Trump Is Acting As If He Could Gaslight The Coronavirus Away-- Too Bad Normal People Will Die, Not Just His Followers

Polling has shown that almost a third of Americans believe whatever Trump says. Despite Trump's delusional bragging at Fox's Scranton town hall on Thursday, the Trump Regime has entirely botched the American response to the coronavirus pandemic. Testing is the key to community transmission and less than 2,000 people have been tested, almost exclusively people with symptoms or known exposure. The modest goal-- a sensible one expressed by Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, was a million people tested by yesterday-- considerably more than 200. (CoronaCzar Pence said a million and a half tests would have been done by today.)

The L.A. Times reported that "Federal officials said nearly 1 million tests were expected to be available by the end of this week. But in California, one of the country’s hardest-hit regions with 60 cases, the total testing capacity is limited to only 7,400 through the weekend, according to the California Department of Public Health. The inability to test widely and swiftly for the novel coronavirus has impeded the country’s ability to beat back the spread of the virus, experts say. Without testing, public health officials don’t know where the virus is spreading and where to target efforts to contain it." See, sometimes it actually matters who you vote for. Wait for a month or two to process that, when people you know are dead or dying.

Toluse Olorunnipa, a Washington Post reporter, wrote thatTrump himself is the greatest obstacle on responsible coronavirus messaging. "As leading public health experts from across the government have tried to provide clear and consistent information about the deadly coronavirus, they have found their messages undercut, drowned out and muddled by President Trump’s push to downplay the outbreak with a mix of optimism, bombast and pseudoscience. Speaking almost daily to the public about an outbreak that has spread across states and rocked the markets, Trump has promoted his opinions and at times contradicted the public health experts tasked with keeping Americans safe. The president has repeatedly misstated the number of Americans who have tested positive for the virus and claimed it would 'miraculously' disappear in the spring. He has given a false timeline for the development of a vaccine, publicly questioned whether vaccinations for the flu could be used to treat the novel coronavirus and dismissed the World Health Organization’s coronavirus death rate estimate, substituting a much lower figure and citing a 'hunch.'"

Even as pusillanimous and spineless a figure as Lindsey Graham told CNN's Manu Raju in an impromptu interview while he was sashaying down the hall near his office that Trump should pay attention to scientific facts and stop pulling lies out of his ass. "I don’t know what he was talking about," said the South Carolina Trumpist. "I would encourage the president, if he’s going to report things, to make sure that the science is behind what he says. I listen to the scientists when it comes to the numbers."

Remember when Trump's chief economic adviser, the coked up and alcoholic freak Lawrence Kudlow claimed last week that "We have contained this; I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight.". Yesterday he was on CNBC urging American workers should "stay at work" despite coronavirus. CNBC reporter David Faber points out that the former FDA commissioner has criticized the administration for "encouraging people to do things that they shouldn't" which helps spread the virus. Kudlow says to just avoid Seattle and California. He sounded drunk-- and besides, he says, only 20% of Americans who get it will die... so-- worst case scenario-- just 65 million Americans. What's to worry?





Trump's political advisors have told him that coronavirus could kill his reelection efforts, primarily because his regime's response has been doomed from the start. "The Trump Administration’s strategy to combat COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, began with a relatively simple focus: keep it out of the United States. In service of that goal, the White House issued drastic travel restrictions, imposed mandatory quarantines, and repeatedly told the public that these steps were working... [T]he administration’s rosy messaging was fundamentally at odds with a growing cacophony of alarm bells inside and outside the U.S. government. Since January, epidemiologists, former U.S. public health officials and experts have been warning, publicly and privately, that the administration’s insistence that containment was-- and should remain-- the primary way to confront an emerging infectious disease was a grave mistake. In congressional testimony, in medical webcasts and in private discussions with health officials, they warned that the unique features of this flu-like virus made it impossible to control, and that the administration must use any time that containment measures might buy to prepare the country for an inevitable outbreak. The administration was using all its resources to blockade the doors, they warned, but the enemy was likely already in the house."

In a world linked by tens of thousands of flights a day, it’s nearly impossible to completely contain the transmission of an infectious disease like COVID-19, in part because people carrying the virus do not necessarily show symptoms. An effective response, experts say, would have required that administration officials capitalized on the temporary delay of new infections offered by containment strategies in order to aggressively prepare for inevitable outbreaks. But not one of the dozens of experts, doctors or former public health officials who spoke with Time thought that the Trump administration used that delay effectively.

