"Trump’s response to virus reflects a long disregard for science:" by Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer New York Times, April 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — At a March visit with doctors and researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the public health agency at the heart of the fight against the coronavirus, President Trump spoke words of praise for the scientific acumen in the building — particularly his own.
It was a striking boast, even amid a grave health crisis in which Trump has repeatedly contradicted medical experts in favor of his own judgment, but a disregard for scientific advice has been a defining characteristic of Trump’s administration.
As the nation confronts one of its worst public health disasters in generations, a moment that demands a leader willing to marshal the full might of the American scientific establishment, the White House is occupied by a president whose administration, critics say, has diminished the conclusions of scientists in formulating policy, who personally harbors a suspicion of expert knowledge, and who often puts his political instincts ahead of the facts.
“Donald Trump is the most anti-science and anti-environment president we’ve ever had,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.
The president’s actions, he said, have eroded one of the United States’ most enviable assets: the government’s deep scientific expertise, built over decades.
Like a DEEP STATE?
“It’s extraordinarily crazy and reckless,” he said.
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in a statement that Trump’s handling of the outbreak “has put the full power of the federal government to work to slow the spread, save lives, and place this great country on a data-driven path to opening up again.”
Well before winning the presidency, Trump had publicly questioned science by expressing skepticism about vaccines and suggesting that climate change was a hoax.
Well, he's now got his mind right on the damn vaccines!
Once in office, Trump’s administration quickly began work on one of its most far-reaching policies — the systematic downplaying or ignoring of science in order to weaken environmental health and global warming regulations.
More recently, as the coronavirus outbreak engulfed the nation, Trump has repeatedly clashed with his own public health experts.
He was slow to react to early internal warnings to take the outbreak more seriously and has promoted the use of various drugs to fight the virus even as scientists said there was no proof they would be effective. On Thursday, he suggested that injecting disinfectants might help, drawing global condemnation and ridicule, and last week Trump publicly downplayed a warning by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s most visible medical expert, that the United States still lacked adequate capacity to test for the coronavirus.
Birx said drop it, so drop it!
The president also suggested that the virus might be gone by the fall, a line that was immediately countered by Fauci, who said: “We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that.”
Then so am I, whether it's true or not!
Historians and foreign policy experts said the administration’s disregard for scientific expertise — combined with the nation’s broader retreat from international trade agreements and cross-border defense alliances — is diminishing the nation’s status on the world stage.
“America’s friends feel like they don’t even recognize us,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization.....
That is where I quit reading the damn article!
The NYT turned to the AEI's MILITARY ANALYST for "expert" analysis?
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Speaking of science, I presume the Bo$ton Globe is destroying itself with the Globe Goes over the top undercounts while downplaying the overcounts as they relapse into their deranged state:
"The United States on Tuesday surpassed one million known coronavirus cases, showing how an outbreak that began with a small trickle of cases in January has exploded into a national crisis. The bleak milestone was yet another sign of how the virus has upended life in America, taking lives, destroying families, spreading through meat plants, prisons, and nursing homes, forcing businesses and schools to close, and causing more than 26 million people to lose their jobs in the past five weeks. The true number of infections is much higher. The one million figure does not include untold thousands of Americans who contracted the virus but were not tested, either because they did not show symptoms or because of a persistent national testing shortage. Some disease researchers have estimated that the true number of infections may be about 10 times the known number, and preliminary testing of how many people have antibodies to the virus seems to support that view."
Then we should all be let out because we likely have herd immunity!
Of course, the case levels are going to shoot up since the most recent CDC guidelines added nine other conditions as COVID as they keep massaging and manipulating the numbers.
"New COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York state are averaging under 1,000 a day for the first time this month, the latest sign of slowly decreasing pressure on the health care system. Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters Tuesday that hospitalizations and deaths from the outbreak were both continuing to tick down. The daily death toll dropped again, with 335 deaths reported Monday — the lowest daily tally recorded in April and the third straight day under 400."
They are at the heart of the red dot -- unlike Baltimore.
