🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
A scientific journal published an editorial to its website endorsing anybody for president other than President Donald Trump, citing his funding cuts to the World Health Organization and the "erosion" of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics," The Lancet editorial board stated on its website in an article slated for the May 16 issue of the journal.
"The Trump administration's further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic," the editorial stated.
The Lancet editorial board blamed the "conservative politics" it believes have "eroded the agency's ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses." It called out the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush for their actions in the past.
"More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC's leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic," The Lancet stated.
According to a report released by the Associated Press, the Trump administration's guidelines for reopening the economy differ from the stricter guidelines put together by the CDC.
Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, has held various positions with the WHO in the past and is an advocate for the organization.
Trump announced the U.S. would stop sending funds to the WHO in a press conference April 14, indicating that his administration would "review" the agency's response in the early stages of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
"Today I am instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus," the president said during the April press conference. He added that as the WHO's largest donor, which sent the organization $893 billion to the agency from 2018-2019, the "United States has a duty to insist on a full accountability."
The WHO criticized the travel restrictions implemented by the U.S. on China in its effort to help halt the spread of the virus, restrictions that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a top health official on the Coronavirus Task Force, said he recommended to the president at an April 13 White House press conference.
"The travel [ban] was another recommendation when we went in and said, 'We probably should be doing that,' and the answer was 'yes'." Fauci said in comments he made assuring the public that Trump was heeding the advice of health officials.
Trump is not the only conservative politician to be heavily criticized by The Lancet. The medical journal has mentioned Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in a May 9 editorial, where it said "he needs to drastically change course or must be the next to go," in response to his handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The country's health minister resigned Friday over disagreements with Bolsonaro's response to the crisis.
