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Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg opened up about coronavirus in a recent interview with the Deseret News.
Bloomberg spoke with Boyd Matheson, the Deseret News opinion editor, about his hopes for the presidency and answered questions about how he would handle the coronavirus and a national emergency.
Matheson referenced when Bloomberg bought ad space on CBS and NBC to talk about the coronavirus outbreak, The New York Times reported. The ads cost between $1.25 million and $3 million.
“I know this has been a very worrisome week for many Americans,” Bloomberg said in thread, according to The Verge. “The coronavirus is spreading, and the economy is taking a hit. Markets have fallen because of uncertainty. At times like this, it’s the job of the president to reassure the public that he or she is taking all of the necessary steps to protect the health and well-being of every citizen.”
In Tuesday’s interview with Matheson, Bloomberg said when he was mayor of New York City he practiced and simulated plans for an emergency — like a virus “that comes from some place else in the world.” Emergencies could be explosions, pipe leaks or disasters, he said.
Bloomberg said he “practiced in real terms how do you communicate, for example, with the public.”
He said his team would figure out how to communicate through radio, television and other forms of media. He said it was important for officials to identify the “right numbers” for people who need to call for help.
Bloomberg said he always wanted to make sure senior citizens who lived alone and didn’t listen to radio would know information, too.
“You do all of them in advance,” he said of those steps. “And unfortunately we’ve not done that.”
Bloomberg said President Donald Trump and his staff have not added new staffers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Institutes of Health, which could cause a problem when the coronavirus continues to spread.
“He’s not planned for any of this stuff,” Bloomberg said.
