Study: Slow response to coronavirus was widespread issue

WASHINGTON (SBG) -- As this year kicked off, there was a frenzy of political news occupying Washington.

The impeachment hearings of President Donald Trump were wrapping up. Presidential candidates in the 2020 race were campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, preparing for Super Tuesday. This, as top health experts were issuing dire warnings about a new virus tearing across China.

"Pretty much in every country, that’s had to face this virus, the policy makers and leaders have been somewhat behind the ball," saidJoshua Michaud, Associate Director for Global Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, in an interview Tuesday.

On Jan. 30, during a Senate Armed Services hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said this:

"The coronavirus could result in a global pandemic. It is essential that we immediately stop all travel on commercial aircraft between China and the United States," Cotton said.

And even though Trump did just that, it ended there.

In early February, some top newspapers posted articles with warnings about overreacting to the coronavirus, with most cities and states operating business as usual, from Mardi Gras in New Orleans to a Trump rally in South Carolina to a Chinese New Year celebration in San Francisco, attended by Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who spoke to reporters.

"We want to be careful with how we deal with it but we do want to say to people, 'Come to Chinatown. Here we are.'"

In fact, in a Pew Research Study that analyzed nearly 150,000 tweets by members of the U.S. C congress, few lawmakers were tweeting about it until mid-March, when it became clear it would impact every facet of life in the United States.

The study also shows how this global pandemic has been flavored by politics with 70% of Democrats having posted at least one tweet that included direct criticism of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus, and 70% of their GOP counterparts tweeting praise for the administration on this issue.

The deciding factor, say experts, may have been not the medical warnings, but the stock market and other economic repercussions, happening as a result of the virus.

It was a delay that likely cost lives.

"We lost a lot of time in the United States in getting a test out there that could identify this virus. That was sort of the original sin of this response: that we didn’t realize that there was transmission going on because we weren't testing," Michaud said, adding that made getting ahead of the virus, impossible.