- Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her administration could have saved more lives and modeled “more responsible behavior” during the coronavirus pandemic.
- “I know I would have done a better job,” Clinton said on a Hollywood Reporter podcast on Friday.
- His comments come amid totals of cases in the United States. The nation reported its highest number of daily coronavirus cases on Friday: more than 56,000.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Hillary Clinton is not relieved to be out of the Oval Office right now.
“I will tell you that it is frustrating to be on the sidelines in a pandemic,” the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said Friday on The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast.
He added that his administration would have been more successful in managing the coronavirus outbreak in the United States.
“We could not have stopped the pandemic at our borders in the way that Trump claimed in the beginning, but surely we could have done a better job saving lives, modeling better and more responsible behavior,” Clinton said. “I don’t think we necessarily should have had as deep an economic assault on livelihoods and work as we have. So I know I would have done a better job.”
The initial United States response to the pandemic was hampered by delays in testing, restrictive testing criteria, lack of airport controls, and shortages of medical supplies. The advice of federal agencies has also been constantly riddled with inconsistencies. In January, President Trump insisted that the outbreak was “totally under control.” The following month, he said the virus “would disappear” in April.
But 18 of the 30 states that began reopening as of May 7 were still seeing new cases daily, according to New York Times data. Some public health experts believe this allowed the outbreak to escalate further.
Over the past week, the US has recorded the highest number of coronavirus cases to date: about 47,000 cases daily, on average. Friday marked the peak of the outbreak so far, with more than 56,000 cases. New cases are now emerging in most states.
The nation’s death count has nearly reached 130,000.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump before a presidential debate at the University of Washington in St. Louis on October 9, 2016.
AP
In recent weeks, public health experts have expanded their call for a nationwide mask mandate to reduce coronavirus transmission. So far, at least 21 states have instituted a statewide mask mandate, but the details differ from state to state, and some cities and counties have implemented their own policies.
“More attention and commitment to a national directive and a national policy for facial masks is of vital importance,” Dr. Howard Koh, former undersecretary of health for President Obama, told Business Insider. “We have 50 states that go in 50 different directions.”
In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump said he believed that some Americans wear masks to show their disapproval. The President has been repeatedly photographed without a mask at public events.
But Dr. Theo Vos, a professor at the Institute for Health Measurement and Assessment (IHME), told Business Insider that wearing masks has “great potential to make a substantial dent in this epidemic.”
IHME coronavirus models, which are often cited by the White House, predict another 50,000 coronavirus deaths from July to October in the United States. The researchers found that almost half of those deaths could be prevented if 95% of the US population wore masks.
