Coronavirus & 2020

[pppolitics]

The country will reward or punish Trump for his response.

Bush didn't create Katrina, but his inept response came to define his legacy.

[pppolitics]

'I don't take responsibility at all': Trump deflects blame for coronavirus testing fumble

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/13/trump-coronavirus-testing-128971

Isn't this just made for a political ad?

[pppolitics]

Trump did at great job today. Market was up big. If Trump prevents an Italy or Korea he will get big marks from the public and will possibly ensure his re-election

South Korea tested 10,000 people per day.

In contrast, the US has only tested 11,000 people in total.

Meanwhile, the monkey-in-chief is not taking any responsibility and is blaming Obama.

[pppolitics]

'I don't take responsibility at all': Trump deflects blame for coronavirus testing fumble

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/13/trump-coronavirus-testing-128971

Isn't this just made for a political ad?

So he ought to say — “Yes, I take responsibility. Because we were given a — a set of circumstances, and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn't meant for this kind of — an event with the kind of numbers that we're talking about.”

?

If he was given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time (enacted long before he took office), then why is he incorrect to say he takes no responsibility?

If Trump has a problem with the "rules, regulations and specifications from a different time", what was he doing in the past three years?

Eating glue?

[pppolitics]

Trump did at great job today. Market was up big. If Trump prevents an Italy or Korea he will get big marks from the public and will possibly ensure his re-election

South Korea tested 10,000 people per day.

In contrast, the US has only tested 11,000 people in total.

Meanwhile, the monkey-in-chief is not taking any responsibility and is blaming Obama.

Did you listen to the press conference? Are you following / reading the coverage of the virus in America?

Medical experts (NOT Trump, NOT Republicans ... medical experts) explained that America couldn’t do what South Korea did because America has a system that doesn’t facilitate that sort of rapid, nationwide testing against a novel virus. Specifically, the FDA has to approve the testing system  first, and their requirements (it appears) are quite stringent. In the confines of the laws, what could anyone have done to circumvent this system?

They did announce the approval of the Roche testing. And NYC announced that  drive-in testing is coming. So they are making headway.

That's a nice way throwing your hands up in the air and say, "not my fault!"

[pppolitics]

Trump tells a nation terrified of coronavirus that none of this is his fault

President Trump held a remarkable press conference Friday afternoon. It began with a parade of corporate CEOs who briefly took the podium to explain efforts their companies would take to improve coronavirus screening. But it quickly progressed into a parade of lies, insults, and buck passing by the president himself.

Trump’s core message: All of this is someone else’s fault.

One of the biggest failures — possibly the single biggest failure — of the United States’ response to coronavirus pandemic is our failure to deploy tests that will allow doctors, patients, and public health officials to determine who is infected. The United States has tested far fewer people per capita than any of its peer nations, and by a wide margin.



At one point, Trump was asked about the admission of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, that our lag in testing was “a failing.” And he was asked if he takes responsibility for this failure.

Trump’s response: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

The president claimed that “we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules and regulations and specifications from a different time,” and this existing legal infrastructure “wasn’t meant for this kind of event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”

It’s an astonishing claim, and it’s astonishing because Trump has spent the better part of his term dismantling the federal government’s pandemic fighting infrastructure.

How Trump made the government less able to respond to a pandemic

In 2005, the US Agency for International Development developed a program to help detect and research infectious diseases that arise in animal populations and eventual jump to humans — it’s likely that coronavirus is such a disease. This program, which was set up in response to the H1N5 bird flu scare, continued through the rest of the Bush administration and through the entire Obama administration.

The Trump administration shut it down last fall.

Trump has also repeatedly proposed budgets — he most recently did so last month — calling for sharp cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, although Congress resisted such cuts. Former CDC Director Tom Frieden warned that the public health cuts in Trump’s first budget were “unsafe at any level of enactment.”

In 2018, Trump ordered the White House National Security Council’s (NSC) entire global health security arm shut down. And that’s only part of what Trump’s done to hollow out the nation’s public health infrastructure. As Foreign Policy’s Laurie Garrett reports:

[...]

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/13/21179119/trump-not-my-fault-coronavirus-press-conference-public-health