Trump administration has shown ‘troubling’ failure to lead global coronavirus response: Gayle Smith

One Campaign President & CEO Gayle Smith joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Video Transcript

ANDY SERWER: You were directly involved in the US response to Ebola in 2014, so what is your assessment of how the United States has handled the coronavirus?

GAYLE SMITH: You know, I have to say, sadly, I think there's a very sharp contrast. The response to the Ebola epidemic was extremely difficult, but I think one of the ways we were very effective, where I think we've got a contrast to right now, first was a tremendous reliance on facts, data, science and expertise. And the American people are blessed by having huge talent within and among our US government agencies, so we had a foundation to work with, because, you know, fighting a virus, it's a science. There's data. You can track it. You know where it moves, so it's all, it's like an engineering logistical exercise at warp speed.

So I think that was that was one, and we're seeing less of that, quite frankly, now. I don't think the Ebola response to the Ebola epidemic was not politicized. There was a little bit of political noise at certain points, but when, for example, we went to Congress to get supplemental funding for the global response, strong bipartisan support, and I think, unfortunately, the response has become quite politicized today.

I think the biggest difference though, and it's the one that in many ways I find the most troubling is that we are not seeing a global response and we are not seeing American leadership in marshaling that global response. And that global response is one that, obviously, we want to impact the lives of the world's most disenfranchised but also matters to us. So if you think, for example, of the food fights that were had over PPE and medical supplies, you know, we should be using our leadership to pull the world together and mobilize and say we all need these things. Let's organize ourselves and be more effective and more efficient.

The impact of this, I mean, here's the shocking thing. There's as many as 35 countries that can end up defaulting on their debts, because the economic impact of this is so great. Now, the impact of any one of those on the global economy would not be major. If we start seeing significant numbers of countries default, huge impact on human suffering, but huge impact on the global economy. American leadership should be out there getting ahead of them.

Lastly, think about vaccines, and there's a lot of talk about vaccines. We need a plan globally so that we've got vaccine equity, which isn't simply fairness, but it is also the kind of coverage that the epidemiology tells us that we need so that we can shorten the lifespan of this pandemic. That requires leadership and engaging the rest of the world in a way that I don't think we're seeing now, where in contrast during Ebola, President Obama convened a summit with the Secretary-General of the UN. It was top of agenda in UN Security Council, the G7, the G20.

He sat in the Oval Office, I was with him many times, called leaders all over the world to say, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? We all got to work together and get this done. So I think we're much more fragmented, not nearly science-oriented enough, and we're not planning ahead. Other than that, it's great.