Trump’s former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger says it was a “serious step” for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to wait until April 2020 to advise the U.S. public to start using masks as a means of protecting oneself from mortals. Coronavirus pandemic. In an excerpt from an interview aired on “Face the Nation” this Sunday, Pottinger told moderator Margaret Brennan that “the passage of the mask cost us a lot.”
“It was the only tool that was widely available, at least homemade, you know, cotton masks were very available,” Pottinger said. “It was the effective and widely available tool we had in the arsenal to deal with this … It was a serious misstep.”
When the pandemic began to spread rapidly in the United States in March last year, key officials in the administration and the COVID-19 working group publicly advised against wearing masks, a recommendation that was based in part on the fact that hospitals were in drastic shortage of personal protective equipment.
Pottinger went to the Taiwanese government to get a batch of masks that he distributed to White House medical staff and the national security team that informed him. He said the rest was given to the national reserve. The CDC did not issue official guidelines on the use of masks to the public until April.
In a previous interview with “Face the Nation” last March,Surgeon General Jerome Adams he told the program that “masks do not work for the general public and prevent them from contracting coronavirus.” Doctors Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and then-director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, also gave similar guidelines.
On Feb. 27, while testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, Redfield advised prioritizing masks for front-line health workers and stated that “there was no role for masks in the community.” The following week, Fauci told a Senate committee that the masks were not necessary “because right now there is nothing in the community, certainly the coronavirus, that calls for widespread use of masks.”
Adams reappeared on “Face the Nation” in July, this time wearing a mask, and urged viewers to wear face masks when in public.
The surgeon general said at the time that the change in orientation toward the American people was attributed to a better understanding of the coronavirus and how it spreads. Still, former President Trump himself rarely put on a mask and openly questioned its usefulness.
The CDC has since the publication of an explicit mask guide asking for a “universal mask suit” at all out – of – home activities as well revised guidelines was introduced last week recommending wearing tight-fitting face masks or two masks at once in certain situations to improve fit and filtration to help curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pottinger sounded the Trump administration’s first alarms about the potential ferocity and impact of the virus on the United States. He said the information he received from making personal calls to doctors on the ground in China provided more accurate information than what the Chinese government shared with their CDC counterparts.
Pottinger also noted that the collection and analysis of data related to the spread of the virus in real time was a serious problem that, according to him, has not yet been corrected under the Biden administration. He said he now speaks in hopes of supporting attempts by the new CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, to reform the CDC and expand this virus sequencing and surveillance to track its spread more quickly.
“… Wherever it appears, but also how its genetics are evolving so that we can stay ahead, make sure we don’t get a sucker hit by a new variant that could compromise the effectiveness of our vaccine.”
Pottinger, who began his stint in Trump’s White House in 2017, resigned from the National Security Council shortly after the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol carried out by Trump supporters, saying to Brennan that “it was the time when I felt it was appropriate for me to go.”
Shani Benezra contributed to the notification