When the surgeon general slid into my DMs
When the surgeon general slid into my DMs
Adams: "I worry we are selling masks as a magic bullet."
By Adam Wren and design by Kris Davidson
The U.S. is in a pandemic, and the surgeon general is in my DMs.
Let me back up: The White House is expected to release new guidelines today on which Americans should wear masks to protect themselves—and those around them—from the novel coronavirus.
But just weeks ago, Surgeon General Jerome Adams—Indiana’s former health commissioner from 2014-2017—was telling Americans to not buy such masks.
This morning, I noted on Twitter the tension between that initial guidance and what we’re expected to hear later today.
The surgeon general—whom I profiled a few weeks ago—slid into my DMs to add some nuance. Here is an unedited transcript:
I don’t disagree with the idea that face covering might stop some asymptomatic spread of covid. A) that’s not the same as protecting the wearer from catching it - which is what the tweet said b) there’s a real worry it will give people “permission” to go out in public. Many point to South Korea and the Czech republic as examples of “mask wearing” success, but correlation isn’t causation. Both of those countries also simultaneously instituted extremely aggressive social distancing/shelter in place and early travel restrictions.
I worry we are selling masks as a magic bullet, and instead of stay home but if you absolutely must go out wear a mask, people will hear, if I wear a mask I can go out. In addition to my original tweet about masks not providing much protection to the wearer still being true (in both CDC and WHO have reiterated that belief in the last week) there’s also the very real and pragmatic concern about PPE shortages- people forget now but the context for my original tweet was a public run on N95s.
We could hurt healthcare workers if we make a loosely scientifically-based recommendation (meaning we ascribe more credit to the mask than to social distancing), that ends up pulling from the medical supply chain at a critical time. Finally, attacking institutions like the WHO, CDC (who both agreed with my original stance) and my office ultimately do more harm than good for public health. When we then go around and tell people to get vaccinated for measles they remember that Adam Wren said “they were wrong / lied to us the last time, so why should we believe them this time.?”
We are doing the best we can based on the best available information at the time and in a highly charged and rapidly evolving environment. Feel free to reach out if you have questions or need context/ I’m always happy to talk to media as they are important in getting the message out- but please also strive to be helpful in laying out the nuance and not just tweeting out that we were wrong...
Note: I reached out to the surgeon general’s office while writing the profile, but his office declined my interview request.
IMPORTANTVILLE TAKE: Adams’ explanation is a fairly nuanced walk-back of his earlier statement. The surgeon general’s role is to provide Americans with “the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury.” Talking with journalists is a part of that: His longform response was more nuanced than my original tweet. I appreciate Dr. Adams’ time educating me about the administration’s decision.
Good Friday morning, and welcome to IMPORTANTVILLE.
HAPPENING TODAY: Gov. Eric Holcomb, the Indiana State Department of Health and other state leaders will host a virtual media briefing in the Governor’s Office to provide updates on COVID-19 and its impact on Indiana.
Watch here.
TOTAL HOOSIERS TESTED FOR CORONAVIRUS**: 16,900
TOTAL POSITIVE CASES: *3,437
TOTAL DEATHS: 101
*Results from ISDH and results submitted by private laboratories.
**Number of tests is provisional and reflects only those reported to ISDH—not a comprehensive total.
REP. JIM BANKS ‘I TOLD YOU SO’ CORONAVIRUS TOUR
The congressman is on a press tour of right-wing media sites, from The Daily Caller to Breitbart, pushing the narrative that he was far ahead of the curve of warning his congressional colleagues about coronavirus.
His evidence? He tweeted about it, he told Breitbart:
When I initially tweeted about what we call the coronavirus or COVID-19, Congress was entirely focused on impeachment and the day that I tweeted, I think it was January 31st, likening this to the Spanish flu, that was the day that the Senate was voting on whether or not to have witnesses in the impeachment hearings.
From Daily Caller:
Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks warned of the looming coronavirus pandemic days before his fellow lawmakers began taking the virus seriously, he told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview.
Banks also praised the president’s response:
Banks said he can’t imagine any president in modern times managing the coronavirus response better than Trump has, and he points to Trump’s approval ratings as a testament to the president’s handling of the virus.
“His approval ratings rising show that the American people trust this president. They believe that he’s doing all that he can,” Banks said. “It doesn’t mean that there won’t be lessons that we learn when we get beyond this as we look in the rear view mirror.”
“And we should learn lessons from all this, but the president has done what he can with the resources and tools that he has his disposal to address this national crisis,” he added.
Banks was one of 40 House members to vote against the initial coronavirus relief bill.
He said at the time: “it greases the skids for massive bailout packages for industries forced to implement these costly policies. Our national debt is nearing $23.5 trillion--our children's generation can't afford it.”
He later voted for the final $2 trillion CARES Act bill, arguing that “this is by no means a perfect bill, but it gets help to the people who need it most.”
IMPORTANTVILLE READS
Marc Caputo, Politico: “Trump camp targets Obama’s Ebola czar”
Joe Biden has had limited success with his live-from-Wilmington, Del., coronavirus briefings. His longtime adviser, Ron Klain, is a different story.
The nation’s former Ebola czar recently cut a video for the Biden campaign making an animated case against Donald Trump’s handling of the contagion — a white board presentation that racked up 4.4 million views on Twitter alone.
Now, the president’s reelection campaign is drawing a bead on Klain.
Over the past week, the president’s allies have trained their fire on him, seeking to undermine his credibility and use Klain’s high-profile role as the face of Biden’s coronavirus response to bolster their own arguments about Biden’s own competence.
IMPORTANTVILLE TAKE: Klain is a native Hoosier and alum of North Central High School, and joined me at Half Liter BBQ last fall for an IMPORTANTVILLE Live event, during which he talked about his work as Ebola czar—which is largely unassailable.
Michael Kruse and Elena Schneider, “Across the Country, Campaign Operatives Are Stuck”
Most every evening in these strangest and scariest of days, on the second floor of a building that used to be a printing plant downtown in South Bend, Indiana, best friends Greta Carnes and Joey Pacific sit in the doorways of their respective apartments—a responsible 12 feet apart—and just talk.
“Mostly small talk,” said Carnes, who was the national organizing director for the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg. “About our existential dread.”
Pacific, the campaign’s national operations head, feels fortunate to have somebody to talk to, about anything, across the way, face to face.
“Most people,” he said, “don’t have that right now.”
So much of the world is stuck in this uneasy pause, this rattling standstill, on account of the spread of Covid-19, but Carnes and Pacific are two of a legion of political professionals in a particular sort of limbo. All of a (very long) month ago, four major presidential campaigns ended in the span of less than a week, the bids of Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren shuttering one after the other after the next. The end of any campaign marks the beginning of an always unnerving interval for suddenly out-of-work staffers. But seldom do so many sprawling operations stop in such rapid succession—and never, needless to say, has that coincided with the rise of a sweeping, life-upending pandemic.
IMPORTANTVILLE SOUND BITE
“I think it’s one of the greatest answers I've ever heard, because Mike was able to speak for five minutes and not even touch your question."
—President Donald Trump, characterizing the vice president’s evasive answer on whether Medicaid should be expanded to the middle class during a coronavirus task force briefing this week.
