Experts agree: Trump horribly mismanaged the U.S. COVID-19 disaster

Two days ago my daughter lost her job as sales manager for a small business in southern California. She's shocked.

Her company's financial problems arrived very suddenly because of the COVID-19 outbreak. As I described in a previous blog post, with no retail outlets being open, with the companies that owe them money being unable to pay, and with them being unable to pay their suppliers, every employee has been furloughed.

I blame Donald Trump. For good reason.

Trump is why the United States is facing a massive disaster. Lots of sickness and deaths. Economic recession, if not depression. Shortages of all kinds of stuff, including the personal protective equipment needed to keep our heroic health professionals from contacting the coronavirus themselves. 

At first I was tempted to write a post about Trump's failure to manage the COVID-19 outbreak that was filled with profanities. That's how upset I am about the damage our Idiot-in-Chief has done to this country. 

My daughter's travails, though serious, pale in comparison to what millions of other people are going to have to endure. Her husband still has a job. Their family finances are fairly sound. Today she told me that if they stick to buying basics, they should be fine. There's a chance her company could get back in business if things improve by next September.

So my outrage at Trump is based on concerns that go way beyond how my wife and I, along with my daughter's family, have been affected. I'll never forgive Trump for making a bad pandemic situation so much worse than it needed to be.

But rather than rant more about this from my personal perspective, I'm going to quote two health experts.

First, here's some quotations from a piece dated today in The New Yorker, "The Coronavirus and Building a Better Strategy for Fighting Pandemics." I've highlighted some notable quotes in red.

I recently spoke by phone with Dr. Ashish Jha, a physician and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, who has been tracking the coronavirus story closely over the past couple months. He has been especially outspoken about the Trump Administration’s slow response to the threat and also the scandalously slow pace of testing in the United States.

...You recently told Bloomberg News, “We’re so far behind this thing at this point. And the reason we’re so far behind is because we’ve had so little testing. This is such a rapidly moving infection that losing a few days is bad, and losing a couple of weeks is terrible. Losing 2 months is close to disastrous, and that’s what we did.” Can you explain the scenario where we have more testing starting two months ago, and what you think that would look like today?

Oh, my God, if we had got on top of this thing two months ago, America would look very, very different. So, let’s walk through that scenario. Imagine that when the W.H.O. put out its test kit [in January] we either took it or built an effective test ourselves.

We would have then ramped up those tests. The data by late January was very clear that we were going to see a lot of these infections in the United States, and, actually, we had started seeing the first cases from travellers from China. We would have started testing people who had symptoms.

Initially, it was the travellers, because that is how it got introduced. We would have isolated those people. We would have had contact tracing, which is really critical. Everyone that had been in touch with them would have been monitored, and any of them that showed symptoms would have been tested.

If we had done that extensively across the United States, I believe we would have got on top of this infection. We wouldn’t have broad community spread the way we do right now, and I don’t know that we would have a lockdown right now.

I could imagine in some communities the infection might have got a little out of control, and you would close schools and businesses for a couple of weeks, but where we are right now, with this broad, almost national—should be national—shutdown, it’s all because we let this infection get ahead of us.

And what it would have taken to be on top of it was literally what we learned in first-year public-health programs about how you deal with outbreaks. It’s what we have done for hundreds of years, which is identify people infected, trace their contacts, monitor them, test them, and isolate whichever ones are positive. It’s a little chain.

It’s a standard thing. It is what South Korea did. It is what Singapore did. It is what Taiwan did. And they are not out of the woods. But they have not had to shut down their schools or do the kinds of extreme things we have had to do because we haven’t done testing. I think what your readers need to know is that we are in this position today because we wasted two months not getting an infrastructure together for testing Americans who need to be identified with having covid-19.

And here's some passages from a WIRED piece dated yesterday, "The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains Whats Coming." Again, I've highlighted in red some significant quotes.

LARRY BRILLIANT SAYS he doesn’t have a crystal ball. But 14 years ago, Brilliant, the epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox, spoke to a TED audience and described what the next pandemic would look like.

...People say Contagion is prescient. We just saw the science. The whole epidemiological community has been warning everybody for the past 10 or 15 years that it wasn't a question of whether we were going to have a pandemic like this. It was simply when. It's really hard to get people to listen.

I mean, Trump pushed out the admiral on the National Security Council, who was the only person at that level who's responsible for pandemic defense. With him went his entire downline of employees and staff and relationships. And then Trump removed the [early warning] funding for countries around the world.

