'It's COVID-19, not COVID-1 folks': Kellyanne Conway mocked for hinting there were 18 previous coronaviruses
Senior counselor to President Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, became an object of ridicule after she suggested on television on April 15, that there were 18 previous viruses before the coronavirus that could have turned into pandemics. The 52-year-old also slammed World Health Organization (WHO), saying it acted irresponsibly when it came to global well-being and was caught unprepared in its fight against the outbreak. Her criticism of the WHO came in the wake of Trump doing the same and freezing US' funding for the international agency, which was a whopping $453M in fiscal year 2019.
Conway, who appeared on Fox News, said: "This is COVID-19, not COVID-1 folks, and so you would think the people in charge of the World Health Organization, facts and figures, would be on top of that." The disease was named COVID-19 because it's from the coronavirus family and was detected for the first time in 2019.
Her viewpoint on COVID-19 changed less than an hour later
Conway, however, changed her tone completely when appearing in a separate interview on Fox News about half an hour after making the bizarre remark and then again while speaking to reporters at the White House. She was clearer about the reason why the disease is called COVID-19 and told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo: "It's called COVID-19 because that's the year, that's the year."
Speaking to reporters in the White House driveway, Conway reiterated it and made a more organized attack on the WHO saying the world health body termed it a global pandemic in March 2020 while it originated in 2019. "So they knew for a while and they dragged their feet it looks like," she said.
COVID-19 is the shortened form of corona (CO), virus (VI) and disease (D) followed by the year. Before the WHO formalized the name, it was called the "2019 novel coronavirus" or "2019-nCoV".
While questioning the WHO's transparency and accountability during the outbreak, Conway also denied that the agency was being made a scapegoat by the Trump administration. She said they were only asking the WHO why it didn't do its job.
"At the very very least we should expect a return on that investment that the WHO tells us the truth about this virus, about its origins, whether it can be transmitted human to human — they denied that — they made a very political statement that when the president shut down travel to China," Conway said during her appearance on Fox News. "Lying about it and not being transparent — let's at least hit pause and investigate that. Nobody's scapegoating them. We're asking them why they didn't do their job," she added.
Trump has attacked the WHO in the recent past over its role in the coronavirus episode. While he accused it of being biased towards China and called it "China-centric", he also slammed it for not favoring his decision to ban travel from China in the initial period. He then warned freezing funds for the body and eventually did it.
Conway has a war of words with Democrat Bobby Rush
Conway faced a backlash over her controversial comment on COVID-19 initaially. Veteran Democratic representative from Illinois Bobby Rush asked her to "do better" in a tweet and broke down the definition of COVID-19 for her, adding that there haven't been 19 cases of coronaviruses.
Conway didn’t opt for silence either. Responding to Rush, she said she knows that the '19' in COVID-19 stands for the year because she attends the task force meeting daily. She said she only wanted to convey the point that the WHO should have been able to predict pandemics and be honest after having received massive fundings from the US.
Conway then hit back at Rush and asked him what made him feel better: Insulting her or endorsing former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg for president. Bloomberg failed to impress in the Democratic primaries this year and dropped out after just one Super Tuesday.
Rush then took another dig and told Conway, "It’s telling that you perceive the truth as an insult."
The White House later came to Conway's rescue. In a statement to PolitiFact, an official said that Conway, a former campaign manager of Trump, is well aware of the fact that the 19 in COVID-19 refers to the year. It said the president’s counselor was addressing "the sheer number of years the US has given billions and billions of dollars to WHO and were failed by them". It said Conway said in each of her interviews on April 15 that the WHO’s job is to anticipate the pandemics and that she never mentioned "18 other coronaviruses".