Trump's response to the Covid-19

Fauci is trustful.

Trump - not so much.


When Fauci is away from Trump he will tend to deliver nuggets of truth.

But I wonder if he's doing the right thing by remaining to be associated with this administration. The thing is, Trump spews his misinformation with Fauci usually made to stand silently by or not disagree with Trump, giving gravitas to whatever Trump spews out. They're using him when he's made to stand besides Trump.

Fauci may better serve to country by quitting and joining an organization like John Hopkins where he would not be at all muzzled.


People and organizations in general are taking this very seriously, even as the radical right seems to think the virus is "suspiciously-timed" and "originating in a rival country." Yup, the media and dems are trying to crash the market. Sheesh.

So it is a glaring example of the U.S. not believing the administration and also the administration's failure to acknowledge and address the virus quickly.  


"As he (Fauci) warned that the worst is yet to come in terms of the coronavirus outbreak the US, the nation's top infectious disease expert told House lawmakers it "would be nice" if President Donald Trump hadn't eliminated the National Security Council's global health unit.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a House Oversight Committee hearing said: "We worked very well with that office. It would be nice if the office were still there."

.........

"We would recommend that there not be large crowds. If that means not having any people in the audience as the NBA plays, so be it," he said. "We will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now... Bottom line: it's going to get worse."

When pushed for projections on the potential scale of the outbreak, Fauci said: "I can't give you a realistic number until we put into the factor of how we respond. If we are complacent and don't do really aggressive containment and mitigation, the number could go way up and be involved in many, many millions."

Fauci, who has been widely applauded for being a voice of clarity amid the coronavirus outbreak as Trump continues to contradict experts and spread disinformation, was also urged by Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts to push back when the president is at odds with the facts.

"The president has made some bizarre statements here," Lynch said. "The cases are not going down. The American people should be aware of that. You should be forthright in explaining that."

"I have never ever held back telling exactly what is going on from a public health standpoint," Fauci, who has advised six presidents, said in response."

https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-would-be-nice-trump-hadnt-scrapped-nsc-global-health-2020-3


GL2 said:

People and organizations in general are taking this very seriously, even as the radical right seems to think the virus is "suspiciously-timed" and "originating in a rival country." Yup, the media and dems are trying to crash the market. Sheesh.


Yes, the Dems and the media are happy to crash the market. Just to spite Trump. After all, wel all know Dems and the media don't have any market investments. question

Astounding how the radical right advertises its stupidity. Its like wearing a MAGA.


Getting back to the corona virus,I don’t think the USA has a plan. Where are the tests? Last night I was chatting with family in Hong Kong.There are strict rules and regulations there. Before entering your office building your temperature must be checked and given a virus test every time.Most work is done from home but at least once a week work is done at the office. Workers are always distanced far away from each other,etc. This has just become the norm. We are not sure of where to find the tests although Trump as usual said they are beautiful,not knowing anything about it. Let’s get our act together.


The crazy thing is that the bottleneck, in terms of testing isn't the tests themselves (which are virus specific) but the RNA extraction kits which would have been necessary in any outbreak of this sort.  The Government should have had these kits stockpiled in mass but, instead, it may be months before they are available in sufficient quantities.


You can get RNA Extraction kits on the internet


lord_pabulum said:

You can get RNA Extraction kits on the internet

 you can order them.  Whether or not you get one depends on how long it's on back order.

RNA Extraction Kits for COVID-19 Tests Are in Short Supply in US


Rich white people will be able to get them, I'm guessing.


lord_pabulum said:

You can get RNA Extraction kits on the internet

 On eBay  even.  The seller is listed as "J-Rod Kush".  I guess we know what happened to that government stockpile.


When the President speaks tonight, who will he blame for the economic distruption?

  • China?
  • State Governments?
  • Media?
  • Obama?

nohero said:

When the President speaks tonight, who will he blame for the economic distruption?

  • China?
  • State Governments?
  • Media?
  • Obama?

 I did not have "people traveling from Europe" on my Bingo card.


