Wash Your Hands & Don’t Be Racist
“People Are Dying Who Have Never Died Before” DJT 3/18/2020
It’s bad enough that we have creeps on El Cajon Boulevard trying to hawk toilet paper at outrageous prices, as a neighbor reported (to the police) yesterday.
Now we have the President having a meltdown on TV during what was supposed to be today’s episode of Our Great Dear Leader speaks.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases no longer appears at the daily White House briefings since he used the word “failing” in response to a question about the lags taking place in testing for the coronavirus.
The messaging at these daily dog and pony shows is supposed to mirror the president’s claims about being out in front of the pandemic and the government’s now-wartime status in responding to it.
As Trump makes claims about nobody knowing how bad it could be or that the system weren’t in place, stories are popping up in the press disproving these claims.
Prior to his inauguration, the Obama administration briefed incoming officials on a scenario remarkably like the one the nation faces now.
Multiple current and former Trump officials reached by POLITICO said they did not recall much about the briefing. But some Obama aides who attended said they were left with the impression that many of the Trump aides showed up to simply check off a box more than to learn. The impression was boosted in part because the transition overall was going so poorly. Several Trump nominees had barely even spoken to their Obama counterparts.
As it turns out, some in the administration were well aware of the potential for a pandemic disaster, via the New York Times:
The work done over the past five years, however, demonstrates that the government had considerable knowledge about the risks of a pandemic and accurately predicted the very types of problems Mr. Trump is now scrambling belatedly to address.
“Crimson Contagion,” the exercise conducted last year in Washington and 12 states including New York and Illinois, showed that federal agencies under Mr. Trump continued the Obama-era effort to think ahead about a pandemic.
But the planning and thinking happened many layers down in the bureaucracy. The knowledge and sense of urgency about the peril appear never to have gotten sufficient attention at the highest level of the executive branch or from Congress, leaving the nation with funding shortfalls, equipment shortages and disorganization within and among various branches and levels of government.
The October 2019 report in particular documents that officials at the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services Departments and even the White House’s National Security Council were aware of the potential for a respiratory virus outbreak originating in China to spread quickly to the United States and overwhelm the nation.
CNBC, In January: Do you trust that we’re going to know everything we need to know [on the coronavirus] from China?
Trump: "I do. I do. I have a great relationship with President Xi."
This morning NPR broke a story saying that well-connected donors of Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were warned on February 27 to prepare for dire economic and societal effects of a likely pandemic.
On Feb. 27, when the United States had 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19, President Trump was tamping down fears and suggesting the virus could be seasonal.
"It's going to disappear. One day, It's like a miracle. It will disappear," the president said then, before adding, "it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We'll see what happens."
On that same day, Burr attended a luncheon held at a social club called the Capitol Hill Club. And he delivered a much more alarming message.
"There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. "It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic."
https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1240681268645429248?s=20
Now it’s time to start blaming other people.
https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1240696337001111552?s=20
A planted question, so the Prez can do a racist rant
https://twitter.com/GaryLegum/status/1240675114305421324?s=20
Some perspective on the future, via the Washington Post:
Like the hilly bumps experts foresee in coming months, the 1918 pandemic hit America in three waves — a mild one that spring, the deadliest wave in fall and a final one that winter.
With each wave came a cycle of denial, devastation, community response finally kicking into overdrive — always followed by finger-pointing and blame among leaders and the public.
“Every outbreak is different,” said medical anthropologist Monica Schoch-Spana, who spent months digging through archives to study how Spanish flu played out in Baltimore.
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Capitalism "thrives", regardless
https://twitter.com/BuckFoston_/status/1240671575843602434?s=20
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com