Fact Checking Clueless Joe Biden: Wrong on the Coronavirus, as Usual

I gather that Joe Biden is making the Wuhan coronavirus his number one, and possibly only, a substantive campaign issue. I don’t blame him. What else of substance does he have?

Until the virus hit, America was going great. Since then, in addition to the pandemic, we’ve had riots and a surge in homicides, but Biden can’t plausibly blame President Trump for them. In fact, some unwritten rule seems to bar him from mentioning riots and crime in the cities (nearly all of them run by Dems).

Trump’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus has been mixed, in my opinion. This was to be expected considering how novel the virus is and how little we knew (and still know) about it.

Joe Biden’s response to the virus makes Trump look masterful. Biden and his team made a series of statements in the first few months of the year that denied the seriousness of the virus and criticized President Trump for taking steps to prevent its spread.

This, too, was to be expected. Hack that he is, Biden has been wrong on almost every national security issue for as long as anyone can remember. He even advised Barack Obama against undertaking the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Most of what Biden says about the coronavirus is factually untrue. 

For example:

“There’s a study out of Columbia University and a disease control center up there. They pointed out that if he had listened to me and others and acted just one week earlier to deal with this virus, there’d be 36,000 fewer people dead.”
— in an interview in May on the radio program “The Breakfast Club”

This is misleading. A study by infectious disease modelers at Columbia University did find that about 36,000 deaths could have been prevented through early May had social distancing measures been enacted by March 8, rather than in mid-March. But there is no record of Mr. Biden urging adoption of those measures before March 8, nor does Mr. Trump have the power to compel their nationwide enforcement.

The study estimated the combined effects of all intervention practices including mask-wearing, travel restrictions, business and school closings and shelter-in-place orders as “they were varyingly applied and complied with overtime on a county-by-county basis,” said Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University and a co-author of the study.

Karl Rove put together a list of Biden’s greatest misses on the coronavirus. He recently presented it on one of the Fox News programs.

Here is Rove’s list:

1) Jan. 31: In response to Trump’s travel ban, Biden says “this is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia.”

2) Early February: Biden public health advisory committee member says the coronavirus is less lethal than the SARS virus and a top aide says this “is probably not a serious epidemic.”

3) Mid February: Top Biden adviser says “we don”t have a Covid epidemic, we have a fear epidemic.”

4) Late February: Biden health adviser Zeke Emmanuel says many experts view the virus “like the flu” and expect it to dissipate with warmer weather moving to the southern hemisphere. Masks will not help, he adds.

5) Early March: Biden holds a mass indoor rally and criticizes the European travel ban as ineffective and “counterproductive.”

6) Mid March: Regarding Trump’s January 31st decision to close travel to China, Biden says “stop the xenophobic fear mongering.”

Rove also said that as vice president, Biden presided, along with President Obama, over the depletion of the national strategic stockpile of the PPE equipment that health professionals require in an epidemic. The Obama-Biden administration did not replenish it. Thus, the equipment that was needed most by health care professionals was no longer available when the virus hit the U.S.

Finally, Rove said that in a televised interview with Joy Reid two weeks ago, Biden listed six elements of his plan to deal with the pandemic. According to Rove, all six elements of his plan are things Trump has already done.