Remember the time when Donald Trump berated former President Barack Obama for not restricting travel during the 2014 Ebola outbreak?
In a glaring difference, Trump’s silence in the face of the Wuhan coronavirus hasn’t gone unnoticed.
While POTUS usually chimes in on everything from sports to celebrities, Politico reported that he was “trying something new with a global crisis: keeping quiet.”
For now, he is letting the Centers for Disease Control And Prevention (CDC) take charge. In fact, a briefing on the contagious disease that has five confirmed cases in the U.S. took place not at the White House, but at the health department.
When asked about it at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he simply told CNBC, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
According to CDC’s latest stats on the virus in the country, five cases have been positive, while 92 people are currently under investigation.
Americans on Twitter were quick to note that the Trump administration scrapped a whole National Security Council team focused on responding to global epidemics.
As you read about coronavirus, remember the Trump administration shut down the entire NSC Directorate on Global Health Security. And it cut funding to deal with pandemic diseases. (But we're building an awesome border wall). @BethCameron_DC @maddow @RonaldKlain https://t.co/JNeuAv6YFW
— Michael Carpenter (@mikercarpenter) January 22, 2020
According to a 2018 New York Times report, a budget proposal made by Trump offered three agencies — the CDC, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Defense Department’s health security programs approximately the same funding those agencies received between 2006 and the Ebola crisis.
Without more funding, the CDC would have to cut its health security fieldwork by 80 percent, according to its plan reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Monday called on the president to check that action and to appoint a Global Health Chief.
In a letter to Trump, 30 Democratic senators wrote that “outbreaks like this serve as a solemn reminder of the need for an unwavering commitment to global health security and the need for strong public health programs worldwide.”
The Coronavirus is not the first, and will not be the last, biothreat the U.S. faces. I’m calling for the appointment of a global health chief - a position established by President Obama in response to the Ebola crisis then eliminated by President Trump - to address the threat. pic.twitter.com/T06u4tGIlY
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) January 27, 2020