"Alabama Governor Kay Ivey says retail stores, beaches, and nonemergency medical procedures can resume later this week with limits. Ivey says a “safer at home” order will take effect 5 p.m. Thursday evening when the current stay-home order expires. The changes do not go as far as Georgia’s aggressive timetable for reopening. Alabama restaurants will remain closed for on-site dining. Hair salons, nail salons, tattoo parlors, and other close-contact services will remain closed, and in Maine the state will begin reopening its economy in phases this week on a schedule that is more ambitious than most of the rest of the hard-hit Northeast. The state will extend its broad stay-at-home order until May 31 but also begin lifting restrictions Friday, said Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat. The first stage will give residents access to personal services like barbers and drive-in churches. Later phases, to spread across the summer, will reopen restaurants, hotels, summer camps, and bars, and in California, schoolchildren could return to their classrooms as early as July though there likely will be modifications. Governor Gavin Newsom has previously said that schools may launch with staggered start times to limit the number of students in the school at one time."
"Vice President Mike Pence chose not to wear a face mask Tuesday during a tour of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, an apparent violation of the world-renowned medical center’s policy requiring them. Video feeds show that Pence did not wear a mask when he met with a Mayo employee who has recovered from COVID-19 and is now donating plasma, even though everyone else in the room appeared to be wearing one, and Pence was the only participant not to wear a mask during a roundtable discussion on Mayo’s coronavirus testing and research programs. Mayo tweeted that it had informed the vice president of its mask policy prior to his arrival. The tweet was later removed. Mayo officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it was removed, or at whose request. The vice president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why Pence chose not to wear a mask."
Vice President Mike Pence didn’t wear a mask during a visit to the Mayo Clinic Tuesday, in violation of the facility’s rules. (Jim Mone/associated Press)Jim Mone/Associated Press
Pence is part of the resistance?
Or he knows something we don't given there is no social distancing!?
"During a question-and-answer session with reporters after an event in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday afternoon, President Trump outlined some of the conditions he would like to see placed on aid to states amid the coronavirus pandemic. Asked whether there might be additional direct payments to Americans, Trump said he supports the idea of payroll tax cuts. He then addressed the issue of aid to states. “The problem with the states is we’re not looking to recover 25 years of bad management,” he said, echoing similar statements made recently by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. Trump added that it was possible to “talk about” money for states if it was “covid-related,” but that he would want to see certain conditions met, “including sanctuary city adjustments.”
He's attaching $trings?
"Can the US economy recover from coronavirus if the budgets of its states are a fiscal disaster?" by Jim Puzzanghera Globe Staff, April 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — The coronavirus pandemic has delivered a devastating, one-two financial blow to state and local governments, forcing them to spend more on health care and assistance for the needy at the same time as stay-at-home restrictions have smothered the flow of incoming sales taxes and other revenues.
Governors, mayors, and local officials are begging for help from Washington after Republican opposition halted attempts in the latest rescue package, enacted last week, to add to the $150 billion in federal money they’ve received so far.
The National Governors Association estimates states need a combined $500 billion in federal aid to close looming budget shortfalls or they’ll be forced to make major cuts. Organizations representing the nation’s cities and counties say they need $250 billion on top of that or will face the same prospect.
Now, as Congress and the White House begin fighting over whether to provide more help — and if so, how much — in the next rescue legislation, the fate of the US economic recovery could be riding in the balance.
Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities, said state and local governments play a huge role in the US economy and estimated they’ll ultimately get $1 trillion in federal assistance, a number that still won’t be enough. “There’s no way the federal government can make up all of this,” he said. “They could help plug the hole. They can’t replace everything that’s been lost. It’s too big.”
“It looks like it’s going to be considerably worse than the Great Recession and it’s happening really fast,” said Elizabeth McNichol, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank focused on reducing poverty and inequality. “That’s going to require laying off workers and imposing really deep budget cuts at exactly the wrong time and it could make this downturn deeper and longer."
That got me thinking, and did you know they are "supported by a number of foundations, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, as well as individual donors, and The Atlantic Philanthropies is a major donor, as is George Soros."
The Ford Foundation is a notorious CIA outfit, and do I even need to comment about the hand of $oro$?
