“This is probably one of the worst stories I’ve covered in my career here at CNN. … Doctors Without Borders have come to the United States to do their work,” Gupta said, while giving his own assessment of the US’ dire coronavirus situation.

“This is an organization that typically covers true disasters and medical crises all over the world,” he exclaimed. “They go to the hottest spots in the world, they look at the Earth and say where are we needed? Well, they’re needed here in the United States right now.”

Indeed, the organization’s involvement does serve to illustrate the seriousness of the pandemic in the US, which has experienced 242,000 deaths due to the virus. But it seems many Americans were still shocked to learn of their work there, prompting plenty of outrage and even some panic on social media.

Many were quick to pin the fault for the scale of the Covid-19 outbreak on the Republican administration and President Donald Trump personally, with one user blaming him for supposedly “turning [America] into a Third World Country.”