Martin Smith On America's Deferred COVID-19 Response

President Donald Trump listens during a roundtable about America's seniors, in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, June 15, 2020, in Washington.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

June 16, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

FRONTLINE producer Martin Smith spoke with Boston Public Radio on Tuesday about his new documentary "The Virus: What Went Wrong." The Trump administration deferred to take action in preparing for the coronavirus in February, Smith said.

"We responded late and a Columbia University study has calculated that had stay-at-home orders and social distancing been imposed or even suggested three weeks earlier, than it was by the president, 83 percent of U.S. deaths would have been prevented," he said. "That's a stunning statistic, it goes to the issue of the fact that we were in denial through February, and so we didn't respond soon enough."

Another issue with our response was the improper manufacturing of COVID-19 testing kits, Smith added.

"We didn't manufacture tests successfully so we lost another several weeks there in bobbling that effort," he said. "So we were blind, and we didn't even know what was going on around the country."

The new FRONTLINE special The Virus: What Went Wrong, is from award-winning, veteran FRONTLINE producers Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria. You can catch it tonight at 9:30 Eastern Time on PBS and on YouTube, the film will be available to stream on pbs.org/frontline and on the PBS Video App.