Donald Trump stepped into office with zero political experience, so we ended up with an administration that ignored warnings from the Intelligence community since January of the pandemic the world is facing now. We need a bold, honest, and reassuring leader, but instead, Trump has lied to the American people about the disease that is forcing entire states to shut down while the economy is on life support.
Dr. Larry Brilliant does have experience, though, and he has a very impressive resumé, specifically with pandemics. Brilliant, an epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox, was interviewed by Wired, and he had a lot to say about Trump’s handling of COVID-19. Brilliant, by the way, warned of an upcoming pandemic in 2006.
“The whole epidemiological community has been warning everybody for the past 10 or 15 years that it wasn’t a question of whether we were going to have a pandemic like this,” Brilliant told the outlet. “It was simply when. It’s really hard to get people to listen. I mean, Trump pushed out the admiral on the National Security Council, who was the only person at that level who’s responsible for pandemic defense. With him went his entire downline of employees and staff and relationships. And then Trump removed the [early warning] funding for countries around the world.”
Brilliant, who has worked with four presidents, warned that the coronavirus is “the most dangerous pandemic in our lifetime,” and said that Trump has been lying or calling the outbreak fake, or a “hoax.”
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“But did we get good advice from the president of the United States for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax,” Brilliant said. “There are still people today who believe that, to their detriment. Speaking as a public health person, this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.”
Americans need to be tested, but Trump has lied about when tests would be available to the public.
Brilliant notes that “by the time South Korea had done 200,000 tests, we had probably done less than 1,000.”
We need to hear the facts, instead of the dangerous lies Trump has been blurting out at his rallies COVID-19 briefings.
You can read the full interview here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
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