Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar participated in a quite tense interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper this Sunday morning on State of the Union. Azar addressed Donald Trump’s recent remark that the country would reopen even if there isn’t a proven vaccine by the end of the year, and also suggested that the nation’s high coronavirus numbers are due to comorbidities of our people, rather than failings of the federal government. When asked about people reemerging in crowded bars in states like Ohio and Wisconsin, he stressed that some people will be “irresponsible,” and that’s part of what freedom offers us in the U.S. Let’s dig into the clips below.
Azar backed up Donald Trump’s insistence that the nation will reopen with or without a vaccine, saying “not everything depends on a vaccine.” Azar claimed: “We're committed to delivering a vaccine, we'll put the full power of the US government and our private sector towards getting a vaccine… but that's one of a multi-factorial response program.”
Tapper also noted that while the U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, we have about 30% of the world’s officially reported coronavirus deaths. He quoted Azar’s comments from January, in which he stated the risk was “low.” Tapper asked it simply: “Did the U.S. government fail?”
According to Azar, that’s a no. Why? Because our people have “greater risk profiles” in some communities. Azar also suggested we’re testing more than other countries and praised “historic border control measures.” Azar also said the virus has remained within our healthcare system’s “capacity.”
Azar blames coronavirus rates on comorbidities, noting that the American population has “significant unhealthy comorbidities” that make “many individuals” in communities, specifying, “African American and minority communities particularly at risk.” Mind you, Azar doesn’t explicitly identify structural inequalities, like systemic racism, environmental racism, or long-term worse access to healthcare. He notes there are “disparities” which are an “unfortunate legacy” in the healthcare system before saying the “response in the United States has been historic.”
Tapper said he wanted to give Azar a moment to “clear it up,” because it sounded like he was saying “the reason there are so many dead Americans is because we’re unhealthier than the rest of the world?” To which Azar claimed comorbidities, like obesity, hypertension, and diabetes "make us at risk."
Tapper countered that by saying it doesn’t mean it’s the fault of the American people that the government “failed to take adequate steps in February.”
“Please don’t distort,” Azar said. “It’s not about fault, it’s about simple epidemiology.”
And social distancing? Oh, that irresponsibility is just “part of the freedom we have in America.”
Instead, he stresses that “we” have got to get the economy and schools back up, because there are “serious health consequences to we’ve been going through.” This is perhaps a veiled reference to Donald Trump’s latest claim that it’s important to get the economy back up and running because isolation may cause mental health struggles. To be clear, mental health issues (including, for example, depression, addiction, and anxiety) are real and serious concerns all of the time, and especially during a global health crisis. But the emphasis should be on getting people free, accessible health care support and resources to have stable homes and basic needs met, not reopening the country when there’s an ongoing pandemic.
In Azar’s words, “reopen we must”!
You can check out a longer cut of the interview below.