President Trump's view of the coronavirus contrasts with those of federal health officials.
Trump told reporters while traveling in India Tuesday that he thought the virus in China “a problem that's going to go away,” and downplayed the mortality rate for a pathogen that has been confirmed to have killed 2,700 people.
Trump rejected the comparisons between the 2014 Ebola outbreak, which killed 11,310 people in West Africa, and the much more easily spread coronavirus when asked about it Tuesday, pointing to the lower mortality rate with the coronavirus. “There’s a very good chance you're not going to die. It's just the — it's very much the opposite. You're talking about 1 or 2 percent, where as in the other case, it was a virtual 100 percent.
Thomas Frieden, the former head of the CDC under the Obama administration, said Trump’s portrayal of a situation under control isn’t helpful and that the administration should be helping the public take steps to prepare. He said he believed it is inevitable that the virus will spread further within the United States.
The White House could find itself hobbled in its response by cuts to programs over the past three years designed to respond to just such a scenario. The White House hasfor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and eliminated several key positions focused on responding to a pandemic, including having a CDC staffer in China working with disease detectives there to quickly identify and contain new pathogens, said Frieden.
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