They would be kin to the "left wing think tank," according to the New York Times, that is funded by none other than JPMorgan Chase, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the US Department of State, and Siemens, among others.
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Why can't they just shake hands and work together?
More Deep State sabotage of the President of the United States:
"Trump’s aversion to intelligence and details comes into full focus on coronavirus response" by Aaron Blake Washington Post, April 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — Before Donald Trump’s presidency even began, he made clear just how little regard he had for the lengthy President’s Daily Brief that provides the latest US intelligence.
So what?
He is far from alone in that regard.
I can sum up the reason in two words: Iraqi WMD.
So what I have on page A4 today is a hit 'em high, hit 'em low strategy by the NYT and WaCompo.
‘‘You know I’m, like, a smart person,’’ he said in December 2016. ‘‘I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.’’
Hell, Bush told the briefers they had covered their ass back in August 2001 before he went golfing.
The next month, he told Axios that, ‘‘I like bullet [points] or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page: That I can tell you.’’ Since then, reports have detailed how infrequently Trump has engaged with these reports or even taken the briefings, and now we’re discovering just how much this aversion to intelligence, expertise, and detail might have cost us.
Who is "us," Wa$hington Compo$t?
The Washington Post’s Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima reported that, beginning in early January, more than a dozen PDBs included dire warnings about the potential of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
What we are seeing here is a revisionist backfill set of forgeries to create a false narrative surrounding the president.
The WaCompo has long been known as the CIA's newspaper.
It has previously been reported that the intelligence briefings contained such warnings, but the degree to which they were conveyed and the frequency was not previously known. As Miller and Nakashima reported, ‘‘US officials said it reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts, or other rapidly developing security issues.’’
They go on: ‘‘For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.’’
The timeline here is key. Trump first weighed in on the threat of the coronavirus on Jan. 22, when he dismissed the possibility of it becoming a pandemic. He would eventually issue travel restrictions on China, where the virus is believed to have originated, on Jan. 31, but for a month and half after that, he would not take major action, even as those around him were becoming increasingly alarmed.
One key aspect of the briefings is that they didn’t just offer warnings, but that they also alleged a Chinese coverup. In fact that allegation about China’s lack of transparency was included from the very first briefing at the beginning of January.
Oh, this is also war-monger projection and deflection from the fact that COVID-19 -- if it exists at all -- was most likely loosed from Fort Detrick!
Despite that, Trump would spend weeks praising China’s response to the virus and insisting it had it under control. He even directly praised its ‘‘transparency’’ on Jan. 24 and flatly dismissed the idea that it was covering anything up on Feb. 7. That soft touch troubled US officials at the time. According to the new Post report, he had been advised the opposite as much as a month earlier.
The Deep State was alarmed, huh?
Then the pre$$ ran with this fraud!
A second key point here is that the new revelation suggests Trump might not have been forthcoming about when he was receiving such dire warnings. Facing a bevy of revelations about unheeded, early warning signs, he said this month that he had first learned of the severity of the situation shortly before he issued the China travel restrictions on Jan. 31. ‘‘When I learned about the gravity of it was sometime just before closing the country to China,’’ Trump said.
Well, he didn't tell lies that were blared from the front pages of the piece of $hit that is the Wa$hington Compo$t, leading to the mass murder of millions in Iraq and beyond.
Trump’s statement might have been strictly accurate. He may not have learned himself of the severity of the situation, because he didn’t actually take the briefings (There is some reason to doubt that, given experts told the Post that such developments would likely have been summarized orally for Trump, at the very least), but whether Trump actually consumed the information or not is kind of beside the point. The point was that the warnings were there, and he either didn’t bother to consume the information or was informed and proceeded to cast doubt on all of it.
Beside the point?
That means it is not relevant to the subject that they are discussing (yeah, who gives a damn about the facts when creating a perception for the public?)!
That sounds like an even if (despite the fact) or a to be sure (used to concede the truth of something that conflicts with another point that one wishes to make)!
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A Tribe member says don’t let the coronavirus failures shake your faith in federalism.
