Trump’s Fatal Failure?

by Pearsonally · Published 2004.18 · Updated 2010.30

Where Stoppeth the Buck? || Instead of Dealing With It . . . || Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic
|| Response & Previous Knowledge || Last Words: Covid and Vietnam

While Coronavirus bodies are piling up, what has been the continued response from the top, and what could have been?

Where Stoppeth the Buck ?

During the Truman administration, a small wooden sign was placed on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office reading “The Buck Stops Here”.¹ What does that mean? The Wikipedia page has a precise sentence for it: “The phrase refers to the notion that the President has to make the decisions and accept the ultimate responsibility for those decisions.”²

One determination of fitness for any high office is his/her duty, actions and reactions in a time of crisis.

For Truman in the closing year of WWII, the Pacific theater continued taking American lives even 3 months after Germany’s surrender. Although history may have judged him harshly for doing so, with Truman’s authorization, on August 6 & 9 of 1945, we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, taking up to an estimated 229,000 Japanese lives. Less than 3 weeks later, Japan surrendered, ending the war. The balance can be seen as having taken more lives than would have been lost in continuing the war and invading Japan, yet the American death toll in the planned invasion could been in the tens of thousands. One truly cannot know which would have been worst as far as a body count is concerned, yet certainly the decision saved American lives.

And doing this is the ultimate duty of the Commander in Chief.

^^Back To Top^^

Instead of Dealing With It . . .

So what is President* Trump doing during this desperate time?

What promises have been made, which opportunities have been seized or missed? Certainly during what is so far (arguably) the largest global crisis of the 21st Century, we need a singular vision, strong and enduring leadership, swift action which saves lives and sets examples.

Instead:

— Threatening to sue tv networks running an ad showing the public his lack of early action on Covid-19. Early action which could have saved lives. The brilliant ad runs a statistical line of proven infections in the U.S. with his concurrent statements on the tragedy, outlining his lack of early response³.

In fairness, I have included the video below.

— He has more concerns about his ratings than the health of the public. On Sunday, March 29, Trump, calculated to have been reacting to a New York Times article (which he also stated “[he] never reads”⁴), showed his shallow concern about his ratings.

On that day he Tweeted

and

are just 2 of several Tweets on that day alone about himself and his ratings⁵ instead of maybe giving advice to help save American lives, communicating the efforts to get PPE to the citizenry or healthcare workers in desperate need, utilizing the national stockpile of respirators to areas short of this critical supply …. I could go on, yet instead of turning this into an Encyclopaedia Britannica Macropaedia article, I’ll let this illustrate the point.

—During his now near-daily Coronavirus Task Force Press Briefings, thanking OAN and Faux News for their questions and lambasting similar questions from CNN, calling their questions “nasty”. Here’s a perfect example: On March 30, 2020, in an outdoor briefing, came the following exchange (bold on things which should be concerning) ;

Reporter: “What do you say to Americans who are upset with you, the way you downplayed …”

Trump: [[shaking head obviously annoyed]]

Reporter: [continuing] “… this crisis we’ve had over the past couple of months, uh, [quoting Trump] “We have it very much under control in this country”, “The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” “It’s going to disappear”, “It’s like a miracle, it will disappear”. March 4th …”

Trump: [[once again shaking head]]

Reporter: [continuing] “… uh, “We have a very small number of people in this country infected”. March 10th, “We’re prepared, we’re doing a great job with it, it will go away, just stay calm, it will go away.” What do you say to Americans …”

Trump: [interrupting] “It will go away, and I want …”

Reporter: [continuing] “… who say you got this wrong?”

