Former Trump deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger says it was a “serious misstep” for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to wait until April 2020 to advise the American public to start wearing masks as a means of protecting themselves against the deadly corona pandemicIn an excerpt from an interview aired on “Face the Nation” this Sunday, Pottinger told moderator Margaret Brennan that the “mask slip has cost us a lot.”
“It was the only tool that was widely available, at least homemade, you know, cotton masks were widely available,” Pottinger said. “It was the only effective, widely available tool we had in the arsenal to deal with this … It was a serious misstep.”
When the pandemic began to rapidly spread across the United States in March last year, the main administration and the COVID-19 task force publicly advised against wearing masks, a recommendation based in part on the fact that hospitals were struggling with a drastic shortage of personal protective equipment.
Pottinger turned to the government of Taiwan to obtain a batch of masks that he handed out to White House medical personnel and the national security team who reported to him. He said the rest was donated to the national supply. The CDC did not issue formal guidelines on the wearing of masks to the public until April.
In an earlier interview with “Face the Nation” last March, when-Surgeon General Jerome Adams told the program that “masks don’t work for the general public and keep them from getting coronavirus.” Doctors Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and then-CDC director Robert Redfield also provided similar advice.
On February 27, while testifying before the House’s Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, Redfield recommended that masks be given priority for primary care health workers, stating that there was “no role for masks in the community.” The following week, Fauci told a senate committee that masks were not necessary “because there is nothing going around in the community at the moment, especially the coronavirus, which advocates the widespread use of masks.”
Adams reappeared on “Face the Nation” in July, this time wearing a mask and urging viewers to wear face covers when out in public.
The surgeon general said at the time that the shift in guidance towards the American people was attributed to a better understanding of the coronavirus and how it is spreading. Yet former President Trump himself rarely wore a mask and openly questioned its usefulness.
The CDC has since issued explicit mask accompaniment calls for “universal wearing of a mask” in all outdoor activities, as well revised guidelines unveiled last week that recommend wearing well-fitting face masks or two masks at once in certain situations to improve fit and filtration to help curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pottinger raised early alarms within the Trump administration regarding the potential cruelty and impact of the virus on the U.S. He said the information he received through personal phone calls with doctors in China provided more accurate information than what the Chinese government shared with their government. CDC counterparts.
Pottinger also pointed to the collection and analysis of data related to the spread of the virus in real time as a serious problem that Biden’s government says has yet to be addressed. He said he is now speaking out in hopes of the efforts of the new CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, in efforts to reform the CDC and scale up virus sequencing and surveillance to track their spread faster.
“… Where it appears, but also how its genetics evolves so we can stay ahead of it, make sure we don’t get sucked by a new variety that could compromise the effectiveness of our vaccine.”
Pottinger, who started his time in Trump’s White House in 2017, resigned from the National Security Council shortly after the January 6 uprising against the U.S. Capitol, carried out by Trump supporters, telling Brennan that it was “ the moment when I felt it was appropriate for me to go. “
Shani Benezra contributed to the reporting