The United States’ Trail of Missteps Handling COVID-19

RICK BRIGHT, FORMER DIRECTOR, BARDA: President Trump still is in complete denial that we have a problem with the coronavirus sweeping across our country and across the planet. He has refused to accept this and be honest with the American public from day one. The actions that we’re seeing him do now with the rallies and mixed messaging and the irresponsible behavior that he is not only doing, but encouraging others to do, is going to lead for not just a really dark next few weeks and months, the darkest winter that we have ever seen probably, is going to be downright deadly. This is going to translate not only at just in more people being affected, more hospitalizations and the hospitals are going to be overwhelmed, our health care workers don’t have the protective equipment they need. It will translate to deadly outbreaks across our country and the world. Our senior citizens, our most vulnerable, we have not protected them yet and there is still no plan from our government to protect the vulnerable, to test or do anything to get this pandemic under control.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Alex, let me ask you because Dr. Fauci also said that seeing those pictures of President Trump at rallies but also at the — you know, the famous super spreader event at the White House with no masks and people all jammed together and no social distancing, he said that he wasn’t surprise the president got COVID and contracted it, but he’s also, you know, in light of all these attacks and the politicization of the health, this is what he told CBS last night. Let’s just take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: That is sad. The very fact that a public health message to save lives triggers such venom and animosity to me that it results in real and credible threats to my life and my safety. But it bothers me less than the hassling of my wife and my children.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have been threatened?

FAUCI: Yes. I mean, like give me a break.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So, Alex, I mean, I put that out there because it leads directly into what you have been uncovering and investigating in your documentary. And it is essentially a story about what Fauci is saying. In other words, threatening the experts and threatening the science, threatening the masks, you know, raising the idea of untested drugs and the like. You talk about a lost month at the beginning of the documentary. Tell me what you mean.

ALEX GIBNEY, DIRECTOR, “TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL”: The lost month early on when due to a snafu with the Centers for Disease Control, the test wasn’t working, the test wasn’t properly working. But there were all sorts of things that the federal government could have done to get control of that testing procedure and to put in place a national testing program, because that was really the only chance we had of containing the virus. So, now, we’re dealing with mitigation.