Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, Matt Pottinger, says it was a “serious misstep” for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to wait until April 2020 to advise the American public to start wearing masks as means of protection against mortals coronavirus pandemic. In an excerpt from an interview scheduled to air on “Face the Nation” this Sunday, Pottinger told moderator Margaret Brennan that the “misstep mask cost us dearly.”
“It was the only tool widely available, at least made at home, you know, cotton masks were widely available,” said Pottinger. “It was the only effective and widely available tool that we had in the arsenal to deal with it … It was a serious mistake.”
When the pandemic began to spread rapidly across the United States in March last year, the top management and staff of the COVID-19 task force publicly advised not to wear masks, a recommendation partly based on the fact that hospitals faced drastic shortages of personal protective equipment.
Pottinger asked the Taiwanese government for a batch of masks that he distributed to the White House medical team and the national security team that reported to him. He said the rest was donated to the national stock. The CDC did not issue formal guidance on the use of masks to the public until April.
In a previous interview with “Face the Nation” last March, then-General Surgeon Jerome Adams told the program that “the masks don’t work for the general public and prevent them from getting the coronavirus.” Doctors Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and then director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, also gave similar guidelines.
On February 27, when testifying before the Chamber’s Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Redfield advised prioritizing masks for frontline health professionals and said that “there was no role for masks in the community.” The following week, Fauci told a Senate committee that the masks were unnecessary “because now, there is nothing happening now in the community, certainly not the coronavirus, which calls for widespread use of masks”.
Adams appeared again on “Face the Nation” in July, this time wearing a mask, and encouraged viewers to wear facial covers when in public.
The surgeon general said at the time that the shift in orientation to the American people was attributed to a better understanding of the coronavirus and how it spreads. Still, former President Trump himself rarely put on a mask and openly questioned its usefulness.
The CDC has since issuing explicit mask orientation asking for “wearing a universal mask” in all activities outside the home, as well as revised guidelines revealed last week, which recommend using tight-fitting face masks or two masks at a time in certain situations to improve fit and filtering and help contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pottinger set the first alarms within the Trump administration regarding the potential ferocity of the virus and impact in the U.S. He said the information he received when making personal calls to doctors in China provided more accurate information than that shared by the Chinese government with their CDC counterparts.
Pottinger also pointed out the collection and analysis of data related to the spread of the virus in real time as a serious problem that, according to him, has not yet been corrected in the Biden government. He said he is speaking out now in hopes of supporting attempts by the new CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, to reform the CDC and increase the sequencing and surveillance of the virus to more quickly track its spread.
“… where it is showing up, but also how its genetics is evolving so that we can stay ahead, ensure that we are not caught by a new variant that could compromise the effectiveness of our vaccine.”
Pottinger, who started his time at the Trump White House in 2017, resigned his post on the National Security Council shortly after the January 6 uprising on the United States Capitol by Trump supporters, telling Brennan that “was the time when I felt it was appropriate for me to go. “
Shani Benezra contributed reporting