The Trump administration’s response to the spread of coronavirus within the United States has been criticized for being unable to effectively test people who present symptoms of the disease, as well as the fact that the president himself seems to have an optimistic viewpoint over what many medical professionals fear could happen.
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Hoping to find actionable recourse to address the crisis, President Donald Trump has reportedly given his son-in-law/senior adviser Jared Kushner some responsibilities in the matter, even though he reportedly doesn’t attend coronavirus task force meetings.
"Kushner hasn’t attended a single task force meeting. … Many of the officials who have been working on the issue for weeks said they were cut out or ignored during the speech writing."
Wall Street Journal's @MichaelCBenderhttps://t.co/32O79715Yx
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) March 13, 2020
Trump has been hesitant to declare a national emergency so far, with some media outlets reporting that he was reluctant to do so until Kushner came back with answers for him. There are others who insinuate, too, that Trump’s ideology (or his vanity) may be preventing him from making such a declaration.
Where has Kushner been doing his research? It seems he’s been “crowdsourcing” physicians on social media.
Dr. Kurt Kloss, the father-in-law to Kusher’s brother Josh, made a post to a Facebook group of physicians this week, asking them for their thoughts on what they’d have the federal government do to address the spread of COVID-19.
“I have direct channel to person now in charge at White House,” Kloss wrote. “If you were in charge of Federal response to the Pandemic what would your recommendation be.”
Jared Kushner’s father in law is helping him crowdsource coronavirus intel on Facebook https://t.co/wbapdNk0F7
— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) March 13, 2020
Kloss requested “only serious responses” from his online colleagues. The following day, he said that his question came on behalf of Kushner himself.
Crowdsourcing is a sometimes reliable way to come up with answers for a question in the business world. But for the administration to engage in it, when it already has a bevy of doctors, health experts and scientists at its disposal, may seem counterintuitive to some.
As of Friday morning, there have been close to 1,700 confirmed coronavirus diagnoses across the country — although, with a lack in testing kits available throughout the U.S., it’s possible that number is much higher. At any rate, health experts agree the situation on the ground is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Chris Walker is a freelance journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin, who focuses on news, politics, and analysis of world events. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, since 2005 Chris has reported on workers’ rights protests in Wisconsin, opined on four separate presidential elections and written on a number of other political subjects for a variety of national online publications.