So Trump's response is basically, blame foreigners, shut down the borders and cut taxes. He really has a limited toolbox, doesn't he?


nohero said:

nohero said:

When the President speaks tonight, who will he blame for the economic distruption?

  • China?
  • State Governments?
  • Media?
  • Obama?

 I did not have "people traveling from Europe" on my Bingo card.

When Trump opens his mouth the market tanks. Presidents are supposed to inspire confidence at times of crisis, not crater it.

The market responded to his clueless banning of travel from Europe but not the UK. So how does that work? Are planes allowed to leave the UK bit not Europe? Will it be by citizenship? What's to prevent someone from the EU hopping over to London to take a London flight? Why should the UK be exempted? Because he's more worried about politics than health mitigation?

Its sad for those who are in corporate or union pensions funds (mostly invested in markets) or 401K's considering much market tanking is due to loss of confidence in governments. We elect bobble head bs artists and this is what we get when we have real crisis.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/obamas-ebola-czar-on-how-trump-bungled-coronavirus-response.html

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/trump-speech-coronavirus-travel-ban-europe.html

Even the nonsensical measure of the travel ban contains its own nonsensical exemption for the United Kingdom. Why Trump left out a country that has far more confirmed cases than many of the countries whose residents are banned, he did not say. Political affinity with its Prime Minister? A personal business stake for his European golf resorts, which are coincidentally located in exempted countries? No account was even offered.
Trump’s speech had no mention of the central problem in the American response to the coronavirus, which is the lack of a functioning testing regime. Having falsely promised on Friday that everybody who currently wants a test can get one, Trump simply ignored the question altogether. At the moment, people who have symptoms do not know what they can do about it. The number is due to explode, and Trump offered them no guidance.
While he did urge the audience to wash their hands, he likewise ignored the question of public gatherings, which is being resolved without any apparent input from the administration. Colleges are closing, sporting events are being canceled or staged without crowds, but Trump’s speech made no mention of the question at all.


This bothers me:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-secrecy-exclusive-idUSKBN20Y2LM

Why the heck should deliberations about the government response to the pandemic be classified? Apparently this made it impossible for some experts to attend, since they don't have the appropriate clearances.

Edited to add: My assumption is that Trump wants it classified because he doesn't want his statements in such briefings on the evening news. He is in over his head and doesn't want to look bad.


mrincredible said:

This bothers me:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-secrecy-exclusive-idUSKBN20Y2LM

Why the heck should deliberations about the government response to the pandemic be classified? Apparently this made it impossible for some experts to attend, since they don't have the appropriate clearances.

I saw that yesterday and that is just one of the reasons that the public has no confidence that this administration is able to handle this crisis. 

btw - I read a tweet yesterday that Jared Kushner is really the person who is calling the shots - not Pence. That should really give us a feeling of confidence.  


In a word - disgusted.

You pat yourself on the back as being the smartest person in every room that you're in and you deliver a press conference that is filled with finger pointing, nonsense and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the severity of the problem.  For such a great problem solver you really screwed the pooch on this one.

Instead of getting up, showing real leadership by saying you messed up, you point the finger at "foreign" countries as if it is their fault.

I guess I'm not surprised so I shouldn't be disappointed but just once I wish he would say, "I made a mistake.  I'm on it."  But who am I kidding, that will NEVER happen.


I find myself wondering if anyone in the administration is looking at a 25th amendment solution. I've never taken that idea seriously, although I know it's been floated before.

It seems so highly unlikely with all the yes-men in the cabinet now.

I know this is crazy talk. But man, the guy seems clueless.


mrincredible said:

This bothers me:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-secrecy-exclusive-idUSKBN20Y2LM

Why the heck should deliberations about the government response to the pandemic be classified? Apparently this made it impossible for some experts to attend, since they don't have the appropriate clearances.

