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AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness


WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and ham-handed leadership by President Donald Trump. That’s a distorted picture. For starters, Trump hasn’t succeeded in cutting the budget.

He’s proposed cuts but Congress ignored him and increased financing instead. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.

A look at some of the Democrats’ remarks:

MIKE BLOOMBERG: “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.” — debate Tuesday night.

JOE BIDEN, comparing the Obama-Biden administration with now: “We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. … He’s wiped all that out. … He cut the funding for the entire effort.”

THE FACTS: They’re both wrong to say the agencies have seen their money cut. Bloomberg is repeating the false allegation in a new ad that states the U.S. is unprepared for the virus because of “reckless cuts” to the CDC. Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased.

Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies.

Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness — the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.

The broader point about there being “nobody here” to coordinate the response sells short what’s in place to handle an outbreak.

The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House. Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.

Among the health authorities overseeing the work are Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC’s principal deputy director and a veteran of previous outbreaks, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s infectious disease chief who has advised six presidents.

“The CDC’s response has been excellent, as it has been in the past,” said John Auerbach, president of the nonpartisan Trust for America’s Health, which works with government at all levels to improve the nation’s response to high-risk health crises. Some Democrats have charged that Trump decimated the nation’s public health leadership, but Auerbach said CDC’s top scientific ranks have remained stable during the past three years.

Will the preparations be enough?

One of the lessons learned in prior crises, such as the anthrax attacks, is not to offer false assurances when scientists have questions about the illness.

The CDC, for example, can accurately test for the virus but has struggled to get working test kits to state health departments. That’s key if there’s a need to rapidly increase the number of tests being performed.

The U.S. closed borders to travelers from China to buy time as preparations began but, “classically that’s not the way you address an outbreak,” Fauci told The Associated Press this week. “If you do it for a very limited period of time, temporarily until you can get things in order in your own country, it could have some benefit. But in general, the concept of closing borders, you cannot do that for an extended period of time.”

But with infections now in much of the world, one of the questions for U.S. policymakers is whether it’s time to modify any of those border or travel restrictions.

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Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

AP FACT CHECK: LINK HERE

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Jack February 28, 2020, 11:57 AM

    These lying left wing nut cases wouldn’t know the truth or be able to repeat the truth if you literally took a truth bat and beat them senseless with it.

  • ghostsniper February 28, 2020, 1:24 PM

    “…ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of the same reason ALL aspects of gov’t are abject failure, over paid, under worked, and unaccountable across the board.” If gov’t was a business it would have failed the 2nd day it was open and all of the employees would have been caged or killed.

  • DrTedNelson February 28, 2020, 2:32 PM

    I was listening the the leftist idiots on NPR last night whining about VP Pence. The Party of Science(TM)!

  • Casey Klahn February 28, 2020, 3:02 PM

    Hillary would’ve Benghazied this one right in the ass, I’m sure.

  • Vanderleun February 28, 2020, 4:22 PM

    Not the best thing about Trump (probably in the top ten): Not a Hillary. This would not have been Hillary’s Katrina, it would have been Hillary’s Hiroshima.

  • jwm February 28, 2020, 5:39 PM

    I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t had TV in my home for years. I am so unused to it that when I’m forced to see or hear it I find it absolutely horrifying. Last night I got dinner at a local spot. They had the evening ABC news on. It was like sticking my head in a cesspool, just having to endure it for the time it took to finish the meal. Non-stop hysteria, lies, and slander. And then non-stop political propaganda advertising for the next “School bond” initiative that will sink us 26 trillion in the hole so kids won’t die from asbestos and lead anymore. (I might vote for that one. I’m tired of smelling dead kids from the school yard a block away.) This morning I got breakfast out in another place. They had the local public TV broadcast on. (DEMOCRACY NOW!!) It was all third world horror, cross cut with Bernie campaign. If only we can elect a socialist then America can go forth and cure the world’s ills. I would note that every commenter on the show was horse-face ugly, but very sincere. Very.

    JWM