The media landscape in the United States is incredible. There is such a clear divide between left and right wing news outlets that it's remarkably difficult to get an unbiased account of what is currently going on.
No media company is more infamous for this than Fox News. They have been clear cheerleaders of Donald Trump since his election to office, inexplicably ignoring his many faults in order to put a positive spin on every decision he has made during his presidency.
Trump's 'we're doing a great job' narrative around the coronavirus crisis has proven to be an absolute fallacy. The USA are now the epicentre of the virus, with their testing methods ensuring that it has spread much quicker than it could have, and to devastating effect.
It is clear their refusal to accept the seriousness of the issue early on has cost lives. That is now widely accepted, with Fox News of course an exception to this narrative.
They invited Dr. Rishi Desai onto the channel to discuss the USA's testing policy, but they wouldn't have expected him to rip Tump to pieces. That's what he did, and the anchor's response was absolutely priceless.
They should have been working on it for months. We knew about this when? December 31st 2019. So last year we knew about this, we knew it was coming, we knew it was a respatory disease, we knew it was person to person.
Why is it that it was this week that the FDA finally approved these new Abbott Lab testing, which by the way is one test at a time.
It's great, but it's one test at a time. It's different to labs that are doing mass testing. This is a wonderful test, don't get me wrong, but it's one test per 15 minutes. It's wonderful, but it's not the volume that you really need. This is more for outpatient clinics and things like that.
You look at Korea. South Korea and the US had their first official confirmed cases on the same date, January 19th.
You look at what South Korea did and what we did. Their population is 1/6th of ours, look at the cases they have, look at the mortality they have.
It's a trifle compared to what we are dealing with right now, because we've had a very weak response and they've had a strong response.
We can only imagine what was being shouted down her earpiece when she cut that interview short.
Everything Dr; Desai said here is correct. The response had been far too slow, with no real plans in place to deal with a pandemic.
Abbot Labs are now in Illinois have only just been approved to use their 15-minute testing method, but even that is only a drop in the ocean when you consider the amount of people waiting to be tested for COVID-19.
People in New York have literally been queueing around the block from hospitals to get tested, mixing potentially infected patients with those who do not have the virus. The whole thing is remarkable, but Donald Trump still seems fairly blasé about it.
Only yesterday did he once again refuse to issue a full-country lockdown order, leaving the decision in the hands of individual states. His reasoning was that coronavirus is not 'much of a problem' in many parts of the country:
“States are different.” President Trump is resisting calls to issue a national stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the new coronavirus pic.twitter.com/P5sA9spwkO
— TIME (@TIME) April 2, 2020
Reactionary policy is exactly what has led to this situation. Real action will be required to stop it becoming far worse.
