Tuesday, June 16th @ 9:30 on WGVU Public Television - PBS FRONTLINE presents The Virus: What Went Wrong? It investigates why and how the U.S. was unprepared to battle COVID-19, despite repeated warnings of a potent contagion headed our way.
“In December patients are trickling into hospitals in Wuhan.”
“It was like a nuclear bomb.”
Narrator: “Why wasn’t the United States more prepared?”
“It really goes to the top in the White House and that’s what we show in the program that the response was just sluggish and not coordinated well.”
From President Donald Trump’s eye on the 2020 election to a lack of COVID-19 testing, correspondent Martin Smith takes a closer look in FRONTLINE’s The Virus: What Went Wrong?
“Generally, even the media and some of the health advisors were a little bit slow in late January and early February. So, yea there was advice available and there is a Columbia University study that now shows that had we called for social distancing three weeks sooner it would have reduced the number of deaths in the United States by 83%. That’s a stunning statistic and finding but that’s the case when you have exponential growth. If you respond earl you can cut it off, but we didn’t.”
FRONTLINE’s The Virus: What Went Wrong? airs Tuesday, June 16th @ 9:30 on WGVU Public Television.