SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

Did I say couple of hours? I meant couple of minutes.

A live streaming link if you want to follow statistics...

well for one supporting the president (every president) is pretty much in my job description considering I'm a US army contractor.

Likely a big reason as to why I would never work for the government.

Fuck Donald Trump. He is responsible for every single COVID-19 death in this country. Fuck him right up the ass with a giant pineapple, stem side first.

He is responsible for every single COVID-19 death in this country.

so are you going to tell me (nobody else will rise up to the challenge) why Trump is the only politician who knew COVID-19 was a bigger problem than anybody thought it was? He's so fucking smart - or has psychic abilities - or he can keep a secret better than anybody on the planet - that nobody else knew about the tragedy about to overtake our country? I sure don't remember any public outcry from...oh I don't know....anybody about COVID-19 until China was knee-deep in it. So connect-the-dots for me! Lay out a likely strategy for Trump being the only human being in the entire US who had the power to stop the virus but didn't take action. Come on Columbo, bust the case wide open for us! File a fucking lawsuit against him since you obviously have the proof of your claims.

Why are you so worked up, after all you repeatedly reassured us all that this wasn't going to be a disaster.

the only "disaster" I'm worked up about is the rising level of stupidity as evidenced by comments such as "Fuck Donald Trump. He is responsible for every single COVID-19 death in this country."

Do you not think letting our ventilator stockpile degrade due to lack of maintenance a disaster or it just doesn’t work you up?

Here you go.
Share on Twitter Share via email Print
For ten weeks President Trump downplayed the threat of and ignored warnings about the potential severity of COVID-19 with a series of lies, exaggerations, and outright fabrications that have been well documented. And yet despite the video record of the president’s words, the White House is trying to establish an alternate reality where in which Trump was a competent, focused leader who saved American people from the coronavirus.

If only it were true.

On March 18 the Trump campaign put out a list of actions the U.S. government took to prepare for COVID-19. They meant this as exculpation; instead, it highlights just how asleep Trump was at the switch, despite warnings from experts within his own government and from former Trump administration officials pleading with him from the outside.

Most prominent among them were former Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb, and Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council Dr. Luciana Borio who beginning in early January used op-eds, television appearances, social media posts, and private entreaties to try to spur the administration into action.

I emailed Borio last night about how we got here and what the administration should have been doing in January to prepare us for today.

She cites the delay on tests, without which “cases go undetected and people continue to circulate” as a leading issue along with other missed federal government responses—many of which are still not fully operational—including:

• Tech solutions for tracing that protects civil liberties
• Technology matching demand to critical supplies
• Mobilizing manufacturers to ramp up PPE and ventilator productions
• Securing a supply of needles and syringes as the Strategic National Supply does not have enough. (This last problem is still not getting much mainstream attention.)

The prescient recommendations from experts across disciplines in the period before COVID-19 reached American shores—about testing, equipment, and distancing—make clear that more than any single factor, it was Trump’s squandering of out lead-time which should have been used to prepare for the pandemic that has exacerbated this crisis. Because of Trump’s inaction, the country was caught flat-footed, exacerbating a pandemic that is causing substantial death and economic destruction.

What follows is an annotated timeline revealing the warning signs the administration received and showing how slow the administration was to act on these recommendations.


PODCAST · APRIL 01 2020
Ben White: How Bad Will it Be?
On today's Bulwark Podcast, Politico's Ben White joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss the economic ramifications of COVID...
The Early Years: Warnings Ignored
2017: Trump administrations officials are briefed on an intelligence document titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.” That’s right. The administration literally had an actual playbook for what to do in the early stages of a pandemic. Among the playbook’s protocols:

• Begin early procurement of PPE materials for healthcare workers as soon as the threat is identified.
• Concentrate on “early diagnostic capacity”—which is government-speak for Have a mountain of tests on-hand so that you can monitor the spread of the disease.

February 2018: The Washington Post writes “CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak.” The meat of the story is “Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo.”

May 2018:

• At an event marking the 100 year anniversary of the 1918 pandemic, Borio says “pandemic flu” is the “number 1 health security issue” and that the U.S. is not ready to respond.
• One day later her boss, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer is pushed out of the administration and the global health security team is disbanded.
• Rep. Ami Bera warns that “Admiral Ziemer’s departure is deeply alarming, especially when the administration is actively working to cut funds that addressed past pandemics like Ebola.”
• Beth Cameron, former senior director for global health security on the National Security Council adds: “It is unclear in his absence who at the White House would be in charge of a pandemic,” Cameron said, calling it “a situation that should be immediately rectified.”
  • Note: It was not.

