On Balance | Donald Trump and his coronavirus task force are doing a bad job. Let a woman take over
- The US president takes no responsibility for the coronavirus testing debacle. Meanwhile, Nancy Messonnier, the health official who warned of community spread in the US, is not part of the White House coronavirus task force
Dr Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), went mute at a US congressional committee hearing last week when Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked him who at his agency was responsible for ensuring that Americans who need to be tested for Covid-19 get the test.
He looked helplessly at Dr Anthony Fauci, the very distinguished head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who acknowledged that no such responsibility exists at any level of the United States government.
Others at the CDC have also gone quiet, but not because they don’t have answers.
Yet Redfield tried to play down Messonnier’s comments, telling lawmakers afterwards her message “could have been done much more articulately from what the American public heard”.
If Messonnier’s message could be faulted for anything, it’s that “this could be bad” was an understatement. Although she continues to show up at CDC briefings with updates on the situation she tried to warn Americans about, she is not part of the White House coronavirus task force. President Donald Trump put Vice-President Mike Pence in charge of that ad hoc group because Trump needs someone willing to spew utterly false assertions like the assurance that any American can get a Covid-19 test.