Former President Barack Obama criticized President Trump for “downplaying the severity” of the coronavirus pandemic and offered praise to President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff Ron Klain, who called the virus a “fear epidemic” earlier this year.
“The good news is that Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, was my point person on Ebola,” Obama said in an interview with the Atlantic. “He knows how to work on these big public-health issues, and they’ve already surrounded themselves with the right people who are going to be applying the very best science and technology and organizational measures to this problem.”
Klain did downplay the COVID-19 pandemic back in February, insisting it was an epidemic of “fear” while praising New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for attending a large gathering with no masks.
“We don’t have a #COVID-19 epidemic in the US but we are starting to see a fear epidemic,” Klain said on Twitter. “Kudos to @NYCMayor (and others) for standing against that.”
We don’t have a #COVIDー19 epidemic in the US but we are starting to see a fear epidemic. Kudos to @NYCMayor (and others) for standing against that. https://t.co/mULErCXKsH
— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) February 13, 2020
Klain’s comments came two weeks after Trump restricted travel from China, citing concerns that unrestricted travel from the country could lead to a coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The day after Trump announced the restrictions, Biden called Trump xenophobic while criticizing the president’s handling of the virus.
“We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus,” Biden said on Twitter. “We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.”
But Obama accused Trump of politicizing the virus and not taking it seriously.
“There is little doubt that if we had had a White House that from the start had said, ‘Let’s follow the science, let’s take this seriously’ — if they had reinforced the message coming from people like Dr. Fauci and not politicized basic preventive measures like wearing masks, if they had not been intent on rushing the reopening and downplaying the severity of the pandemic across the primary channels that a big chunk of the country gets its news from — some lives could have been saved and we would have had better control of this,” Obama told the Atlantic.
Throughout February, Klain urged against fearing the emerging coronavirus.
“No reason to yet be fearful, no reason to really panic or anything like that,” Klain said during an appearance on Pod Save America.
In February 2020, Klain went on Pod Save America and downplayed the coronavirus.
“No reason to yet to be fearful, no reason really panic or anything like that”
Ron Klain would be a disaster for America.pic.twitter.com/NfxG1ktcn8
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) November 12, 2020
On Feb. 11, Klain said that “evidence suggests” the coronavirus was “probably not” a “serious epidemic.”
Obama said that the Trump administration could have done more in the early weeks of the pandemic to prevent an outbreak.
“It’s also fair to say that had we taken better steps to contact-trace and set up testing protocols earlier, it is likely that we would not have seen severe outbreaks everywhere and we might have been able to reduce the severity of the pandemic in certain portions of the country,” Obama said.
Trump has defended his pandemic response, saying that his early actions saved 2 million lives while outperforming other developed nations on excess deaths and case fatality rates.
