Health Chief’s Early Missteps Set Back Coronavirus Response (Curiously, NOT Paywalled, thank Rupert?)

HHS Secretary Alex Azar waited for weeks to brief the president and oversold his agency’s progress

WASHINGTON—On Jan. 29, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told President Trump the coronavirus epidemic was under control.

The U.S. government had never mounted a better interagency response to a crisis, Mr. Azar told the president in a meeting held eight days after the U.S. announced its first case, according to administration officials. At the time, the administration’s focus was on containing the virus.

When other officials asked about diagnostic testing, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, began to answer. Mr. Azar cut him off, telling the president it was “the fastest we’ve ever created a test,” the officials recalled, and that more than one million tests would be available within weeks.

That didn’t happen. The CDC began shipping tests the following week, only to discover a flaw that forced it to recall the test from state public-health laboratories. When White House advisers later in February criticized Mr. Azar for the delays caused by the recall, he lashed out at Dr. Redfield, accusing the CDC director of misleading him on the timing of a fix. “Did you lie to me?” one of the officials recalled him yelling.

Six weeks after that Jan. 29 meeting, the federal government declared a national emergency and issued guidelines that effectively closed down the country. Mr. Azar, who had been at the center of the decision-making from the outset, was eventually sidelined.

Mr. Azar’s defenders say he is being unfairly blamed by White House officials eager to cover up their own missteps.

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(with apologies to Will D. Cobb and Gus Edwards)

THE HIGH CASTLE (April 22) —

Fall guy, fall guy,

hang ’im out to dry guy

Let ’im twist very slow in the wind

Do not blame Donnie, it's never him

Looks like Azar ’iz gotta go

’cuz he made Trump look like a schmo

I can’t help thinking I told you so

Let us sing, “Bring out your dead”