Probably because he doesn't want it on the record that he exempted UK because that's where his golf courses are 


Per the title of this thread, 

"Via pool, Trump just declared his rally in Florida - which has not been announced for Tampa on March 25 bc aides have tried getting him not to do it - is “all sold out.”

https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1238121348741955589



We're all paying the heavy price thanks to the deplorables and the stupid who voted Trump and of those who refused to vote for Hillary:

In an extremely illuminating interview with Gabriel Debenedetti published this morning, Obama’s Ebola czar Ron Klain described his response to that threat, which he suggested was a relatively good model for how the U.S. might have responded to this one. That response began with 10,000 public-health workers sent to fight and investigate the disease. This administration has sent none, which means it has been, practically speaking, flying blind about the nature of the coronavirus and the challenges it represents to public-health systems. In fact, it’s worse than that; for all intents and purposes, the administration hasn’t been flying at all, spending the last three months sitting by entirely idle and indifferent, rather than scaling up testing regimes, issuing protocols, and preparing for a major surge of patients by developing contingency plans to expand hospital capacity around the country wherever it became needed.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/coronavirus-shows-us-america-is-broken.html


basil said:

Probably because he doesn't want it on the record that he exempted UK because that's where his golf courses are 

 there is speculation that Trump was struggling to read the teleprompter and just ad-libbed portions of the speech. 


This is something he doesn't know how to fight. He tried all his usual tricks: call it a hoax, claim it has been developed and spread by the democrats, claim we only have 15 infected people in the US and they will all be better next week, claim it will go away by itself, claim it is a foreign virus. Also, he can't bully it or call it "sleepy corona virus". None of this is going to work. So now he is trying to play the competent leader who can combat it and call for unity, but he already screwed the whole thing up, and most people won't believe him no matter what he says. It would be ironic if the thing that brought him down would be a virus from China (because, by the way, corona is going to destroy the global economy).


Comparison to the previous administration's handling of Ebola:

Critics deride Trump for appointing VP Pence who has no medical or health care experience as head of the COVID-19 task force.  In October 2014, Obama appointed Ron Klain as the Ebola response coordinator. Klain is a lawyer and had no medical or health care experience.

From the Guardian Oct 2014

On October 16, 2014, in a United States Congressional hearing regarding the Ebola virus crisis, Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), testified and warned that in developing a vaccine they were still some distance from producing sufficient quantities for widespread trials

From US News and World Report Oct 2014

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that Ebola is like a “forest fire” that can reignite at any point if all embers are not extinguished, as politicians in Washington prepared to criticize initial mistakes made in responding to its spread in the US.

Dr. Fauci noted that the supply of the experimental drug known as ZMapp, which may have helped American health workers who caught Ebola while working in Liberia, is gone. He said federal officials were helping the drug manufacturer with efforts to boost manufacturing, but that it would be up to two months before any more of the drug is available. Moreover, tests on potential vaccines or treatment drugs need to be done to prove that a drug works.

This all sounds familiar doesn't it.



You're quoting Dr. Fauci describing the science.  The science is still the science, and it's misleading to say that Fauci's comments there are criticisms of the government response.

lord_pabulum said:

From the Guardian Oct 2014

On October 16, 2014, in a United States Congressional hearing regarding the Ebola virus crisis, Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), testified and warned that in developing a vaccine they were still some distance from producing sufficient quantities for widespread trials

From US News and World Report Oct 2014

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that Ebola is like a “forest fire” that can reignite at any point if all embers are not extinguished, as politicians in Washington prepared to criticize initial mistakes made in responding to its spread in the US.

Dr. Fauci noted that the supply of the experimental drug known as ZMapp, which may have helped American health workers who caught Ebola while working in Liberia, is gone. He said federal officials were helping the drug manufacturer with efforts to boost manufacturing, but that it would be up to two months before any more of the drug is available. Moreover, tests on potential vaccines or treatment drugs need to be done to prove that a drug works.

This all sounds familiar doesn't it.

 


lord_pabulum said:

This all sounds familiar doesn't it.

 it's not at all familiar.  The criticism of the decision to appoint Pence to a leading role in this effort has little or nothing to do with his lack of a medical background.  It has to do with his past positions rejecting science on the link between smoking and cancer, and his complete mishandling of an HIV outbreak in Indiana when he was governor.  His background makes him a uniquely bad choice to instill confidence in the federal response to a health crisis.


I'm saying - This all sounds familiar doesn't it.


it may "sound" familiar.  But it isn't similar.


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