...The problem, they say, is partly that the administration misallocated limited resources. By being told to focus on monitoring a small number of quarantined travelers returning to the U.S., public health departments were not fully engaged in preparing mitigation efforts in communities, where we now know the virus was already infecting more people. Healthcare workers could have used that time to coordinate with hospitals, track suspected cases, funnel resources to diagnostics, prepare vulnerable populations, like nursing homes, and promote mitigation measures, such as isolating known cases outside of a hospital.

Instead, the administration telegraphed that such mitigation work would only be necessary if containment failed. “Community mitigation work is not a failure, and part of the problem is not recognizing that,” Nuzzo tells Time. “Sending the message that we are stopping this at our border, keeping this from coming in from China, has a psychological impact not on just on the American people but on practitioners as well.” The President’s repeated assertions that the containment strategy was working also diminished the sense of urgency, causing delays in community preparedness, public health experts and doctors told Time.

“Quarantines are intended to buy us time. Did we make good use of the time? No-- and now we’re hustling,” says Steve Morrison, the director of the CSIS global health center and a former State Department official who served in the Clinton administration.

The Trump Administration only last week began authorizing disease surveillance within major American cities, where the medical community has been blind for weeks to the expanding number of new cases. Additionally, the drive to quarantine individuals from certain countries-- China, Italy, Korea-- discounted those from other nations, where the virus was also being transmitted. Taken together, the federal government’s singular focus on containment came at the expense of a more comprehensive-- and more effective-- approach, Nuzzo said.

In ideal circumstances, infectious disease experts tell Time, the government would also have focused on mobilizing capacity to test for COVID-19 prior to the first reported case on U.S. soil. It would have sent test-kits to hospitals and clinics around the nation to identify any new infections and, armed with that data, officials would have tailored a rapid response, issuing public recommendations on sanitation practices, when to seek medical treatment, and how to limit the spread of the disease.

Instead, public health departments in some parts of the country were blindsided. As experts predicted a month ago, some state coronavirus hotlines and hospitals have been overwhelmed.

The administration’s failure to quickly disseminate enough working COVID-19 test-kits has also had lasting repercussions, likely exacerbating the spread of the disease and robbing public health officials of vital data about the spread of the virus.

...“Given the features of this virus, we knew from the onset that it’s not the type of virus that is amenable to containment,” says Luciana Borio, who served as director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the White House National Security Council from 2017 through 2019 and as chief scientist for the Food and Drug Administration. “And that only works if you use the time really wisely. It’s possible that the time that it bought us wasn’t used in the best possible manner to help us get ahead of the curve in terms of preparing the homeland for the eventual epidemic.”

Public health and infectious disease experts have been urging the Trump administration to take actions to mitigate an outbreak for more than a month. As early as Jan. 28, Borio, along with former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, began publishing op-eds highlighting the ways the U.S. healthcare system needed to prepare. The first one was titled “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic.” They warned that more cases in the U.S. were inevitable, that the CDC would struggle to keep up with the volume of screenings, and that hospitals and public health workers needed to prepare for an influx of patients. While U.S. containment measures could stall an outbreak, they wrote that officials needed to start testing patients with symptoms who had not traveled to China.

Several former government officials also warned Congress in early February to resist the temptation to focus on travel bans and restrictions from affected areas. “Congress should press the administration for the science behind recently announced quarantines….and inquire as to the effectiveness of the measures being implemented,” Ron Klain, who served as Ebola response coordinator under President Barack Obama, told Congress on Feb. 5. He called the travel ban a “band aid.”

Other former U.S. officials have put it more bluntly, calling the administration’s focus on restricting flights and quarantining travelers the “original sin” of the Trump administration’s response. “The containment strategy was doomed from the start,” says Jeremy Konyndyk, who directed USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Ebola outbreak and is a member of the World Health Organization committee overseeing health emergencies.

The containment measures were meant to buy the Trump administration time to move aggressively, but they didn’t do that, Konynkyk added. “What did you do with the delay?” he tells Time. “If you buy time, you need to use that time to prepare. It’s insane to me that they’re still harping on containment and travel controls and keeping the disease out when that is not going to be the driver of transmission at this point.”

Even as the coronavirus spread from Asia to Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and North America, and tracking and quarantining travelers became increasingly ineffective, the White House doubled down, insisting that containment was working. For weeks, both the President and administration officials repeatedly claimed that the decision to impose travel restrictions and quarantines was the reason for the low number of cases, and that the media and Democrats were exaggerating the threat. In fact, the low number of cases appears to be due to the fact that very few people were being tested for the disease.

