". . . On April 30, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 63-page draft of recommended guidelines for opening America leaked to the press. The CDC’s guide, which had already been submitted to the White House, reflected the current state of the science on the coronavirus and how to prevent it from spreading in communities once lockdown measures end. If implemented, it would have offered some of the most precise guidance the public had received since the COVID-19 pandemic began. . . Unfortunately, those recommendations will not be implemented. The guide was shelved by the White House before it was ever officially published, with Vice President Mike Pence’s task force complaining that the rules were restrictive and “overly specific.” The implication here was that the White House wished to avoid anything prescriptive or difficult to implement. And so instead, a much sparer and looser set of CDC guidelines for “reopening” was published online on May 14: “Communities, Schools, Workplaces and Events: Guidance for Where You Live, Work, Learn, Pray and Play.”Ambiguity in these circumstances is not neutral. It is harmful. And we deserve better. . . "
The first sign of a massive failure came with testing. South Korea, which has been widely praised for its response to coronavirus, tested more than 66,000 people within a week of the first community transmission within its borders. By comparison, the US took roughly three weeks to complete that many tests — in a country that is much more populous and, now, is on track to have a much worse outbreak than South Korea and other nations. . .
instead trying to downplay the threat of Covid-19. Trump himself has tweeted comparisons of Covid-19 to the common flu — which Jha describes as “really unhelpful,” because the novel coronavirus appears to be much worse. Trump also called concerns about the virus a “hoax.” He said on national television that, based on nothing more than a self-admitted “hunch,” the death rate of the disease is much lower than public health officials projected. . .
And Trump has rejected any accountability for the botched testing process: “I don’t take responsibility at all,” he said (in March) . . .
The Trump administration . . . put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of handling the coronavirus pandemic, building out a team that includes well-respected experts like Deborah Birx. But this is in reaction to the epidemic, instead of something that a preexisting agency within the administration was working on for years. . . “It would be nice if the office was still there,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said during a congressional hearing. “We worked very well with that office.”. . .
other countries’ actions, such as China’s draconian measures, gave the US a bit of time to do something, but the federal government has failed to get even the basics right in that time. . .
Trump has consistently downplayed the coronavirus, comparing it to the common flu and claiming that his administration is doing a “GREAT job” and keeping things under control. Even when announcing his administration’s goal to get 5 million test kits out, Trump said, “I doubt we’ll need anywhere near that.”. . .
Trump “did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that’s partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall.”. . .
(from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/presidents-intelligence-briefing-book-repeatedly-cited-virus-threat/2020/04/27/ca66949a-8885-11ea-ac8a-fe9b8088e101_story.html)
". . . U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials. . . The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats. . . the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week . . . "
(from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/peter-wehner-trump-presidency-over/607969/)
"When, in January 2016, I wrote that despite being a lifelong Republican who worked in the previous three GOP administrations, I would never vote for Donald Trump, even though his administration would align much more with my policy views than a Hillary Clinton presidency would, a lot of my Republican friends were befuddled. How could I not vote for a person who checked far more of my policy boxes than his opponent? . . . What I explained then, and what I have said many times since, is that Trump is fundamentally unfit—intellectually, morally, temperamentally, and psychologically—for office. For me, that is the paramount consideration in electing a president, in part because at some point it’s reasonable to expect that a president will face an unexpected crisis—and at that point, the president’s judgment and discernment, his character and leadership ability, will really matter. . . this is a massive failure in leadership that stems from a massive defect in character. Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president’s disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious. . ."
. . . that we must continue to suffer this person in this position????? . . .
(from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests-injection-disinfectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216)
". . . President Donald Trump suggested the possibility of an "injection" of disinfectant into a person infected with the coronavirus as a deterrent to the virus during his daily briefing Thursday. . . Trump made the remark after Bill Bryan, who leads the Department of Homeland Security's science and technology division, gave a presentation on research his team has conducted that shows that the virus doesn't live as long in warmer and more humid temperatures. Bryan said, "The virus dies quickest in sunlight," leaving Trump to wonder whether you could bring the light "inside the body." . . . "So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked because of the testing," Trump said, speaking to Bryan during the briefing. "And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that, too.". . . "
. . . dead people can't BUY STUFF, Mr. Trump . . .
". . . Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said President Donald Trump’s Friday tweets calling for several U.S. states to be “liberated” would provoke Americans to break the law and commit acts of violence in his name. . .“The president’s statements this morning encourage illegal and dangerous acts. He is putting millions of people in danger of contracting COVID-19. His unhinged rantings and calls for people to ‘liberate’ states could also lead to violence,” Inslee said in a statement released Friday afternoon. “The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies even while his own administration says the virus is real and is deadly, and that we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted.”. . . Earlier in the day, President Trump called for certain states to begin easing emergency restrictions put in place to stymie the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. . .As previously reported by Law&Crime, the president specifically attacked battleground states with Democratic governors, specifically Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota, with the Virginia tweet explicitly saying “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”. . ."
". . . a series of cost-cutting decisions made by the Trump administration in preceding years that had gutted the nation’s infectious disease defense infrastructure. The “pandemic response team” firing claim referred to news accounts from Spring 2018 reporting that White House officials tasked with directing a national response to a pandemic had been ousted. . . Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior. . . It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time. . ."
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". . . President Trump was slow to acknowledge the virus as a real threat. And thus far, the president has resisted using the Defense Production Act to force private companies to manufacture masks, gloves and other essential supplies in the fight against the coronavirus. Many government task forces that plan for disasters have yet to be activated in this crisis. . . "One of the biggest problems we're facing now is panic. You see it in the stock market. You see it in panic buying," he says. "'All of this panic could have been prevented. ... If the president had been working since January to get the organs of government ready for this, we as citizens could have been calmed down knowing that the people that we trust to protect us are doing that.". . . "
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(from http://digitaledition.baltimoresun.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=e6321562-5b65-44a0-909e-22af8824e01a)
". . . Looking at Trump this week, I see someone desperately making it up as he goes along, still unaware that millions of Americans now can’t help but see the disconnect between his words and the reality of their lives. But, as an entertainer, Trump can feel the cameras and the spotlight pulling away to gaze on others and that means marginalization for him. There is nothing a narcissist fears more than marginalization. Perhaps that’s why he held two press sessions Thursday and lashed out at the media in one of them. . ."
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(from A Very Stable Genius; Donald J. Trump's Testing of America by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig)
". . . The first couple was set to take a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, which sits just of the coast of Honolulu and straddles the hull of the battleship that sank into the Pacific during the Japanese surprise bombing attack in 1941. As a passenger boat ferried the Trumps to the stark white memorial, the president pulled (John) Kelly aside for a quiet consult . . . "Hey, John, what's this all about? What's this a tour of?" Trump asked his chief of staff. . . Kelly was momentarily stunned. Trump had heard the phrase "Pearl Harbor" and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else. . . "He was at time dangerously uninformed," said one senior former advisor. . . "
". . . Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley stepped down from Boeing’s board of directors after less than a year because she opposes government aid to help the aircraft manufacturer weather the coronavirus crisis, the company said Thursday. . . Boeing earlier this week said it is seeking $60 billion in government aid for itself and its massive supply chain because of the virus. . . President Donald Trump this week threw his support behind the manufacturer, saying: “We have to protect Boeing.”. . ."
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(from snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/)
". . . It’s . . . true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating (Rear Adm. Timothy) Ziemer’s position (head of the global health security team on the National Security Council) and reassigning others (spring, 2018), although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time. . . "
(from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-need-leadership-we-have-trump-instead/2020/03/09/19630afe-623b-11ea-845d-e35b0234b136_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2_YbGgcNT2yQsUHWip5UvECgqEV9q8ty7DdYpfJrR6ct-UmXvbdbBMtlY)
". . . it was a catastrophic mistake to give an egomaniacal reality-television star such power and responsibility. We are all paying the price. . . even a minimally competent president could calm anxieties by explaining what we know and what we don’t know about the virus. A decent president would be less concerned about the media coverage he or she was receiving and more focused on getting reliable information to a nation desperately seeking answers. . . He may well succeed in convincing his loyal followers that the coronavirus is some kind of hoax. We can only hope that none of those true believers end up paying with their lives.". . . "
