Talk:Communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic

Possibly useful

This source was recently posted on another talk page. This might be useful for this article:

US medical chief claims he was removed for questioning Trump's miracle drug, report says ---Steve Quinn (talk) 04:55, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Steve Quinn: - thank you, but this incident seems a bit too tangential for this article. starship.paint (talk) 08:04, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

@Starship.paint: No problem ---Steve Quinn (talk) 17:52, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Move

Why not just focus this article on the overall handling of the COVID crisis? Communications seems to be just one piece of that. Wikieditor19920 (talk) 06:57, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

FYI, the general "pandemic in the US" article (a broad topic that can include health and economic data) includes a short "government responses" section: COVID-19 pandemic in the United States There are worldwide articles for Coronavirus recession and Shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic. I guess one could create a "response" article for the U.S. federal government, but there are already articles for: (1) White House Coronavirus Task Force (2) the CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program passed by Congress (3) medical equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile (4) this article on Trump administration communication during the COVID-19 pandemic we're discussing right now, plus (5) a very long "response" article for state and local govts: U.S. state and local government response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm not sure what more we'd put in a federal response/handling article. IMO and as argued in this Wash Post op-ed., the Trump administration, as a matter of Republican ideology (to the extent that the Republicans have one and the Trump admin adheres to it), tries to shift the burden/responsibility of the actual response to the individual states. Therefore, there may not be a coherent federal response to describe. The governors have a "response" by declaring lockdowns and purchasing medical supplies, and the Trump administration produces confusing "communication" about it (in my perspective). -- Tuckerlieberman (talk) 09:36, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Wikieditor19920: - why not two articles? starship.paint (talk) 07:00, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Terminology

In the very start "the virus" did not have a name, and was called the Wuhan-virus, "2019-nCoV", chinese coronavirus or simply coronavirus. 11. February 2019 it was named "Sars-cov-2" and the disease Covid-19. [1]. The Sun named it the: "Killer Snake Flu" in January. "Kung Flu" and "WuFlu" have been around for just as long. Still, before February 11. the virus did not have a name, and we knew nothing about it, so using the "wrong" name prior to feb. 11 should be excused, while using it in April, May or June should not. (The terminology changed 11. Feb. ) The disease is "COVID-19", the virus is "SARS-CoV-2", (like AIDS and HIV) and even if mr Trump do not keep them apart, we should try hard to. Right now I am not sure if this article fails to keep them apart, or if it is showing how the administration fails to keep them apart - but until proven wrong, I put my trust in Wikipedia. Markuswestermoen (talk) 11:48, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Reputable journalists and scientists called it the "novel coronavirus" until there was an official name. Names including the words "Wuhan" or "Chinese" were intentionally avoided due to well-founded (in retrospect) concerns of a repeat of when naming a coronavirus disease "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" led to prejudice against individuals from that part of the world.47.139.42.35 (talk) 04:39, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Needs Update

This article needs to be updated in light of the following: - A vaccine for covid - more than one - was found well within the timeline promised by Trump. They are currently in use. - The AMA has reversed it’s earlier objections to hydroxychloroquine and now approve it for treatment. In essence, admitting they were incorrect. Hydroxychloroquine is safe for use. TruthIsHer (talk) 18:03, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Politico’s "worst predictions of 2020"

Politico has named Trump's 15 statements between March and October that the virus would "go away" as among "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year we just lived through". I think this belongs in this article somewhere, but can't work out where. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 12:00, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Sentence pertaining to Easter disputed as to both accuracy and NPV; citation needed

I realize my comments below may seem like a childish joke, but they are not. According to Wikipedia's rules, my point is valid, and the article does require revision.

I am raising the issue that the article implies, without citation to a reliable source, that Trump's comments about reopening by Easter applied to Easter of the year in which he made the comment. Although this is obvious now, and was obvious at the time, a citation to a reliable source is still needed; Wikipedia articles are not supposed to included unsourced material, however obvious it may be. This is particularly true where a living person's comments are presented as false, but could be interpreted in a way that would technically be true, and presenting them as false is therefore potentially libelous (although probably not).

Specifically, the article says "Trump expressed a target of lifting restrictions 'if it's good' by April 12, the Easter holiday, for 'packed churches all over our country'".

1.

Does anyone have a proper citation that he said either "April 12, 2020" or "this Easter" or other words that clearly denote the year he meant? Easter and April 12 occur annually, but Easter does not fall on the same day every year, so it is not correct to use the phrase "April 12, the Easter holiday" unless he specified that he meant a year in which Easter fell on April 12. If he stated the year, then add a citation for that. If he did not state the year, then the article should say only EITHER "April 12" OR "Easter", whichever he said, and NOT both.

2.

The article presents his comments as false or unrealistic. However, as it turned out, many restrictions actually were lifted in March 2021, shortly before Easter of that year. If he did not explicitly state a year, then he technically was correct that there would be restrictions lifted by April 12 and by Easter, and the article should reflect this. (However, if any state has sufficient restrictions in place on Easter to prevent churches from being "packed", this could be noted as well.)

