‘The Most Egregious Level of Incompetence’: Columbia University Doctor Lambasts Trump’s Coronavirus Response

As cases of the coronavirus spread throughout the country, a Columbia University doctor criticized the Trump administration for its response to the epidemic.

Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the university’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said the administration has shown “the most egregious level of incompetence” that he could remember.

“It’s extraordinary when you contrast the level of what we’re dealing with with the absolute gross amateur hour incompetence coming out of the White House,” Redlener said.

“It has nothing to do with politics,” he added. “It has to do with…an objective assessment of what we’ve been doing, when we got started, why we haven’t involved the private sector a long time ago, the fact that we’ve done maybe a little more than a thousand tests, when South Korea has done 75,000 to 100,000 tests. This whole thing is out of control.”

President Trump signed legislation on Friday providing $8.3 billion in funding to address the outbreak. There are currently more than 300 cases of coronavirus in the U.S., with more than half of states having confirmed cases.

Two fatalities in Florida on Friday marked the first recorded deaths outside the West Coast.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said Friday that there were “some missteps” regarding the Center for Disease Control’s initial testing for the virus. He added that the country will need “millions and millions” of tests to be produced and distributed.

President Trump said during a Friday visit to the CDC that he did not want infected passengers to disembark a cruise ship off the California coast because the number of coronavirus cases would rise as a result.

“I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship” — Trump explains that he doesn’t want to let people off the Grand Princess cruise ship because he doesn’t want the number of coronavirus cases in the country to go up pic.twitter.com/ELhZDjiZW9

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 6, 2020