Bill Gates: ‘Serious Mistakes Were Made’ in Trump’s Pandemic Response

Wednesday, during an interview with CBS News, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said the Trump administration had made serious mistakes in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Gates said, “Why wasn’t there a federal testing plan? Why didn’t we get the turn around on the testing down? Why aren’t we get tests out to low-income, minority communities? Serious mistakes were made.”

He continued, “The U.S. had the lowest compliance with masks use of any country. Didn’t have the leadership message there.”

He added, “Some of the policies were a mistake. Opening up bars – the economic benefit versus the infection risk – a lot of activities like that made it a mistake. So now, in most of the U.S., we need to absolutely avoid those things. We need to distance. We need to use masks. We’ve seen that in Europe they had the dramatic falloff. It didn’t spread into other communities. Their leadership communicated with a clear voice. Their scientists were encouraged to go on TV rather than banned, and their population benefited. The death rate in those countries has gone down very dramatically.”

When asked about Dr. Anthony Fauci being sidelined, Gates said, “Just the idea that the CDC isn’t being heard from, and that Fauci is being limited – you’d never have predicted that. It’s really unexpected that you’d not have the experts able to share.”

When asked about President Trump’s claim the U.S. has the lowest mortality rate in the world, Gates said, “Not at all, not even close. By almost every measure, the U.S. is one of the worst. I think we can change that, but it’s an ugly picture.”

He added, “We opened up with cases increasing. We somehow got masks as this politicalized thing that somehow — as some harbinger of freedom that just covering your mouth was awful.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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