January 2019: The director of National Intelligence issues the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment of threats to national security. Among its findings:

• Page 17: “The increase in frequency and diversity of reported disease outbreaks—such as dengue and Zika—probably will continue through 2018, including the potential for a severe global health emergency that could lead to major economic and societal disruptions, strain governmental and international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support. A novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens such as H5N1 and H7N9 influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus having pandemic potential if they were to acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.”
• Page 21: “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”

it's not a disaster but it sure is a wake-up call! Hopefully a lot of our medical shortcomings will be brought to light during this period. I think a lot of processes and business models and you name it may change significantly when all is said and done.

There was a process.

There was a contract to maintain the ventilators.

The Trump admin didn’t renew it for... reasons.

Only one state and still early, but this could be the start of a good trend here.

Part II...
2020: COVID-19 Arrives
January 3, 2020: The CDC is first alerted to a public health event in Wuhan, China (This fact was revealed publicly later by HHS Secretary Alex Azar.)

January 6, 2020: The CDC issues a travel notice for Wuhan due to the spreading coronavirus.

• Note: The Trump campaign claims that this marks the beginning of the federal government disease control experts becoming aware of the virus. It was 10 weeks from this point until the week of March 16 when Trump began to change his tone on the threat.

January 8, 2020: The CDC issues an official health advisory about COVID-19.

January 10, 2020: Former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert warns that we shouldn’t “jerk around with ego politics” because “we face a global health threat…Coordinate!”

January 18, 2020: After two weeks of attempts, HHS Secretary Alex Azar finally gets the chance to speak to Trump about the virus. The president redirects the conversation to vaping, according to the Washington Post.

January 20, 2020: First U.S. case is reported in Washington state.

January 21, 2020: Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease at the CDC tells reporters, “We do expect additional cases in the United States.”

January 27, 2020: Top White House aides meet with Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to encourage greater focus on the threat from the virus. Joe Grogan, head of the White House Domestic Policy Council warns that “dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.”

January 28, 2020: Two former Trump administration officials—Gottlieb and Borio—publish an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal imploring the president to “Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic.” They advocate a 4-point plan to address the coming crisis:

• (1) Expand testing to identify and isolate cases.
  • Note: This did not happen for many weeks. The first time more than 2,000 tests were deployed in a single day was not until almost six weeks later, on March 11.
• (2) Boost flu vaccination efforts to reduce the load on hospitals.
• (3) Prepare hospital units for isolation with more gowns and masks.
  • Note: There was no dramatic ramp-up in the production of critical supplies undertaken. As a result, many hospitals quickly experienced shortages of critical PPE materials.
• (4) Vaccine development.

January 29, 2020: The New York Times reports that “mask hoarders” may cause further shortages when the outbreak reaches America.

January 30, 2020: Dr. James Hamblin publishes another warning about critical PPE materials in the Atlantic, titled “We Don’t Have Enough Masks.” At the time, it was clear that mask shortages would be a serious problem. Other countries coping with COVID-19 were already running short on masks and ordering them from America and, in addition, almost the entire CDC stockpile had been consumed during the 2009 flu season.

January 31, 2020: Trump puts into action a temporary travel ban on China. This decision has been the centerpiece of his claim to have responded to the coronavirus. But even here, the truth is somewhat different.

• Trump’s Chinese travel ban only banned “foreign nationals who had been in China in the last 14 days.” This wording did not—at all—stop people from arriving in America from China. In fact, for much of the crisis, flights from China landed in America almost daily filled with people who had been in China, but did not fit the category as Trump’s “travel ban” defined it.

January 31, 2020: On the same day Trump was enacting his fake travel ban, Foreign Policy reports that face masks and latex gloves are sold out on Amazon and at leading stores in New York City and suggests the surge in masks being sold to other countries needs “refereeing” in the face of the coming crisis.

February 4, 2020: Gottlieb and Borio take to the WSJ again, this time to warn the president that “a pandemic seems inevitable” and call on the administration to dramatically expand testing, expand the number of labs for reviewing tests, and change the rules to allow for tests of people even if they don’t have a clear known risk factor.

• Note: Some of these recommendations were eventually implemented—25 days later.

February 4 or 5, 2020: Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, and other intelligence officials brief the Senate Intelligence Committee that the virus poses a “serious” threat and that “Americans would need to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives.”

February 5, 2020: HHS Secretary Alex Azar requests $2 billion to “buy respirator masks and other supplies for a depleted federal stockpile of emergency medical equipment.” He is rebuffed by Trump and the White House OMB who eventually send Congress a $500 million request weeks later.

