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Trump’s Admission On Coronavirus Testing Exposes His Failure To Deal With The Crisis, Puts Americans At Risk

By June 22, 2020No Comments

“I Said To My People Slow The Testing Down” 

Trump’s Admission On Coronavirus Testing Exposes His Failure To Deal With The Crisis, Puts Americans At Risk

Trump’s Remark Not The First Time He Expressed Opposition To Testing

Not A Joke: His Words Are Backed Up By Actions, Including Withholding $14 Billion For Testing & Reluctance To Use The DPA

Testing Remains Dangerously Low

During his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump admitted that he called for a slowdown in testing in order to artificially suppress the number of coronavirus cases in the United States. Despite his aides’ efforts to claim that Trump was joking when he said he tried to slow down testing, Trump’s record speaks for itself. 

For months, Trump has publicly downplayed the need to test and his administration’s official policy has been to insufficiently support testing and withhold $14 billion in funding for testing and contact tracing. Trump’s failure to test has had deadly consequences: more than 120,000 people have died, the economy was forced to fully shut down, and coronavirus is continuing to spread at record levels in states that reopened without adequate testing in place.

Trump’s Admission That He Demanded Aides “Slow The Testing Down” Was Not The First Time He Came Out Against Testing

  • June 22, 2020: Trump On Testing: “We’ve Done Too Good A Job… The Reason We Have More Cases Is Because We Do More Testing Than Any Other Country By Far.” “If it did slow down, frankly,  I think we’re way ahead of ourselves, if you want to know the truth. We’ve done too good a job, because every time you go out with 25 million tests, you’re going to find more people so they say, ‘Oh, we have more cases.’ The reason we have more cases is because we do more testing than any other country by far.” [Interview, Scripps, 6/22/20] 
  • June 21, 2020: Trump Claimed “When You Do Testing To That Extent, You’re Gonna Find More People You’re Gonna Find More Cases. So I Said To My People Slow The Testing Down, Please.” “‘When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down, please,’ Trump told a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where many supporters were not wearing face masks.” [Reuters, 6/21/20]
  • June 18, 2020: Trump Asserted “The Problem Is When You Test, You’re Finding Cases.” TRUMP: “The problem is when you test, you’re finding cases, you’re finding kids that had it and you know, etc, etc.” WALL STREET JOURNAL’S MICHAEL BENDER: “Why is that a problem?” TRUMP: “Well, the problem is because we’re showing cases whereas other countries that don’t have testing capacity, they don’t show cases. So they say the United States has more cases than anybody else. That’s because we do more testing.” [Interview, Wall Street Journal, 6/18/20]
  • June 15, 2020: Trump: “If We Stopped Testing Right Now, We’d Have Very Few Cases, If Any.” “And as I said this morning, that’s probably the downside of having good testing is you find a lot of cases that other countries, who don’t even test, don’t have. If you don’t test, you don’t have any cases. If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.” [Roundtable, Washington, DC, 6/15/20]
  • May 14, 2020: Trump Falsely Claimed That “If We Didn’t Do Any Testing, We Would Have Very Few Cases.” “And don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world,’ he added. ‘But why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.” [Politico, 5/14/20]
  • May 7, 2020: While Downplaying The Need For Daily Testing For White House Officials, Trump Argued That Testing Was A “Fallacy.” “Over the past week or so, though, Trump has been more direct about his disregard for the importance of testing — culminating in the ‘overrated’ comments Thursday. ‘But they do the tests, and it just shows you that the fallacy — it’s what I’ve been saying: Testing is not a perfect art,’ Trump said May 7, adding: ‘But even when you test once a day, somebody could — something happens where they catch something.’” [Washington Post, 5/15/20]
  • Trump On May 6, 2020: “If We Did Very Little Testing, We Wouldn’t Have The Most Cases. So, In A Way, By Doing All Of This Testing, We Make Ourselves Look Bad.” “On Wednesday, Trump said that too much testing makes the US ‘look bad.’ ‘So the media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad,’ Trump said during a meeting with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.” [Business Insider, 5/7/20]
  • April 9, 2020: While Public Health Experts Stressed That More Testing Was Necessary To Ease Social Distancing, Trump Argued That Widespread Testing “Isn’t Necessary.” “As public health experts and U.S. officials begin to think about how and when the country should start easing social distancing, President Donald Trump on Thursday said widespread testing ‘isn’t necessary, but would be a good thing to have’ before the economy reopens.’” [Forbes, 4/9/20]

