On Monday President Donald Trump held an hour-long press conference, complete with banners falsely proclaiming “America Leads the World in Testing.” On Tuesday White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who takes her orders directly from President Trump, minimized the importance of testing.
President Trump had bragged about what he claimed was “the unprecedented testing capacity developed by the United States — the most advanced and robust testing system anywhere in the world, by far,” and that the United States was about to “pass 10 million tests conducted — nearly double the number of any other country.”
On Tuesday McEnany appeared to devalue the importance of testing.
“Testing is not preventative,” McEnany told reporters at a short White House press conference. “Preventative is wearing this mask,” she added, holding up a mask but not wearing one.
“Preventative is social distancing,” which the President and many in the White House have refused to practice.
“Preventative is washing your hands. These are measures we need to take to safely re-open, um and then we’ll use testing strategically, for contract [sic] tracing purposes, for example. So, that’s the way it should be used and deployed,” McEnany said, which is at best inaccurate and at worst dangerously false.
Testing is preventative when those who test positive are removed from contact with the rest of the population, via self-isolation or quarantine – something President Trump and his press secretary appear to not understand.
McEnany went on to lecture a reporter, saying, “every state is better off than South Korea at this moment.”
South Korea has had 258 deaths, thanks to the fast action – including testing – they took immediately.
That’s five (yes, 5) deaths per million people.
Only 18 states have had fewer total deaths than South Korea. None have come close to that nation’s per capita death rate.
White House reporters noted McEnany left the press conference without wearing a mask.