Joe Biden should watch that interview from MSNBC this week wherein anchor Katy Tur had to remind the mayor of Las Vegas that none of the disease outbreaks we’ve seen in recent years have been nearly as bad as what we’re dealing with right now.
Biden’s track record on handling national health crises isn’t exactly stellar, but for some reason, his advisers are telling him to lean in and remind voters that he was — get this! — vice president when a fresh round of Ebola was coursing through the world map.
The Biden campaign on Tuesday sent out a memo to Democrats criticizing the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and eagerly recalled that Biden was in the White House for the Obama administration’s “successful containment of Ebola.”
The comparison is ridiculous. Where’s Tur when you need her?
Monday on MSNBC, Tur asked Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman if it would yet be truly wise to reopen the Vegas strip for regular business. Goodman said that her city had survived plenty of other outbreaks, such as SARS and the Zika virus. Tur leaped into action, noting that those “were not as contagious, and they did not spread as far as this disease has already done.” She added that “we have a death toll that proves it.”
True!
Ebola is a lot deadlier than the new coronavirus, but it doesn’t spread nearly as easily. The coronavirus can pass from person to person through droplets in the air. Ebola requires direct physical contact. While Ebola patients experience extreme symptoms, those with the COVID-19 virus can have mild symptoms or even be asymptomatic and unknowingly spread the disease.
That’s why, unlike with this new outbreak, we didn’t see hospitals around the country crushed under the weight of hundreds of thousands of Ebola patients. What we did see, though, is the Obama administration dole out the vast majority of the 150 million medical face masks that were in federal reserve and that are in such short supply right now. Those were stockpiled during the Bush administration in anticipation of a new flu-like virus, only to have the Obama White House disperse nearly all of them and never refill the reserve.
Doctors and nurses are now reusing the same masks, sometimes days on end, because they can’t get a hold of more.
But wow, wasn’t that Ebola containment “successful”?!
Biden’s campaign wants you to think if he were president, things would have been vastly different, but there’s nothing to base that on. If the new coronavirus has confounded scientists, doctors, and drugmakers, why would anyone be led to believe that Biden has the answers? We’ve known about Ebola for 50 years. This thing is brand new, and we’ve yet to find the answers to treating it. We don’t even know why a few people die while the large majority of us apparently contract the virus and recover without ever knowing it.
By comparison, the Ebola outbreak was child’s play. Biden bragging the “successful containment of Ebola” would be like Barack Obama bragging to Franklin Roosevelt about his handling of ISIS.
Biden recently set up a call with President Trump about the coronavirus. His call should have been to Tur.
