Mark
Meadows, the White House chief of staff, portrayed an outbreak among Vice
President Mike Pence’s close advisers as a matter of medical privacy that White
House officials were right to try to keep from the public.
The
comments came on CNN’s “State of the Union,” as Mr. Meadows sought to
dismiss a
report published in The Times about his effort to
contain news about the latest White House outbreak, in which several aides to
Mr. Pence, including his chief of staff, have
tested positive in the past few days. However, Mr.
Meadows did not deny its substance.
“Sharing
personal information is not something that we should do, not something that we
do actually do — unless it’s the vice president or the president or someone
that’s very close to them where there’s people in harm’s way,” Mr. Meadows
said.
Mr.
Meadows was also pressed by the “State of the Union” host, Jake Tapper, on why
Mr. Pence, who had been in close contact with his chief of staff, Marc Short,
was continuing to appear at campaign events. Mr. Meadows said that the vice
president was performing “essential” duties that exempted him from Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention guidelines calling for people to quarantine for
14 days after exposure to the virus.
The C.D.C. guidelines allow “critical
infrastructure workers” to continue working after a coronavirus exposure as
long as they are asymptomatic. Campaigning, however, is not essential work. The
guidelines also state clearly that a critical worker who has been exposed to
the virus should “wear a face mask at all times,” among other precautions.
Mr.
Pence appeared without a mask at a rally in Tallahassee, Fla., on Saturday, and
some in the crowd were also maskless. Mr. Trump’s supporters also rarely wear
masks at his rallies.
Masks
can significantly reduce coronavirus transmission, and wearing them is one of
the most basic precautions public health experts recommend while scientists
work to develop a vaccine and better treatments. But Mr. Trump and his aides
have repeatedly laid out a false choice, implying that the only two options are
to flout public health guidelines as he has, or to “lock everybody down” and
“quarantine all of America,” as Mr. Meadows put it on Sunday.
“We’re
not going to control the pandemic,” Mr. Meadows said when asked about the lack
of mask wearing at campaign events. “We are going to control the fact that we
get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations.”
The
outbreak is the second in the White House to become public since the beginning
of October, when President Trump announced that he had Covid-19. The virus has
infected more than 8.5 million people in the United States, killed more than
224,000 in the country, and is surging in dozens of states. On Friday, the
country set
a single-day record for new confirmed cases.
— Michael Crowley and Maggie Astor
Trump’s chief of staff says, ‘We’re not going to control the
pandemic.’
Mark
Meadows, the White House chief of staff, said on Sunday that the campaign was
not going to control the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than
224,000 Americans and is surging across the country.
“We’re
not going to control the pandemic,” Mr. Meadows said on CNN’s “State of the
Union” when asked about the lack of mask wearing at President Trump’s campaign
events. “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics
and other mitigations.”
Face
masks can significantly reduce coronavirus transmission, and wearing them is
one of the most basic precautions public health experts recommend while
scientists work to develop a vaccine and better treatments. But Mr. Trump and
his aides have repeatedly laid out a false choice, implying that the only two
options are to flout public health guidelines as he has, or to “lock everybody
down” and “quarantine all of America,” as Mr. Meadows put it on Sunday.
Infections have surged across the United States since the
beginning of October, when President Trump announced that he had Covid-19 and
it became clear that there was an outbreak in the White House. There now
appears to be a second outbreak among aides to Vice President
Mike Pence, and on Friday the country set a single-day record for new confirmed cases.
Despite
this, an ABC News/Ipsos poll released
Sunday found that Republicans were less likely to be concerned about the virus
now than they were at the beginning of the month. Sixty percent of Republicans
said they were concerned that they or someone they knew would be infected,
compared with 70 percent who said the same in an ABC/Ipsos poll in early
October.
Democrats
moved in the opposite direction: 96 percent said they were somewhat or very
concerned, up from 86 percent.
Mr.
Pence is continuing to travel for campaign events even though he was in close
contact with his chief of staff, Marc Short, who tested positive. Mr. Meadows
defended that decision on Sunday by claiming the vice president was performing
“essential” duties that exempted him from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s guidance to quarantine after exposure to the virus.
The C.D.C. guidelines allow
“critical infrastructure workers” to continue working after an exposure if they
are asymptomatic. But campaigning is not essential work, and Mr. Meadows did
not identify the ostensibly essential activities he said Mr. Pence would be
performing.
The
guidelines also state that a critical worker who has been exposed should “wear
a face mask at all times,” which neither Mr. Pence nor others in the Trump
administration have done.
— Michael Crowley and Maggie Astor