47.139.42.35 (talk) 04:34, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Respectfully, this article should be reworked or removed

This article is basically a lengthy criticism of Trump's coronavirus response. Wikipedia should remain unbiased and should not so forcefully leave impressions upon readers that Trump's response to the virus was a huge disaster, as this article is doing in its current form. I suggest merging this article's content into the United States response to COVID article. Trump's controversial remarks should be mentioned, but there should not be an entire page whose only purpose is to criticize Trump's response. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nitsua2018 (talk • contribs)

The content of the article is reliably sourced. If people can find reliable sources containing pertinent content that makes the article be more WP:NEUTRAL in your view, they have always been free to add it. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:34, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

This reads like an opinion piece, what's it doing on Wikipedia?

Captain obvious here - this article reads like a lengthy criticism of Trump, not an actual Encyclopedia article. Should be removed. 2600:1007:B029:6895:CD41:C6C5:F90A:B186 (talk) 16:47, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

The content of the article is reliably sourced. If people can find reliable sources containing pertinent content that makes the article be more WP:NEUTRAL in your view, they have always been free to add it. —RCraig09 (talk) 21:34, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

"Light and disinfectants" section full of errors

The § Light and disinfectants is rife with errors, misinformation, and a disturbing lack of WP:RS and WP:NPOV. A couple examples:

• The repeated Wikivoice claims such as "Trump also openly wondered if disinfectants could be used on humans 'by injection'" and that he made a "suggestion involving the injection of disinfectants" are patently misleading and false, having been thoroughly debunked by fact-checkers who have noted that, minutes later in the exact same press conference, Trump specifically clarified his remarks by stating that such treatments "wouldn't be through injections". There is absolutely no excuse for our article to perpetrate such a falsehood, even—or especially—if it was echoed in numerous putative RS.
• Fact-checkers confirm that internally administered UV light was being researched as COVID treatment, and RS report that this preceded Trump's press conference by years.
• The specific claim that "Apparently influenced by Trump's comments about using light as a treatment, a pharmaceutical company claimed to have an experimental ultraviolet technology against coronavirus" is unsupported by the cited source and appears to be false—four days before Trump's briefing, Aytu BioScience publicly touted their "Headlight" platform, writing that it was "being studied as a potential first-in-class treatment for coronavirus". In addition, the weasel-word "claimed" fails WP:NPOV, as it's indisputable that Aytu did, indeed, have such an experimental treatment.
• As stated above Aytu's claim "to have an experimental ultraviolet technology against coronavirus" was not, as is stated in Wikivoice, "disinformation". and is supported by any number of sources, including many cited above.
• Twitter admitted that Aytu's account was "briefly suspended" because it was "mistakenly caught in a spam filter"—something our article fails to include.
• YouTube's removal of Aytu's video on its proposed UV treatment was removed following a tweet by NYT reporter Davey Alba, which he subsequently deleted.
• The claim that "applying disinfectants on skin has the potential to cause irritation or chemical burns" is so vague as to be meaningless, and appears included for the sole purpose of suggesting that Trump's claim that disinfectants "would kill [the virus] on the hands" is somehow dangerous. But the cited Vox article in turns cites, bizarrely enough, a 2007 "guidance note" from the Chinese-Communist Hong Kong Labour Party, which states only that "applying disinfectants on skin has the potential to cause irritation or chemical burns". In terms of "Chlorine Compounds (Hypochlorites)", a group that includes but is not limited to "bleach" (sodium hypochlorite), only that: "The chemicals may cause skin irritation. Concentrated hypochlorites solutions can cause chemical burns of the skin." This is hardly refutation of Trump's claim, which contains no mention of specific "disinfectants"—a class that includes many compounds entirely safe for skin—let alone concentrations of "chlorine compounds" so high they could cause burns. This is a perfect example of the tendentious use of sources as part of a most un-encyclopedic attack on the "communication of the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic".
• Included in the article are a host of utterly irrelevant and WP:UNDUE factoids: a letter about some snake-oil COVID "cure" was reportedly sent to the White House, despite there being no evidence Trump was aware of it; a report of a Kansas man who drank cleaning products "because of advice he'd received" from unknown persons (when no credible source claimed that Trump ever advised anyone to drink cleaning products); and so on. Such miscellanea are clearly included for the sole purpose of smearing Trump and his administration, and thus violate all manner of our most basic guidance: WP:DUE, WP:NPOV, and likely even WP:BLP, the last of which requires immediate correction.

All this misinformation and other violations must be corrected. The use of Wikivoice is especially egregious, and serves to highlight the deplorable lack of WP:NPOV in our article—which, despite having been noted by several prior editors, has not been corrected. Most disturbingly, the lack of WP:NPOV is not only blatant, but cuts only one way: I challenge any editor to find within any such examples that portray Trump or his administration in an unduly positive light, as opposed to casting unfounded and false aspersions.The same glaring bias exhibited in the instant section also appears to infect to our entire article and, whatever its root cause may be, urgently needs to be addressed. Thanks! Ekpyros (talk) 19:40, 31 January 2024 (UTC)