...We are being asked to do things, certainly, that never happened in my lifetime—stay in the house, stay 6 feet away from other people, don’t go to group gatherings. Are we getting the right advice?

Well, as you reach me, I'm pretending that I'm in a meditation retreat, but I'm actually being semi-quarantined in Marin County. Yes, this is very good advice.

But did we get good advice from the president of the United States for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax. There are still people today who believe that, to their detriment. Speaking as a public health person, this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime.

But what you're hearing now [to self-isolate, close schools, cancel events] is right. Is it going to protect us completely? Is it going to make the world safe forever? No. It's a great thing because we want to spread out the disease over time.

Comments

[tucson]

Trump cancelled flights coming in from China at the end of December. At that time the media was saying he was over-reacting and, of course, RACIST!! Racist Trump up to his typical pattern. He hates the Chinese as much as he hates everyone else except rich white guys. Ohhh, those white guys.

“We’re so far behind this thing at this point. And the reason we’re so far behind is because we’ve had so little testing."

--There were test kits available but they were inaccurate, defective. Trump's fault, right? Not the manufacturer or the CDC.. Not if you have a finger somewhere on your hand you can point at Trump. It's gotta be Trump because Evil's real name is TRUMP!

"Trump is why the United States is facing a massive disaster."

-- The enemy in this thing is the Chinese government who kept the lid on this virus and would not let scientists in to study it. Then it really got out of hand. It's not Trump, it's China that is the problem. If they were honest and not deceptive, if they cared about humanity this could could have been nipped in the bud right then and there there. By THEM!

So, here we are looking for someone to blame. Of course, Trump!! Who else? He's the one! He's also responsible it got into Italy, Iran, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and everywhere else the virus is bad.

"I'll never forgive Trump for making a bad pandemic situation so much worse than it needed to be."

--Again, China is where you need to direct your ire. That is where America needs to direct their collective ire. They've been screwing us over for far too long because prior administrations have allowed them to do it.

[nwb]

Unfortunately, facts don’t disturb the trumpanzees, loyal members of the trump cult whose only source of information is the swill on Faux News. If they or those they love are struck down by this virus, they will have “MAGA” engraved on their tombstones.

[Skyline]

"I blame Donald Trump."
At least we get a badly needed break from "global warming".

[Jack Holloway]

Let's look at some actual facts for a change.

Trump shut down the US pandemic task force in 2018, leaving us with no agency to take charge of organizing the necessary experts to do what they are now so badly needed to do.

China officially notified the World Health Organization about what was happening, and what was being done and what was being learned, there in China, on January 3.

Then China similarly notified the US government on January 5.

Trump then claimed that the whole thing was a hoax, and twiddled his fingers.

Trump then claimed that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the Democratic party, and twiddled his fingers.

Trump then claimed that "it's only a bad cold," and twiddled his fingers.

The first covid19 death in the US was reported on Jan 29, in Kirkland, WA. Trump twiddled his fingers.

Then, almost two months receiving the warning from China, Trump appointed a superstition-driven fanatic who does not believe in science, to "take charge" of the already-growing US epidemic.

Eventually, Trump began standing at a podium almost daily, and delivering himself of a torrent of lies, lunacies, misinformation and stupidities that continues to this very day, and in the course of all that announces that he takes no responsibility for all the weeks of delay, or for shutting down the one agency that could have taken charge immediately upon notice from China, and in reply to a reporter's question, gives himself a "10" for the way he dawdled and mishandled everything from the very beginning.

But yeah -- it's all China's fault.

[tucson]

It was the asinine impeachment proceedings that distracted the country from focusing on the emerging virus epidemic in China. Now the corrupt media is using the virus epidemic against Trump since the impeachment failed as it was doomed to do from the start as well as the Russia collusion investigation which was exposed as a fraud.

The corrupt media thinks, "Well, all that stuff didn't work. Let's try to pin the virus epidemic on him. We'll just say what we want. Who's going to stop us? We'll make stuff up. Twist it around. Take it out of context. Let's call it the "Trump Virus". What a great label to pin on him! Maybe we can get him yet!"

It was China who denied access to experts and scientists to study the virus and to make recommendations based on their findings. Their reluctance to co-operate is what has contributed to the wild spread of the Wuhan Virus. They have a lot of suffocation on their hands, not Trump.

Trump declared a travel ban from China starting January 31. This has saved many American lives but he was labeled a xenophobe and racist by the corrupt media. Apparently Trump didn't think it was a hoax and a bad cold. He took it seriously months ago.

