For people looking for hope and certainty in a time of crisis, they got it from the White House Coronavirus Task Force on Saturday, even if not in a single message or from a single messenger.
For the second day running, President Trump expressed his belief that a cure might be found in a combination of drugs that has yet to be proven effective in treating COVID-19. He then announced 10,000 units were being shipped to New York.
His hope was then carefully trimmed by the hard-headed science of the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
Dr. Anthony Fauci summed up their different approaches: “There are those who lean to the point of giving hope and saying give that person the option of having access to that drug.”
“And then, you have the other group, which is my job as a scientist … to ultimately prove, without a doubt, that it is not only safe but that it actually works,” he said. “Those two things are really not incompatible, particularly when you’re in an arena where you don’t have anything that’s proven.”
Trump’s approach has frequently confounded the efforts of the rest of the team by overselling breakthroughs that have to be walked back quietly by his experts. He announced the deployment of a hospital ship that was not yet ready to sail, the purchase of 500 million N-95 respirator masks that will take 18 months to fill, and now touting chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, drugs that are not yet approved for treating coronavirus.
Insiders say it is all part of his working style that grabs attention and gets results.
“He drives a lot of things by pushing people to go as fast as possible,” said a former administration official. “We talk a lot about ‘Trump time.’ This is how he gets it done.”
As the briefings develop into a daily routine, members of the task force have taken on contrasting roles.
Trump is the star power delivering the big message. This week, he promised the public “total victory” in the war on the novel coronavirus, and he repeatedly expressed hope that the American economy would bounce back fast once the virus was vanquished.
Vice President Mike Pence has provided nuts-and-bolts updates on testing and supplies of personal protective gear.
Fauci has introduced scientific skepticism to some of the president’s boldest claims.
And task force coordinator Deborah Birx has brought new pieces of data to jolt people into maintaining their social distancing and hand-washing protocols. (For example, on Friday, she revealed that the death toll among Italian men was double that of women.)
On Saturday, Trump was asked again about whether issues around using malaria drugs had been resolved.
“I can say that it’s going to be distributed, New York, I think, is getting 10,000 units,” he said.
It was important to try it, he said, while thousands of people were falling sick and being hospitalized.
“As the expression goes: What do we have to lose? Because, you know, I feel very, I feel very good about it,” he said.
The latest figures demonstrate what is at stake. The national death toll reached 275 on Saturday, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The total number of cases in the country is nearing 20,000.
Several small-scale studies have reported encouraging results from chloroquine and its relatives, suggesting the drugs may help reduce the length of illness, but scientists say they do not have enough evidence to recommend its use. Larger-scale studies are beginning.
“We’re going to find out very shortly whether or not it’s going to work, I feel very confident,” said Trump. “I mean, I’ve seen things that surprised me, frankly.”
But there is a fine balancing act if the public is to retain trust and confidence in their leaders.
Chris Rosica, a crisis communications expert and president of Rosica Communications, said it was important to maintain a confident outlook without overpromising.
“A lot of these are initiatives that are going to take a long time for them to be fully baked. To announce them when they are still germinating gives a sense of false hope, because a month later, people will be asking what happened to them,” he said.
