded that system. ... And we’re very proud of what we’ve done.”
Kenneth Bernard, a former assistant surgeon general who wrote the 2004 biodefense plan under President George W. Bush, replied: “If it was broken, why didn’t you fix it two years ago?”
Our story Monday found that Congress passed a law in 2016 mandating a federal plan to protect against contagious diseases. “In 2018, President Donald Trump adopted a National Biodefense Strategy,” we reported. “But the document approved by Trump was a blueprint, not a game plan. The ideas weren’t implemented before COVID- 19 arrived in the USA. And the federal government’s response shows it.”
We also dug in to Trump’s claim that two malaria drugs are a potential antidote for COVID- 19. Experts we spoke to in Tuesday’s story noted the drugs are unproven against coronavirus and carry their own risks of side effects.
World leaders aren’t working a coordinated plan either, Deirdre Shesgreen reported Thursday.
“During other international crises – such as the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and the global economic meltdown in 2008 – world leaders joined forces to confront the threat of disease and economic collapse,” she wrote.
The reaction to COVID- 19 has been very “state- centric,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
As a result, our story shows, “individual governments are competing to secure scarce medical supplies from a strained global supply chain, closing borders with little to no notice to their neighbors, and lobbing verbal broadsides that threaten to deepen the discord.”
And in an important story publishing today, our reporters tracked down officials previously in charge of stockpiling emergency medical supplies for the U. S. Those officials told us the stockpile has never had enough funds to buy everything experts believed was needed for the variety of threats facing the American public. Each year, they took educated guesses about what to buy, and recently, that hasn’t included large amounts of masks or ventilators. That’s why there is a shortage of both.
Dr. Tom Frieden, one of the nation’s leading experts on public health and infectious disease, told us he questions why the CDC isn’t “centrally involved in making decisions” during this crisis.
Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former New York City health commissioner, was on a video conference with the USA TODAY editorial board Tuesday.
“This is the first outbreak in the last 75 years that CDC hasn’t been centrally involved in making decisions at the table,” he said. “Not that it’s the only group that makes decisions, but it’s got unique expertise in communicating those decisions. And frankly, I feel less safe because of that.
“CDC has the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases ( NCIRD). There are 700 professionals working there. They’ve worked, on average, for 20 years on respiratory viral infections,” he said. “They’re really good. Look, I’m an infectious disease specialist who’s worked on lung infections, and I wouldn’t trust myself to make these decisions. I would trust them to bring the best decisions out. … The public health experts are the folks at CDC, and not having them there is just not safe.”
And, of course, we’re here to help. To connect you. To inform and empower you. To elevate truth and snuff out misinformation.
USA TODAY was just cited as one of the “brands doing good during difficult times” for our free daily coronavirus newsletter. All our coverage is free at coronavirus. usatoday. com. We’re happy with the shout out, as this is a primary goal for us. To help.
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We’re investigating news that directly impacts your life: how layoffs are disproportionally impacting black and Latino workers, the concerns of people with disabilities, and just exactly what is in the stimulus bill.
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And in the past nine days, our new fact check team has investigated 17 claims circulating on social media. Everything from will Trump invoke the Stafford Act to order a national, mandatory two- week quarantine ( false) to is it true that pets will not catch and spread the coronavirus to their owners. Yes, that’s true.
“The amount of misinformation being published on coronavirus is truly staggering,” said Katie Wadington, one of our fact check editors.
That’s why our efforts, and those of all journalists out there working to spread the truth, are more important than ever. There have been more than 7 million views of our coronavirus fact checks in the past nine days.
“I am doing this,” says fact check editor Martina Stewart, “because, like all journalists, I’m committed to facts and providing useful information to people that helps inform their lives and helps them make critical decisions as citizens.”
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