If there's one axiom for governing in the midst of a life-threatening crisis, it's to keep the public in the dark. Or at least, that's the way Donald Trump sees it. All government health officials have now been ordered to get clearance from public health mastermind Mike Pence before issuing any statements or making any public appearances related to the coronavirus, according to The New York Times. In other words, scientists will now have their conclusions about a potential pandemic censored by politicians when it comes to public dissemination.
As Obama administration alum Ron Klain noted on Twitter, when he served as the White House Ebola Response Coordinator in 2014-15, they "never told" the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or National Institutes of Health (NIH) what to say. "If the WH is doing that now, it is a danger to public health," he wrote.
But that's exactly what the White House is doing. The Times writes that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a leading expert on viruses and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, has told colleagues the White House ordered him not to talk on the topic without first getting approval to do so.
The move is apparently an effort to blunt the conflicting signals coming from the White House versus those who actually know something about science, particularly at the CDC and NIH. After the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, indicated in a press briefing Tuesday that the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. wasn't so much a matter of if it would happen but when, the stock market plummeted. Trump has been pretty rage-y ever since.
During his coronavirus briefing Wednesday, Trump disputed the idea that spread of the virus in the United States was inevitable. Instead he floated the idea that the threat of an outbreak "remains very low," even as he conveyed a sense of uncertainty about how the virus would play out.
On any level, Trump's "low" prediction was classically stupid. Over-promising and under-delivering in a crisis situation could result in panic. But then again, Trump also tapped Pence as the point person on the issue after Pence pretty much singlehandedly botched the response to an HIV outbreak in Indiana while he was serving as governor. Based on Pence's handling of that crisis, the cases of new HIV infections in rural Scott County outpaced the number of new infections through injection drug use in New York City the previous year, according to USA Today. Heckuva job, Mikey.
Still, Trump thinks Pence is a genius pick.
"I’m having everybody report to Mike," Trump told White House reporters Wednesday. "Mike has been very good, very adept. Anybody that knows anything about healthcare, they look at the Indiana model, and it’s been a very great success. It’s been a tremendous model in terms of healthcare. And this is really an offshoot of that."
For all of our sakes, let's hope Pence's handling of this situation is nowhere near an "offshoot" of his nimble work in Indiana.
