Democratic presidential candidates accused President Trump of making the United States less prepared to defend itself against the coronavirus that originated in China and has infected at least five people here.
Elizabeth Warren said this week that the Trump administration’s response to the virus was “a mess,” and Joe Biden wrote in an opinion piece in USA Today that Trump was the “worst possible leader” to deal with the outbreak, recalling that Trump had pressured President Barack Obama to institute a travel ban despite global health officials opposing such a move.
Biden and Warren both blasted the president for dismantling a White House team meant to respond to pandemics and called him out over his proposed budgets, which have called for cuts to medical research. The cuts he called for, however, were ignored by Congress. The spending bill Trump signed into law boosted the budget for the National Institutes of Health, which funds grants for medical research, including for vaccines and treatments, to historic levels.
Trump has said little about the outbreak, which has infected at least 4,515 people in China and killed 106, other than to say on CNBC that it was “under control,” and he has tweeted that he was working well with Chinese leaders. On Tuesday, his top health chief, Alex Azar, said Trump was “highly engaged in this response and closely monitoring the work we’re doing to keep Americans safe.”
“You have the most experienced team in the world on this, prepared on this,” Azar said.
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned people living in the U.S. to cancel all “nonessential travel” to China and said there is a low risk that a large number of Americans will become infected. At least 110 people in the U.S. are under investigation for possible infection.
Warren, whose campaign tagline is “I’ve got a plan for that,” released a detailed proposal on Tuesday about how she would work to battle infectious diseases if elected president. The plan included boosting the Public Health Emergency Fund, a bill that Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut vowed to reintroduce amid news of the coronavirus. The bill would provide $5 billion to the fund.
Political attacks are typical amid illness outbreaks. In 2014, when Biden was vice president, the Obama administration faced similar criticism over its handling of Ebola, and at the time, the NIH had faced cuts because of sequestration, which were implemented across several agencies as a response to rising federal deficits.
Republicans accused the Obama administration of mishandling Ebola when it arrived to the U.S. and spread to nurses. After that happened, Obama hired Ron Klain, a political operative and Biden’s former aide who at the time had no health experience, to be “Ebola czar.”
