President Trump dramatically improved his tone in Friday’s White House press conference on the coronavirus, a welcome change from his earlier press conferences, which were primarily focused on downplaying the seriousness of the problem.
After weeks of trying to boast about the relatively small number of cases in the United States, Trump declared a national emergency.
Instead of using his press conference as an opportunity to praise himself and savage his political opponents, he, on many occasions, stepped aside and directed questions to actual public health experts to field questions.
Trump talked about efforts to expand testing capacity dramatically and speed results through private labs. Flanked by major CEOs, he discussed how retailers such as Walmart would enable setting up drive-through centers in their parking lots, where people can provide samples without getting out of their cars. Those samples can then be sent to labs for testing. The idea has proved tremendously effective in South Korea.
Sure, there were typical Trump moments — such as refusing to take any responsibility for the delayed rollout of testing. And shaking hands with other participants despite having been recently in contact with somebody who tested positive. Also, at the press conference, they announced announced that Google was going to help launch a website that would allow people to enter information and determine whether a test is warranted. However, Google subsequently released a statement saying that the tool was “in the early stages of development” and would first need to be tested “in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.”
Even so, the contrast between this Friday and his press conference last Friday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was quite stark.
Last week, he appeared in a red “Keep America Great” hat, attacked CNN as “fake news,” and called Washington Gov. Jay Inslee a “snake.”
When asked about the idea of drive-by testing he’s now promoting, he dismissed it as just “sampling” and said it wasn’t effective.
Last week he claimed, falsely, that “anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is.”
Whether it’s the spike in cases, the stock market pounding, or advisers finally talking some sense into him, the change in tone hopefully indicates he now actually views this as a real public health crisis.
The question now is whether it’s too late.
It would have been much better had Trump adopted this tone a month ago, and had the U.S. not so badly trailed the rest of the world in testing. South Korea’s success relative to Italy has shown the value of widespread testing — and how it can help identify outbreaks and isolate people and areas affected, thus slowing the spread of the disease. But to be most effective, testing has to be done early. Once the disease is widespread enough, it is harder to isolate positive cases, and the focus must shift.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Friday that after the long delays, his state had started to deprioritize testing to focus on concerns that would start to become more pressing. “We’ve moved from containment to mitigation, and quite frankly, at some point soon, we’re probably not going to be into testing as much because the hospitals will be overwhelmed and not able to do the tests,” Hogan said.
At this point, we don’t know when the nation will actually be able to conduct a sufficient number of tests. That was not clear at all from the Trump press conference. So if there are weeks more of delay, by that point, the medical system may be so overwhelmed that professionals will have to focus on treating patients with severe symptoms rather than screening people.
The dramatic social distancing measures in terms of canceled events, remote work, closure of sports leagues, and shutting down schools will hopefully slow the spread of the disease as testing hopefully ramps up.
Right now, it’s encouraging to have a president who seems more engaged in treating this as an actual crisis. We just have to hope that it isn’t too late.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to add the statement from Google and the reference to hand shaking.
