Name: Trump's Misleading Ad on Coronavirus Testing - FactCheck.org
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Trump's Misleading Ad on Coronavirus Testing - FactCheck.org

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A new Trump campaign ad claims that President Donald Trump took “fast action” in regard to testing for the novel coronavirus. While “fast action” is subjective, pandemic experts say the U.S. did not move quickly to set up an adequate system and in fact lagged behind other countries.We have several times on a number of snags and miscues that prevented robust, widespread early testing.“The United States has lagged nearly every developed country in ramping up testing, and the slow action is one reason why we have the worst epidemic in the world and are discussing reopening when it is not safe to do so, while other countries have used testing as a centerpiece of their strategy to reduce cases to a point where reopening is much more appropriate,” Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told us in an email. “The lack of testing has been not only a public health catastrophe in the US, but also is a direct cause of our economic suffering.”Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told us in an email: “We need only look at other countries (like South Korea, Germany, Singapore, New Zealand and others) to see what rapid testing and identification can do to slow down spread of this virus. South Korea had done 150,000 tests before we had done 500. The fact that we have more deaths per million in the population than many other developed countries is a testament to our slow response to this virus.”The new 30-second ad, called “,” first aired May 5 in Indiana. The Trump campaign has spent more than $200,000 on the ad so far, according to Advertising Analytics.The ad also includes a number of false and unsubstantiated claims that Trump has made before.It says he “banned Chinese and European travel to the U.S.” While Trump did impose , as we have , they included exceptions, so they weren’t actual “bans.” For example, the New York Times that nearly 40,000 people flew directly from China to the U.S. in the two months after the China restrictions went into effect on Feb. 2.The ad suggests that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden used the term “xenophobia” in connection with the president’s travel restrictions. But it’s not clear that he did.On the day the China restrictions were announced, as we have , Biden did say ,The ad also suggests that “President Trump saved countless lives” as a result of the travel restrictions. As we have , in at least two coronavirus task force briefings, the president, without evidence, the travel restrictions he implemented on China “saved tens of thousands” and even “hundreds of thousands of lives.” Wefor such figures, and the White House didn’t provide any.The few studies that have been done estimate travel restrictions the United States and other countries enacted on China had a modest impact, slowing the initial spread outside of China but not containing the coronavirus pandemic.We have on a number of occasions about the problems slowing down the nation’s coronavirus testing efforts. The first case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in the U.S. was on Jan. 20.In the early stages of the pandemic, testing was in the hands of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Another problem early on stemmed fromAnother problem stemmed from the CDC’s role early on as the sole player in the testing game.As we have , Anthony Fauci,Tom Frieden, who was head of the CDC during the Obama administration, , “A series of errors with lab testing delayed the U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic.” Besides the CDC test kit problems, he wrote, “the Food and Drug Administration was slow to allow hospital labs to develop their own tests; and the Department of Health and Human Services didn’t work with commercial labs to start developing broadly available private sector tests until far too late.”On March 6, six weeks after the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the U.S., Trump famously that anyone who “wants a test can get a test.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar in a television interview the same day that there “is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been.”But that wasn’t the case. On March 9, we were by the Association of Public Health Laboratories thOn March 12, atSo seven weeks after the first case of COVID-19 surfaced in the U.S., there remained a “failing” in the nation’s testing system — contrary to the ad’s claim of “fast action.”Ask SciCheckQ. Are vaccinated and boosted people more susceptible to infection or disease with the omicron variant than unvaccinated people?A. No. Getting vaccinated increases your protection against COVID-19. Sometimes, certain raw data can suggest otherwise, but that information cannot be used to determine how well a vaccine works.Have a question?

A new Trump campaign ad claims that President Donald Trump took “fast action” in regard to testing for the novel coronavirus. While “fast action” is subjective, pandemic experts say the U.S. did not move quickly to set up an adequate system and in fact lagged behind other countries.We have several times on a number of snags and miscues that prevented robust, widespread early testing.“The United States has lagged nearly every developed country in ramping up testing, and the slow action is one reason why we have the worst epidemic in the world and are discussing reopening when it is not safe...

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Trump's Misleading Ad on Coronavirus Testing - FactCheck.org

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