Go Ask China

Weijja Jiang, a CBS White House Correspondent got into a dust up with President Trump that left him leaving his own press conference where he declared victory as it relates to COVID 19 testing. 

The CDC has provided the following guidance regarding COVID:
High Priority

• Hospitalized patients with symptoms
• Healthcare facility workers, workers in congregate living settings, and first responders with symptoms
• Residents in long-term care facilities or other congregate living settings, including prisons and shelters, with symptoms

Priority

• Persons with symptoms of potential COVID-19 infection, including: fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, vomiting or diarrhea, and/or sore throat.
• Persons without symptoms who are prioritized by health departments or clinicians, for any reason, including but not limited to: public health monitoring, sentinel surveillance, or screening of other asymptomatic individuals according to state and local plans.

 As a matter of public health if a CDC Official reinforced this message and that official and the President announced the additional resources for testing available and answered questions about when the additional testing would be rolled out, the message would have been clear and we could go on with our lives.

But as usual the drift into politics, winning and trying out snappy phrases of our late great economy began.  And with other health officials and  the Vice President working at home or teleconferencing I started to drift away also as I drove around South Miami to make sure the car battery was charged up after needing to jump start it on Friday afternoon and changed to sports talk which is looking for topics to discuss.

Jiang asked why the Trump administration was boasting about its coronavirus-testing numbers and comparing the US with other countries.
"Why does that matter? Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives and we're still seeing more cases every day," Jiang asked Trump.

And the  President answered: "Well, they're losing their lives everywhere in the world. And maybe that's a question you should ask China," Trump said. "Don't ask me. Ask China that question. OK? When you ask them that question, you may get a very unusual answer."

I've never been a great believer in "Speak truth to power" because these days even a great idea can be twisted like a pretzel as it wanders from source, message, channel, and receiver.  Everyone involved can be analyzed as  be too cute by half.  The President called it a nasty question.  There are a lot of nasty questions out there and a lot of snarky and dishonest answers to these questions but the President's performance on Monday was more racist than snarky or dishonest.  It also distracted from a message about testing which will impact commerce, schools and education, current hot spots like nursing homes and meat packing plants and even getting a hair cut.

While the reporter in question was born in Xiamen, China, she was raised in West Virginia, where she immigrated with her parents when she was two years old. Jiang is the daughter of Liya Wei and Huade Jiang. Her parents, who are retired, owned and operated Chinatown Restaurant in Buckhannon, West Virginia.