The Lancet, which Fox News has touted, published another scathing critique of the Trump administration’s COVID-19 response

The medical journal calls for a COVID-19 “test, trace, and isolate” response that a Fox News host had specifically attacked as unnecessary

British medical journal The Lancet published a new editorial harshly criticizing the Trump administration's COVID-19 response, focusing on its role in marginalizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and public health figures like Dr. Nancy Messonnier, who hasn’t appeared in any of the White House briefings on the novel coronavirus after she warned the public in February to prepare for major disruptions in their everyday life. Right-wing media lashed out at Messonnier at the time, and Trump was reportedly furious with her.

The journal notes that “the USA is still nowhere near able to provide the basic surveillance or laboratory testing infrastructure needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic” and that the Trump administration “is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear.”

The editorial further notes that “only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end.” Fox News figures like Steve Hilton have railed at the notion that a “test, trace, and isolate” approach is even necessary.

The editorial concludes, “Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.”

Last month, The Lancet published another editorial in which it called out the “absence of a cohesive national strategy, and volatile, incompetent leadership.”

Before these editorial singling out the Trump administration’s poor response were published, Fox News repeatedly cited the leading medical journal as an authority. Watch:

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