The Trump Administration and the Coronavirus

The host of "All In with Chris Hayes" on MSNBC, who has been speaking regularly to infectious disease experts, is concerned about the U.S. government's tepid initial response to the Coronavirus thus far. Chris Hayes discussed the situation with Stephen Colbert. The following is an edited transcription.

Hayes: People are little unprepared for the level of disruption that we are likely heading into. I have been speaking to experts. The response, thus far, has been a failure and has been terrible. We are not testing at [the level] that we need to be testing at.

The CDC webpage says there are 80 cases in the U.S. There is not a single public health expert in this country who thinks that’s a real number. No one thinks that’s the real number because it’s not the real number.

We have genetic evidence that the virus has been in the state of Washington 5 or 6 weeks before the first case was caught. We have computational modeling that suggests there might be 5 or 6 hundred cases. We know that the more you test, the more you find. This has been the experience in South Korea.

There has been a complete failure to deploy accurate wide-scale testing at a scale that is necessary to get your arms around the scope of the epidemic.

Colbert: Knowledge is not the enemy. This particular government does not want you to know things so that they can control the narrative.

Hayes: The problem is we’re not testing enough to know the actual scope.

The message from leadership, president of the United States, is (1) cases are going to go to zero, (2) it might disappear like a miracle, (3) it’s not going to be that bad -- the first two are direct quotes -- (4) and there may be a vaccine in two months.

The political leadership has sent the message to the bureaucracy and to the public: they want this to go away, they don’t want it to be a big problem, they don’t want the markets to tank, and they don’t want it to hurt the economy.

The fact of the matter is we have already learned from the trail of this pandemic -- from China through Iran to Korea, Japan, and Italy -- that the worst thing you can do, at the front end of this, is to tamp down and deny the scope of the problem you’re dealing with.

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The Late Show with Stephen Colbert      03/04/2020