On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “Amanpour,” Donald McNeil Jr., a Science and Health Reporter for the New York Times called for the resignation of CDC Director Robert Redfield and sharply criticized the early coronavirus response. McNeil’s statements later earned a rebuke from the Times.
McNeil said, “We completely blew it for the first two months of our response. We were in a headless chicken phase, and yes, it’s the president’s fault. It is not China’s fault. You know, the head of the Chinese CDC was on the phone to Robert Redfield on January 1, again on January 8, and the two agencies were talking on January 19. The Chinese had a test on January 13. The Germans had a test on January 16. We fiddled around for two months. We had a test on March 5, and it didn’t work. We didn’t have 10,000 people tested until March 15. So, we lost two months there. And that was because of incompetent leadership at the CDC. I’m sorry to say, it’s a great agency. But it’s incompetently led. And I think Dr. Redfield should resign. And suppression from the top, I mean, the real coverup was the person in this country who was saying, you know, this is not an important virus. The flu is worse. It’s all going to go away. It’s nothing.”
McNeil added, “I had the same problem at the Times. I was trying to convince my editors, this is really bad. This is a pandemic. It took a while to get them, it took a while to get anybody to believe this.” And that “getting rid of Alex Azar was a mistake. He was actually leading a dramatic response. And then…he was replaced with Mike Pence, who’s a sycophant.”
He further stated that President Trump is “the same guy who said, inject yourself with disinfectant, stick ultraviolet lights into your lungs. This is not somebody whose grasp of the science is even third-grade level.”
In a statement to Fox News, the Times stated, “In an interview with Christiane Amanpour today, Donald McNeil, Jr. went too far in expressing his personal views. His editors have discussed the issue with him to reiterate that his job is to report the facts and not to offer his own opinions. We are confident that his reporting on science and medicine for The Times has been scrupulously fair and accurate.”
(h/t Fox News)
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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