The Harris Poll says 57% of America think the government is handling the virus crisis well. It is only because of President Trump's assembling a team of virologists and experts in logistics and recruiting massive help from private industry that this virus is likely to be conquered sooner than any pandemic of the past. He has dispensed with a long list of ridiculous federal regulations that initially hampered the production of test kits, which has has sped up the fight against this virus which still has not killed nearly as many people as the regular flu did in 2018–2019.

[Skyline]

"Let's look at some actual facts for a change."
What ever President Trump has done right or wrong, the precedent has been set for implication:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F66mGV8xKqo
The precedent has been set and accepted by lock-step democrats.
Some people have died.
"What difference does it make?"

[Jack Holloway]

Well it's obvious that people are putting up responses to others' comments, without bothering to read those other comments.

“He took it seriously months ago.”

Hardly.

Here's a comparison between how South Korea handled their viral invasion, and what happened – or rather, what did not happen – here in the US. Note that the article points out that each of the two nations discovered their first Covid-19 case on the same day.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/coronavirus-south-korea-america/

Excerpts:

“On March 12, a startling chyron went up on CNN’s Mid-Morning News after a congressional briefing on the rapid spread of the dangerous coronavirus known as Covid-19. “Health officials tell lawmakers only about 11,000 people tested for virus in U.S.; South Korea testing about 10K per day,” it read, as the visibly shocked hosts Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow pressed their guests for an explanation.
. . .

“After statistics and anecdotes like these were broadcast on CNN that day in March, South Korea instantly became the hottest topic of the day. Americans glued to their televisions reeled in shock from the realization that the US government was woefully behind a country that is often portrayed as owing its democracy and economic system—indeed, its very existence—to the beneficence of the United States.
. . .

“The contrast is particularly shocking because health authorities in both South Korea and the United States learned of their first coronavirus case on the same day in late January, according to an investigation published by Reuters. Seven weeks later, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had tested close to 300,000 people out of a population of 51 million, while the United States is “not even close to meeting demand for testing,” with only 60,000 tests in a population of 330 million, Reuters reported.”

So, one out of every 170 persons in Korea has been tested, compared to one out of every 5,500 in the US (a more than 30 to 1 lag here in the US), though both had the same notifications, and both started with their first case on the same day. (Of course, South Korea does have single-payer, universal health care.)

There are more comparisons in the article which, unfortunately, die-hard Trump groupies most likely will hide their eyes and refuse to look at.

[tucson]

At such a critical time it is not productive to bicker about Trump, but rather to co-operate positively with information that is helpful to people and for resolving and getting through this problem. On "Meet The Press" this morning even an official highly critical of Trump's actions early in this pandemic concede that progress is being made now and that the administration is doing a good job. Let's work together and get through this thing with a common goal in mind.

[Jack Holloway]

Moving forward:

Analyst Tomas Pueyo has published an examination of the various proposals for getting the US through the pandemic, and makes a compelling case for the one that he says, though harsh at the beginning, will result in fewer cases, fewer deaths, and the least economic disaster. It is lengthy, but in my opinion well worth a careful read.

Corona Virus: The Hammer and the Dance
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

And by the way, the article includes a chart – a timeline – of China's actions over the first 38 days since the first appearance of the virus there, based on information compiled by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Notice how rapidly they moved, and how soon they began sharing their discoveries with the world.

Timeline of China's Battle With Covid19:

Dec. 26: 4 unusual cases of pneumonia (3 in the same family) noticed by Jixian Zhang, MD, in HICWM Hospital
Dec 27: Dr. Zhang reported unusual pneumonia cases to the local CDC
Dec 28: 3 more cases found in the HICWM Hospital – total 7
Dec 30: Active case finding begins in Wuhan city
Dec 31: Wuhan Health Commission alerts National Health Commission and China CDC and WHO notified
Jan 1: Huanan seafood market closed.
Jan 7. 2019-nCoV identified
Jan 12: nCoV sequences first shared
Jan 13: nCoV test kits first available
Jan 20: COVID19 a class B notifiable disease
Jan 23: Wuhan city shut down
Jan 24: another 15 cities shut down
Jan 25 – 31 Lunar New Year national Holiday
Jan 30: WHO declares “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”
Feb 1 – 10: Nationwide mandatory extended holiday

Again, I urge everyone to take a careful look at the article linked to above, to see a well-written and very logical proposal for defeating the virus in a way that will, if the author is correct, incur the least loss of life, and the least damage to our economy.