If I say “Covid tests” today, in 2024, I’m guessing your mind conjures a picture of a white and orange box or maybe a blue and white one. Boxes you’ve gotten in the mail or at your local pharmacy.
That’s not what then-President Donald Trump sent to Moscow in the spring of 2020, despite traditional media framing the Bob Woodward bombshell as “tests.”
The Federal Drug Administration granted Abbott an emergency use authorization (EUA) “for its molecular test for the identification of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19″ in March 2020. This was the first successful testing equipment.
According to Woodward’s latest book, War, Trump sent Putin scarce testing equipment.
In War, Woodward writes that while the former president was in office, Trump “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use”.
Putin was reportedly anxious about falling ill with the virus, according to the retelling of Woodward’s book in US media.
AP notes that “Trump sent Putin COVID-19 test machines … as the virus began spreading in 2020.”
The FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization for Abbott’s point-of-care test on 27 March 2020. It was designed to be used with “bench-top instrument[s] used at physician offices and urgent care clinics.”
It would be eight months later before FDA approved at-home tests (mid-November 2020).
By referring to this equipment as “Covid tests” more than four years after the fact, news media are, once again, sanewashing Trump.
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The stakes in November have never been more urgent, nor the choices more extreme.
Remember: you are not voting for one person. You are voting for a team.
I’m voting for Team America not Team Russia-Hungary-North Korea.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com