Melinda Gates gave the Trump administration a “D-minus” rating for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic last Thursday.
“We need leadership at the national level,” Gates told Politico. “We lost two months almost now in terms of our national response.”
Gates is the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has donated billions of dollars to health research, including the virus.
“To overcome COVID-19 the world doesn’t just need science,” she tweeted May 4. It needs a commitment to help people beat this virus wherever they live. Our foundation is proud to support this effort and will join in pledging the resources & brainpower to confront this globally.”
Gates criticized the federal government for lacking a coordinated response to the virus, saying that the U.S. has “50 different homegrown state solutions instead of a national response.”
“You know, if we were doing the things that the exemplar countries are doing, like Germany, we would be testing. We would be testing, first, health care workers and then the most vulnerable, and you’d be doing contact tracing,” she said. “And we would be able to start thinking about slowly, slowly reopening places in society in safe and healthy ways, but we have a lack of a coordinated effort.”
White House spokesperson Judd Deere contradicted Gates’ claims in a statement claiming that the administration has been working closely with states.
“The ongoing response to this global pandemic has been about close coordination and partnerships with State and local governments,” Deere said. “The White House has been working with Governors and their teams since January on this whole-of-government response, including supply chains, testing, data-driven guidelines for social distancing, and now a responsible plan to open America again.”
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