February 5, 2020: Senator Chris Murphy tweets:


Chris Murphy

✔@ChrisMurphyCT


Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren't taking this seriously enough.

Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.


45.7K
9:09 AM - Feb 5, 2020
Twitter Ads info and privacy

18.3K people are talking about this





February 12, 2020: Gottlieb (remember, he’s the former head of Trump’s FDA) testifies before Congress that actions must be taken to address medical supply chain issues and the possibility of shortages.

February 20, 2020: Borio and Gottlieb write in the Wall Street Journal that tests must be ramped up immediately “while we can intervene to stop spread.”

• It’s important to understand that the Trump campaign brags about the fact that the administration lifted CDC restrictions on tests. This is a factually true statement.
• But it elides that fact that they did so on March 3—two critical weeks after the third Borio/Gottlieb op-ed on the topic, during which time the window for intervention had shrunk to a pinhole.

February 23, 2020: Harvard School of Public Health professor issues warning on lack of test capability: “As of today, the US remains extremely limited in#COVID19 testing. Only 3 of ~100 public health labs haveCDC test kits working and CDC is not sharing what went wrong with the kits. How to know if COVID19 is spreading here if we are not looking for it.

February 24, 2020: The Trump administration sends a letter to Congress requesting a small dollar amount—between $1.8 billion and $2.5 billion—to help combat the spread of the coronavirus. This is, of course, a pittance compared to the massive recovery package still being debated at the time of this writing. At the time the administration was widely criticized by members of Congress for not going big enough to deal with the problem.

February 25, 2020: Messonier says she expects “community spread” of the virus in the United States and that “disruption to everyday life might be severe.” Trump is reportedly furious and Messonier’s warnings are curtailed in the ensuing weeks.

February 26, 2020: Congress, recognizing the coming threat, offers to give the administration $6 billion more than Trump asked for in order to prepare for the virus.

• Trump mocks Congress in a White House briefing, saying “If Congress wants to give us the money so easy—it wasn’t very easy for the wall, but we got that one done. If they want to give us the money, we’ll take the money.”
  • Note: The wall did not get “done.” Trump never got sufficient funding for completion of his promised border wall and in any case, as of early February 2020, only 110 miles of new fencing had been constructed.

February 27, 2020: In a leaked audio recording Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Intelligence Committee and author of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act (reauthorization of PAHPA), was telling people that COVID-19 “is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

March 3, 2020: Vice President Pence is asked about legislation encouraging companies to produce more masks. He says the Trump administration is “looking at it.”

• Note: Recall that the concern about masks was raised publicly by high-profile former Trump appointees, on January 28.

March 4, 2020: HHS says they only have 1 percent of respirator masks needed if the virus became a “full-blown pandemic.”

March 7, 2020: Fox News host Tucker Carlson, flies to Mar-a-Lago to implore Trump to take the virus seriously in private rather than embarrass him on TV. Even after the private meeting, Trump continued to downplay the crisis, forcing Carlson to obliquely criticize him publicly on his show two nights later.

• Note: Carlson, after hearing from an expert with “access to intelligence” who was concerned about the virus began covering the issue on his show February 3rd, over a month prior to the private meeting.This is a good glimpse into how a competent populist might’ve acted.

March 9, 2020: Tom Bossert, Trump’s former Homeland Security adviser, publishes an op-ed saying it is “now or never” to act. He advocates for social distancing and school closures to slow the spread of the contagion.

• Trump says that developments are “good for the consumer” and compares COVID-19 favorably to the common flu.

March 16, 2020: Trump announces his support for a 15-day period of social distancing in order to slow the spread of coronavirus.

March 17, 2020: Facing continued shortages of the PPE equipment needed to prevent healthcare providers from succumbing to the virus, Oregon Senators Jeff Merkeley and Ron Wyden call on Trump to use the Defense Production Act to expand supply of medical equipment.

March 18, 2020: Trump signs the executive order to activate the Defense Production Act, but declines to use it. At the White House briefing he is asked about Senator Chuck Schumer’s call to urgently produce medical supplies and ventilators.

• Trump responds: “Well we’re going to know whether or not it’s urgent.”
• Note: At this point 118 Americans had died from COVID-19.

March 22, 2020: Six days after calling for a 15-day period of distancing, Trump tweets that this approach “may be worse than the problem itself.”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump


WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!


324K
9:50 PM - Mar 22, 2020
Twitter Ads info and privacy

135K people are talking about this





March 24, 2020: Trump tells Fox News that he wants the country opened up by Easter Sunday (April 12).