Trump’s Antagonism Toward Testing Is Not Limited To Rhetoric — Insufficient Testing Is Trump Administration Policy 

  • The Trump Administration Has Withheld $14 Billion In Funding For Coronavirus Testing And Contact Tracing. “The Trump administration has been sitting on nearly $14 billion in funding that Congress passed for coronavirus testing and contact tracing, according to Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Patty Murray of Washington. The top Democrats said in a letter Sunday to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar that the Trump administration has ‘still failed’ to distribute more than $8 billion out of $25 billion appropriated by Congress to expand testing and contact tracing. The letter indicated that Congress passed these funds as part of a coronavirus relief bill in April.” [NBC News, 6/21/20]
  • HHS’ May Testing Plan Called For The Federal Government To Acquire So Few Testing Supplies That Experts Called It “Absurd.” “To ensure that States have the collection supplies that they need through December 2020, the Federal government plans to acquire 100 million swabs and 100 million tubes of viral transport media, and distribute these supplies to States as requested to meet their individual State plans. This large-scale acquisition reflects a significant expansion of current capacity and is a result of the broadening of available swab and media types authorized by the FDA and use of Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to increase production of swabs.” [HHS, COVID-19 Strategic Testing Plan, 5/24/20]
    • Harvard Global Health Institute Director Dr. Ashish Jha Said Of The Trump Administration’s Testing Plan: “The Idea That 300,000 Tests A Day Is Enough For America Is Absurd.” “‘On the face of it, the idea that 300,000 tests a day is enough for America is absurd,’ said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.” [New York Times, 5/25/20]
  • For Weeks, The Trump Administration Delayed Invoking The Defense Production Act To Increase The Production Of Medical Supplies Necessary To Increase Testing. “President Donald Trump will use the Defense Production Act to compel an unnamed company to produce 20 million more coronavirus testing swabs every month — weeks after labs and public health officials started warning that shortages of these swabs were hurting efforts to ramp up testing nationwide… Asked why his administration waited for weeks to use the Defense Production Act on swabs, Trump alternately claimed that states have ‘millions coming in’ already, that states can procure them on their own, and that governors “don’t know quite where they are” and need the federal government’s help.” [Politico, 4/19/20]
    • May 6, 2020: Nine Democratic Senators Write Trump Urging Him To Invoke Title III Of The Defense Production Act To Ramp Up Production Of Supplies Needed For Testing. “Nine prominent senators — all in the Democratic caucus — have penned a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to use wartime authorities to increase the amount of protective personal equipment (PPE) and testing supplies needed to confront the coronavirus. Led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and joined by Sens. Angus King (I-ME), Gary Peters (D-MI), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Jack Reed (D-RI), the letter details how states have struggled to get what they need for their outbreak response.” [Vox, 5/6/20]
  • The Trump Administration Abandoned Talks Of Testing Most Workers Before Reopening The Economy, Citing A Lack Of Tests. “For the last several weeks, health and other administration officials had been discussing having most workers tested for the virus before they returned to work, both to protect businesses afraid of becoming the sites of large outbreaks and to quickly identify and isolate infected people to prevent another wave of cases. But in the last few days, the strategy has morphed to prioritizing four key groups: health-care workers, food safety workers, those in nursing homes and people with chronic diseases — which would still amount to testing millions of people. The new strategy was driven by a realization that it would be impractical to test everybody, as well as a lack of available tests, said a senior administration official involved in the strategy.” [Washington Post, 4/16/20]

Trump’s Refusal To Sufficiently Ramp Up Testing Has Had Disastrous Consequences 

 

1. Trump’s Failure To Ramp Up Testing Allowed The Virus To Spread Undetected, Ultimately Contributing To More Than 120,000 US Deaths.

