Appearing Friday on MSNBC’s Deadline White House, Dr. Irwin Redlener, a member of former Vice President Joe Biden’s advisory panel on the coronavirus, called President Donald Trump’s response to the deadly illness an “international embarrassment.”
A partial transcript is as follows:
NICOLLE WALLACE: What did you make of the two big headlines about testing? It went on for so long, about an hour and ten minutes ago we heard from the CEOs of the nation’s chain drugstores. We heard from the CEOs of Walmart, Target, Walgreens, and CVS. What did you make of the information dispensed by them?
DR. IRWIN REDLENER: The information was fine — only two months late. I remember about eight weeks ago thinking “what is going on here?” Then, we had a couple hundred tests being done by the CDC and then they distributed the test material around the country about 97 percent of those defective and they pulled it back. I thought It was a one shot, horrible mistake by the federal government and the public health system, but, it’s continuing. It’s still a problem.
I spoke to ER doctors this morning who can’t get results. I think it’s going to improve. Governor Cuomo, for example, is starting these drive-through testing facilities. That’s all great and I’m glad that the private sector is getting involved, but it’s so late in the process. It’s like an international embarrassment of how much we have messed up this entire process of testing that’s so critical to our understanding of the disease.
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