Trump: [continuing] “… them to stay calm, but if you look at those individual statements, they’re all true. Stay calm. It will go away, y’know, y’know it is going away, and it will go away and we’ll have a great victory. And it’s people like you and CNN that say things like that, that, uh, it’s why people just don’t wanna listen to CN anymore, you could ask a normal question. The statements I made are I wanna keep the country calm, I don’t want panic in the country. I could cause panic much better than even you, I could do much, uh, it would make you look like a minor league player, but you know what I don’t want to do that, I want to have our country be calm, and strong, and fight, and win, and it will go away, and it is incredible, the job that all of these people are doing, putting ’em all together, the job that they’re doing. I am very proud of the job they’re doing, that Mike Pence is doing, that the Task Force has done, that Honeywell and Proctor & Gamble and Mike and all of these people have done, I’m very proud. It’s almost a miracle, and it is, the way they’ve all come together, and instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question and other than that …” [[points to another reporter]] “… I’m gonna go to somebody else, please, go ahead please.”⁶

A question like what? The words he stated which the reporter was doing due diligence on? It is the duty of legitimate media to pose questions to people in power, especially in response to statements they make which turn out to be untrue or open to interpretation. Instead of generalizing, the reporter did the best thing he could, utilize quotes from the President* himself to make his point and get Mr Big Brain to respond.

Just yesterday he once again made a plutocratic, antidemocratic response to one of the main components of the job he ran for and got. His loathing of all but the most adoring news media outfits (OAN, Newsmax and similar) clearly shows his disdain for the Fourth Estate, something I described in another post. In a briefing on Apr. 6, “was asked repeatedly during Monday’s White House coronavirus task force briefing about a new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general report detailing the federal government’s failure to provide hospitals with the testing and equipment resources they need. His contemptuous responses spoke volumes about his disdain for oversight, as well as for any reporter who has the gall to ask him questions he doesn’t like.”⁷

With Faux News — usually not the subject of his disdain — reporter Kristin Fisher, Trump once again berated a female reporter (this time, at least, not a black woman) on camera. She had the gall to ask (again, my transcription, with bold on things which should be concerning):

Fisher: “I know you don’t want to talk about the Inspector General’s report, but testing is still a big issue in this country, [so] when can hospitals expect …”

Trump: [interrupting] “[unintelligable] again please.”

Fisher: “… [continuing] when can hospitals expect to receive a quick turnaround …”

Trump: [interrupting, again] “Are you ready?”

Fisher: “… of …”

Trump: [speaking over reporter] “Are you ready?”

Fisher: [continuing] “… the test results?”

Trump: “Hospitals can do their own test results also. States can do their own testing. States are supposed to be doing testing, hospitals are supposed to be doing testing, do you understand that? We’re …”

Fisher: [attempting to clarify] “Why …”

Trump: [continuing] “… the federal government, listen, we’re not supposed to be standing on street corners doing testing. They go to doctors, they go to hospitals, they go to the state, [in a condescending tone] the state is a more localized government, you have 50 of them, and they can go 50 … within you, you also have territories as you know, and they do the testing and if you look at the chart, if you take a look [looking to his left]… did they put it up? Yeah. Just take a look, and these are testing and the results are now coming in very quickly. Initially speaking, the tests were old, obsolete and not really prepared we have a brand new testing system that we developed very quickly and that’s your result. And you should say ‘Congratulations, great job’ instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question.”

The question she was asking was in reference to Trump’s statement “Anybody who wants a test can get a test.”⁸ It seems like an important follow up. Apparently, the person who made that statement didn’t think so.

Recently, the [female] Inspector General issued a report which did not support the statements coming from the Trump soundstage. So of course when ABC’s Jon Karl tried to ask about the report, Trump rudely interrupted him and implied that because she was given the position during the previous administration her results were unreliable (hint, they aren’t). Mr Thin-Skin’s retarded retort ended with an insult: “You’re a third-rate reporter. What you just said is a disgrace,” and closed his anti-Obama ramble with “You will never make it.”⁷, yet in journalism, working for ABC is “making it”.

“Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.”

— Katherine Stewart

— Fired or allowed the firing of a Navy Captain who had been asking for help to save the lives of his crew and was ignored. Capt. Brett E. Crozier was responsible for the roughly 5,680 crew members of his enormous floating city, the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Worried about the growing number of cases among his crew, one of his warnings/communiques leaked out, and subsequently, he was relieved of his command. After being relieved of his command, as he was leaving the flight deck, the remaining crew gathered his applaud his efforts at saving their lives.