 

  • By Failing To Sufficiently Test At The Outbreak Of The Coronavirus Crisis, Trump Allowed The Coronavirus To Spread Undetected. “It was not until 29 February, more than a month after the Journal article and almost six weeks after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the country that the Trump administration put that advice into practice. Laboratories and hospitals would finally be allowed to conduct their own Covid-19 tests to speed up the process. Those missing four to six weeks are likely to go down in the definitive history as a cautionary tale of the potentially devastating consequences of failed political leadership.” [The Guardian, 3/28/20]
  • Today, There Have Been Nearly 2.3 Million Confirmed Cases And More Than 120,000 Coronavirus Deaths In The U.S. Despite accounting for only 4 percent of the world’s population, as of June 22nd, the US accounted for more than 25 percent of the world’s reported coronavirus cases and deaths. [Johns Hopkins University, Coronavirus Resource Center, Accessed 6/22/20]

 

2. Trump’s Failure To Sufficiently Test Forced The Economy To Shut Down.

 

  • Harvard Global Health Institute Director Dr. Ashish Jha: “Testing Was The Fundamental Failure That Forced Our Country To Shut Down.” “During the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing on testing, tracing, and targeted containment Dr. Jha said: ‘Every expert on the left, right, and center agrees that we had to shut our economy down because the outbreak got too big because we didn’t have a testing infrastructure that allowed us to put our arms around the outbreak. And so testing was the fundamental failure that forced our country to shut down.’” [Twitter, Coronavirus War Room, 5/13/20]

 

3. Trump’s Continued Failure To Adequately Test Has Made It More Dangerous For States To Reopen.

 

  • As Trump First Considered Pushing States To Reopen, Johns Hopkins Center For Health Security Senior Scholar Amesh Adalja Emphasized The “Only Way” To Control The Spread Of Cases Was Testing. “It’s not a question of whether there’s going to be more cases after you lift social distancing. They are going to occur. We just want them to occur at a rate that is manageable. And the only way that’s going to happen is with testing.” [Vox, 4/10/20]
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci Said Of States Reopening Without Robust Testing In Place: “You Can’t Just Leap Over Things And Get Into A Situation Where You’re Really Tempting A Rebound. That’s The Thing I Get Concerned About.” “‘We will get blips … there’s no doubt,’ Fauci told NBC’s ‘Today’ show. ‘When you pull back there will be cases, and what we need to do is make sure (states) have in place the capability of identifying, isolating and contact tracing individuals.’ Fauci urged states that don’t have that capability to go very slowly. ‘You can’t just leap over things and get into a situation where you’re really tempting a rebound. That’s the thing I get concerned about,’ he said.” [Associated Press, 4/30/20]
  • Despite Those Concerns, Trump Pushed States To Reopen Without Adequate Testing In Place While Many Struggled To Conduct Urgent Testing Of Those With Symptoms Or In High-Risk Groups. “But as states begin to reopen, the nation is far from being able to conduct the kind of widespread surveillance testing that health experts say would be optimal. Many states are still struggling to conduct much more urgent testing of patients with symptoms, or those in high-risk groups. Few have the money or the personnel to also check on the presence of the virus in the general population or to reach out to people who have been in contact with those confirmed to be ill.” [New York Times, 4/25/20]
  • Now, Cases Are Spiking In 29 States After Trump Pushed States To Reopen Prematurely. “A White House adviser said Sunday that the Trump administration is preparing for a possible second wave in the novel coronavirus pandemic this fall, as 29 states and U.S. territories logged an increase in their seven-day average of new reported cases after many lifted restrictions in recent weeks.” [Washington Post, 6/22/20]

