PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2020-05-14 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Did Trump Say More COVID-19 Testing Makes the US Look Bad? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • One of the hallmarks of U.S. President Donald Trump's handling of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic crisis in the spring of 2020 was his repeatedly comparing the U.S. to other countries in areas such as COVID-19 testing, issuing (not necessarily accurate) declarations such as boasting that the U.S. had done more testing than the entire world together and asserting that, We’ve done more tests in eight days than South Korea has done in eight weeks. And our tests are better. In mid-May, Trump abruptly walked out of a press conference when pressed by a reporter to explain why he viewed the subject of COVID-19 testing as a global competition and placed so much emphasis on the amount of coronavirus tests that have been conducted in the United States compared to other countries. Needless to say, the reporter did not get a direct answer to the question from the president. But a quote meme circulated in May 2020 presented Trump as saying that undertaking more coronavirus testing made the U.S. look bad by revealing more infections -- even though revealing infections is one of the primary purposes of the testing. According to the meme, Trump lamented that, More testing only reveals more infections and therefore increases the numbers. In a way, by doing all this testing we make ourselves look bad: The meme is essentially correct in its gist, although the first sentence in the statement it attributes to Trump appears to be The New York Times' elaboration of what he meant rather than a literal reproduction of his words: Trump has expressed a fixation with coronavirus case numbers on multiple occasions. For example, in March 2020, while a Grand Princess cruise ship remained in limbo off the coast of San Francisco after some of its passengers and crew tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus disease, Trump indicated his aversion to allowing it to dock and disembark passengers due to the effect that would have on the numbers. NPR reported: And during an interview with ABC News in May 2020, Trump again suggested that increased testing was in some way a negative because it increased the number of coronavirus cases reported by the U.S. relative to other countries: As Washington Post once observed, Trump’s obsession with numbers has dominated and shaped the administration’s response to the coronavirus, as advisers and public health experts try to placate a leader who largely views the global pandemic through the political lens of how the statistics reflect on his presidency and hopes for reelection. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url