Trump rebukes CDC chief over masks and a vaccine timeline

President Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected the professional scientific conclusions of his own government about the prospects for a widely available coronavirus vaccine and the effectiveness of masks in curbing the spread of the virus as the death toll in the United States from the disease neared 200,000.

In a remarkable display even for him, Trump publicly slapped down Dr Robert Redfield, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, as the president promised that a vaccine could be available in weeks and go “immediately” to the general public while diminishing the usefulness of masks despite evidence to the contrary.

The president’s comments put him at odds with the CDC, the world’s premier public health agency, over the course of a pandemic that he keeps insisting is “rounding the corner” to an end. Trump lashed out just hours after Redfield told a Senate committee that a vaccine would not be widely available until the middle of next year and that masks were so vital in fighting the disease caused by the coronavirus, COVID-19, that they may even more important than a vaccine.

“I think he made a mistake when he said that,” Trump told reporters. “It’s just incorrect information.” A vaccine would go “to the general public immediately,” the president insisted, and “under no circumstance will it be as late as the doctor said.” As for Redfield’s conclusion that masks may be more useful than a vaccine, Trump said that “he made a mistake” and that a “vaccine is much more effective than the masks.”

The public scolding of Redfield was only the latest but perhaps the starkest instance when the president has rejected not just the policy advice of his public health officials but the facts and information that they provided.

Public health officials are in strong agreement about the value of masks even as Trump generally refuses to wear one. Likewise, health officials have said that it will be many months before a vaccine can be distributed to the population at large even as Trump has promised to approve one in time for the general election on Nov 3.

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