Trump keeps bashing Obama's swine flu response. His own response to coronavirus has been much slower.
President Trump has repeatedly cited the Obama administrations' response to the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" outbreak as a means of defending himself against accusations that his administration has been inefficient in its handling of the novel coronavirus outbreak. In a press conference on Friday, Trump falsely claimed that the Obama administration "didn't do testing like this" and that they tested "far too late" — neither of which is true.
Trump, bashing the Obama administration again, falsely claims that, with H1N1, "They didn't do testing like this" and that they didn't do testing until "far too late." The H1N1 testing numbers were exponentially higher.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 13, 2020
Ronald Klain, the former chief of staff to then-Vice President Joe Biden, tweeted that "the Obama administration tested one million people for H1N1 in the first month after the first U.S. diagnosed case," a number that seems within reason seeing as Quidel, a maker of such rapid flu tests, produced some 8 million during the flu season prior to the 2009 outbreak. By comparison, the U.S. has tested some 11,000 people for COVID-19 since the first U.S. case on Jan. 21.
Trump additionally hammered the Obama administration for the death of 14,000 Americans during the 2009 outbreak. Again, that's misleading; Joanne Kenen, the health editor at Politico, noted it's actually even "a low number for flu season." By comparison, the CDC estimates there have been between 20,000 to 40,000 flu deaths in the U.S. so far in 2020.
Comparing swine flu and the novel coronavirus does no favors for Trump, either. "The spread of [swine flu] was much slower and the mortality rate was much lower than today's coronavirus," The Washington Post writes. "At the current rate, the United States would hit 20,000 cases [the point at which Obama declared a National Health Emergency] in a matter of weeks, not six months. What's more, the swine flu had a mortality rate of 0.02 percent — about one-50th of the lowest rate health officials are citing for the coronavirus today (1 percent)."
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