Pres. Trump has at times contradicted leading health experts—and his own officials.
During a White House briefing with the coronavirus task force on Tuesday, Trump insisted that he"always viewed [the outbreak] as very serious."
"The danger in providing inaccurate or politically-motivated information in a pandemic," Cohen said,"is that people will either panic because they don't have confidence that the government is protecting them, or people will disregard the crisis altogether and fail to take the safeguards to protect themselves, their family and their communities.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease at the National Institute of Health, one of the nation’s top public health experts, was more frank in his assessment, calling the country's testing capacity"a failing." Adm. Brett Giroir, the Department of Health and Human Services' assistant secretary of health, reported nearly 60,000 tests had been conducted in the United States as of Tuesday.
Last month, as the number of Americans infected with the virus grew to 60, Trump told the public that the number of coronavirus cases in the country was dwindling near zero. Former homeland security adviser to President Trump, Tom Bossert, now an ABC News contributor, said,"Success will look like we overreacted."
"Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” he said. “By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than one percent of those infected." COVID-19, meanwhile, has already infected at least 214,890 people globally and killed at least 8,730, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
But according to public health experts, a coronavirus vaccine will likely take around 18 months to develop, produce and distribute. ABC's Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, however, said leaders, like doctors, need to adopt a bedside manner.
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