Despite Trump’s Bragging, Testing Levels Remain Dangerously Below The Levels Experts Say Are Needed To Control The Virus’ Spread

  • Harvard Global Health Institute Director Dr. Ashish Jha Believes We Will Need At Least “Two Or Three Times” More Tests Than The 40 To 50 Million Tests Adm. Giroir Estimates The U.S. Will Have Capacity For By September.  “Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, says Giroir’s prediction of 40 million to 50 million tests per month by September won’t be enough to tamp the virus down as the country returns to work and school. ‘I believe that we will need two or three times that number of tests, if not more, if we’re going to have a shot at keeping our economy open and keep our people protected during the fall and winter,’ he said.” [Politico, 6/17/20]
  • Harvard Global Health Institute Director Dr. Ashish Jha Emphasized The Need To “Have Really Substantially Ramped-Up Testing And Isolation [Of New Cases]” To Actually Limit The Spread Of The Coronavirus. “To maintain a reproduction number that’s just over 1, or better yet, push it back to just under 1, even in the midst of further re-opening ‘would take a lot of work,’ Jha says. ‘You’d have to have really substantially ramped-up testing and isolation [of new cases].’ There’s also evidence emerging that widespread use of masks by people when they are out in public could help, Jha notes. Unfortunately, he says, it is hard to envision the U.S. adopting any of these practices to a sufficient degree ‘based on where we are today.’” [NPR, 6/12/20]
  • Harvard Global Health Institute Director Dr. Ashish Jha: “If Things Stay Basically Status Quo And We Continue Doing What We’re Doing, We’re Going To Continue Seeing 25,000 To 30,000 Additional Deaths A Month For The Foreseeable Future.” “’If things stay basically status quo and we continue doing what we’re doing, we’re going to continue seeing 25,000 to 30,000 additional deaths a month for the foreseeable future,’ Jha says. Grim as it is, even this picture may be overly rosy, Jha adds. ‘I’m worried that the idea that we’re going to stay flat all summer is a very optimistic view of what is going to happen over the next three months,’ he says.” [NPR, 6/12/20]
  • Harvard Safra Center For Ethics Director Danielle Allen Emphasized Multiple Models They Ran All Pointed To The U.S. Needing To Conduct More Than 3 Million Tests A Day. “The H.H.S. report noted that an analysis by the Safra Center at Harvard estimated the need at more than three million tests per day. But the federal report said that estimate was based on faulty assumptions. The Safra authors who crafted the estimate said that the federal report had cherry-picked one simple example from their analysis without considering other evidence. ‘We ran multiple models, all of which pointed to the same order of magnitude,’ said Danielle Allen, director of the Safra Center. ‘They’ve selected one non-primary model in an appendix and selectively adjusted assumptions to generate a different number.’” [New York Times, 5/25/20]

And Experts Say Trump’s Attempts To Downplay The Importance Of Testing Are Gravely Mistaken

  • Amesh Adalja, An Infectious-Disease Expert At The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Condemned Trump For Advocating For Slowing Down Testing And For Trying To Manipulate The Number Of Confirmed Coronavirus Cases. “The president’s comment, which came on the same day that eight states reported their highest-ever single-day case counts, drew a chorus of criticism from congressional Democrats and public health officials, who worry the president is more concerned with saving face than combating the pandemic. ‘Looking at it as a scoreboard is the wrong way to think about it,’ said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. ‘To think of it as something you can manipulate or slow down based on what the numbers look like speaks to a complete misunderstanding of what an infectious-disease response should be.’” [Washington Post, 6/21/20]
  • Ashish Jha, Director Of The Harvard Global Health Institute: “We’re Still Really Early In This Pandemic And It Is Not Helpful To Create A Mind-Set That We’re Almost Done.” “‘We’re still really early in this pandemic and it is not helpful to create a mind-set that we’re almost done,’ said Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. ‘It’s part of what we’re seeing in terms of large outbreaks going on in Arizona, Texas and Florida, is people have gotten convinced the pandemic is over.’” [Washington Post, 6/21/20]