“We have had tremendous success, tremendous success, beyond what people would have thought,” the president said at a Feb. 27 press conference in which he often appeared to contradict his own administration’s health officials. “At the same time, you do have some outbreaks in some countries-- Italy and various countries-- are having some difficulties.”

Two days later, the administration increased travel restrictions on South Korea, Iran and Italy, and a man in Washington state-- who had not been to any of those countries-- became the first to die of COVID-19 on American soil.

“Every state should be in the middle of mitigation planning at this point,” says Paul Biddinger, director of the Emergency Preparedness Research, Evaluation and Practice Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s an urgent need. Everything we’ve seen indicates this disease will be widespread within weeks, not months.”

Once it became clear that the crisis was unavoidable, the administration should have pushed harder, Nuzzo says. “What was missing was the sense of urgency. They were still so mentally focused on ‘we just have 15 cases.’”

So now the White House is left looking at how to mitigate the effects of their incompetnce. The Washington Post reported yesterday, for example, that "White House officials are considering deferring taxes for industries hurt by the coronavirus outbreak, including the cruise, travel and airline industries, among other options and speculated that "The discussions are a sign that the White House is grappling with the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, while publicly downplaying the financial pain." And,yes, it would be a shame if there's no Summer Olympics in Tokyo this year or-- if they foolishly decide to go forward-- there are no fans watching the events. The NY Times reported that "the option that nobody in the Olympic movement wants to talk about... [is] just 10,000 athletes competing in front of seas of empty seats. As the coronavirus continues to spread, with more than 3,000 deaths and 90,000 documented cases worldwide, sporting events without fans are edging toward becoming a kind of new normal." That report is insane-- it won't be sporting events without fans; it will be no sporting events period, especially not international competitions. Closer to home, the city of Austin canceled SxSW which was do to start in a few days.

We are devastated to share this news with you. “The show must go on” is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place. We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation.

As recently as Wednesday, Austin Public Health stated that “there’s no evidence that closing SXSW or any other gatherings will make the community safer.” However, this situation evolved rapidly, and we honor and respect the City of Austin’s decision. We are committed to do our part to help protect our staff, attendees, and fellow Austinites.

We are exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible for 2020 participants, starting with SXSW EDU. For our registrants, clients, and participants we will be in touch as soon as possible and will publish an FAQ.

We understand the gravity of the situation for all the creatives who utilize SXSW to accelerate their careers; for the global businesses; and for Austin and the hundreds of small businesses-- venues, theatres, vendors, production companies, service industry staff, and other partners that rely so heavily on the increased business that SXSW attracts.

Politico's Jake Tapper and Anna Palmer didn't beat around the bush yesterday, going right to the point that Trump and his henchmen will never mention publically: "What if this is only the beginning of the coronavirus economic downturn? Imagine if stocks keep on slipping and, even more concerning, if Americans truly stop traveling domestically and internationally over the spring and summer. Many of the members of Congress we spoke to this week were worried about the virus reemerging this fall, pressing the pause button on the economy again. Could Congress be forced into some kind of economic stimulus this spring or summer right before the election? Could Washington be forced to try to help airlines, hotels and even individuals in the middle of a political season? More bluntly: Would Democrats want to vote for any kind of bailout package that could help with President Trump’s reelection? And could Trump’s administration handle a legislative crisis with precision under pressure?”

And to cap off the week, the L.A. Times' Melissa Healy reported that "The global outbreak that has sickened nearly 100,000 people across six continents may actually be fueled by two variants of the same coronavirus: one older and less aggressive and a newer version whose mutations may have made it more contagious and more deadly, according to a controversial new study. Chinese scientists who compared the genetic sequences of 103 viral samples from patients infected with COVID-19 said their evidence suggests that the virulent version of the coronavirus-- which they tagged the 'L-type' version-- was the dominant strain in the earliest phase of the outbreak that began in Wuhan late last year. That strain, they said, appeared to recede as the epidemic progressed. But among samples collected later, as COVID-19 spread across China and into other countries, a variant of the virus they dubbed the 'S-type' was more common, the scientists reported. They suggested that the genetic makeup of the S version more closely resembles coronaviruses circulating in bats and pangolins, the animals that are thought to have incubated the virus before it jumped to humans. And they surmised that it is a less virulent version. The findings suggest the S-type version of the coronavirus may have escaped its animal hosts earlier than previously believed-- and that it may have been circulating longer without causing enough illness to set off alarm bells."