• Trump says, “You will have packed churches all over our country, I think it would be a beautiful time and it is just about the timeline that I think is right.”
• As Trump was speaking to Fox, there were 52,145 confirmed cases in the United States and the doubling time for daily new cases was roughly four days.
  • The pace of the viral spread was increasing.
  • Testing was still in the process of ramping up, and unavailable in many areas.
  • Doctors were still “desperate” for masks and other basic PPE supplies.

Update, March 26, 2020, 10:48 a.m.: The article has been updated to include the revelation that the Trump administration had been given a “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents” in 2017.

Update, March 29, 2020 12:39 p.m: This article has been updated to include the revelation first reported by The Washington Post that HHS Secretary Alex Azar requested $2 billion for medical equipment in early February but was rebuffed by White House officials who were upset about the price tag and the fact that Azar had gone around them to Congress. ”

​

well my mother-in-law says this is just like the black plague and that the bible says viruses and earthquakes and shit (I'm paraphrasing here) means jesus is coming back.
Color me skeptical! And she says the plastic bags you get at the grocery store might be carrying the virus. Oh and your mail too! Of course only if your mail box is next to the street. If your box is right outside your front door attached to your house then you're safe.

• Note: The Trump campaign claims that this marks the beginning of the federal government disease control experts becoming aware of the virus. It was 10 weeks from this point until the week of March 16 when Trump began to change his tone on the threat.

January 8, 2020: The CDC issues an official health advisory about COVID-19.

January 10, 2020: Former Trump Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert warns that we shouldn’t “jerk around with ego politics” because “we face a global health threat…Coordinate!”

January 18, 2020: After two weeks of attempts, HHS Secretary Alex Azar finally gets the chance to speak to Trump about the virus. The president redirects the conversation to vaping, according to the Washington Post.

interesting! So why wasn't every one of these motherfuckers running to CNN, CNBC, CBS, The Young Turks, etc etc screaming about this and demanding Trump's head on a pike?

What definition do you use for a disaster if this present situation doesn't count?

well Baily here's my definition of a disaster and it's every...fucking....year here in the U.S. Totally preventable for the most part too. Granted obesity isn't contagious but nonetheless IMHO this is the bigger (if not as exciting and earth shaking) disaster.

"According to the National Institutes of Health, obesity and overweight together are the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States, close behind tobacco use . An estimated 300,000 deaths per year are due to the obesity epidemic."

By that definition does that mean hurricanes and earthquakes haven't been disasters?

What the fuck, Los Angeles?


Engineer Arrested For Derailing Train Near USNS Mercy, Claimed Ship Part Of ‘Government Takeover’

These people are on Team Trump... just like you, they aren’t going to go against their boss and make statements on live TV without his approval.

Your fellow serviceman, Colonel Vinland, spoke his truth and you saw what happened to him right? He was demonized and vilified by Republicans and then his position with the NSC was terminated.

Trump has created a toxic culture in his administration where he is not only opposed to facts and science but anyone who disagrees with him loses their position and is attacked by the President. Are you aware of how many changes in personnel in the higher levels of government have happened since he was elected? Anyone who is left is a sycophant who won’t speak against him.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/

Fake news.

I see contractors posting under their own names criticizing Trump on FB all the time.

Just say you fanboy Trump and go.

I'm no expert, but I think I see a tiny flaw in his plan to use a train to stop a ship.

Listen these things happen in LA. Have you seen 24?

As thoroughly as I dislike Donald Trump, and as fervently as I denounce his dismal lack of foresight, leadership and competence in dealing with the current crisis, this simply is not true. It is as over-the-top and out of touch with reality as oldfella's unconditional loyalty to him no matter what.

He certainly bears a personal responsibility for many of the deaths. But not for all of them, by any means. No one could have prevented them all. By taking the thing seriously and not pretending it was all about him and his popularity, he could have taken appropriate measures as soon as he saw what other countries even harder-hit by the virus had done, and significantly lowered the death toll. But he couldn't have stopped it all. No one could.

For that matter, the economy is going to tank like it hasn't tanked since the Great Depression, or maybe worse, but Trump is not responsible for that, either. It had to be done, to prevent the deaths of millions. As soon as the virus started spreading widely across the world, a world-wide slump of major proportions was absolutely inevitable.

I'm all for criticizing Trump, but since there are so many areas in which he thoroughly deserves to be criticized, I see little sense in criticizing him in ways that are easily refutable. Such criticisms are counter-productive in encouraging people to see just how bad a so-called "leader" he actually is.

Er, they don't seem to be doing so well on the testing front. They're even losing the Tory media on that.

It's a shame the US didn't have this guy in the White House

Yeah well, don't want them to let it go to their heads or anything...

I'm not saying Johnson's leadership has been perfect, just better than I had expected.