It was a send-off for the ages, with hundreds of sailors aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt cheering Capt. Brett E. Crozier, the commander who sacrificed his naval career by writing a letter to his superiors demanding more help as the novel coronavirus spread through the ship.¹⁰

President* tRump, of course — as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces — refused to step in, allowing an honorable Captain be discharged from his duty (although he is retaining rank) for doing his honorable best to save the lives of his noble crew.

— Continues to deny history and foresight. Despite repeated warnings of a likely upcoming scenario of epidemics spreading death and destruction across the planet and our immensely wealthy country, DJ Trump repeatedly lies and discounts the plethora of top scientists and influential thinkers have warned us openly and often of exactly this scenario.

Although Trump is an avid viewer of Faux News, and they have been steadily reporting on the virus’ spread in China and other countries, the most powerful and resourceful and connected person on the planet did nothing to guard Americans against the coming pandemic, and soon America was number 1 in something; though it was not something to be proud of.

^^Back To Top^^

Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic

It would be excusable to skip to the next section. This section is a timeline of the worldwide spread of the pandemic. Click to open.

Pandemic Timeline

2019

Nov. 17; The first case of someone suffering from a new strain of coronavirus was a Hubei Province (pop. 58.5M) resident, 55 years of age. China, nor the World Health Organization, doesn’t know the identity of patient zero, the first person for whom the virus passed from animal to human¹¹. The virus, normally endogenous to some bats and certainly to the rare pangolin, was most likely related to us by a bite from one of those creatures in the unregulated wild markets of Wuhan (metro pop. 19M).

Dec. 31; The number of cases is now 266. By now China is reporting to the WHO.

2020

Jan. 1; The number of cases in one day has risen from 266 to 381. The government closes the open market areas in Wuhan where the virus is believed to have arisen.

Jan. 7; The novel virus is identified as a form of SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

Jan. 11; China reported its first related death (of course this is speculative, since there were very likely unreported deaths before they conscripted the help of the WHO).

“South Korea has performed over 320,000 tests — almost one for every 150 people. That is 30 times the testing [per capita that we have done in the United States. Exceptional teams are racing to solve testing bottlenecks at local and state levels — Massachusetts is just one example — filling the vacuum left by the complete absence of federal leadership.”¹²

Jan. 13; The first known case outside of China, from Wuhan, a woman returning to Thailand (pop. 69.4M).

Jan. 15; Japan (pop. 126M) becomes the third known country with a C-19 infected resident. We later learn this day is the first when the virus arrives on U.S. soil.

Jan. 17; The second reported death in China, in Wuhan.

Why wasn’t this (far more than) enough to get U.S. officials on the ball?

Jan. 20; Xi Jinping, Chinese President, orders “resolute efforts” to decrease the spread. On this day, officials also confirmed its spread to about 20 other cities in China, still with Wuhan as the epicenter. Among them, Shenzhen (metro pop. 23.3M), Beijing (metro pop. 24M) and Shanghai (metro pop. 34M). This is also the date Chinese media confirms this disease transfers easily from person to person, and South Korea becomes the fourth country with confirmed cases.

Jan. 21; the United States (pop. 328M) confirms its first case¹³, and Taiwan (pop. 127M) becomes the sixth country with infections ((there, I said it, China, that Taiwan is a fucking country, so come and get me motherfuckers)).

Jan. 22; Hong Kong (pop. 4.79M), a semi-autonomous state in China, confirms its first case. On this day, Taiwan “temporarily” bars Chinese citizens or anyone who recently visited the Hubei province area from entering.

Jan. 23; Wuhan locks down the city, suspending transportation in an effort to contain the virus. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the WHO, stated in a way that SHOULD have pricked the ears of all government officials “… [this] has not yet become a global health emergency”. Some people, apparently, are not worthy of the fine art of subtlety. This, on the same day China nation-wide (pop. 1.427B (2018)) cancels all Lunar New Year celebrations over 10 people. Singapore and Vietnam confirm their first cases being the eighth and ninth countries with the ever-expanding contagion.

One would think by now, with a growing international crisis and at least one infected person in the U.S. most likely having already infected others, that something would have been done.

Jan. 24-26; Countries and corporations are reporting shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) which assist in the prevention of human to human transmission of infections.

Jan. 25; Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of Hong Kong, declares the outbreak an emergency and orders the shuttering of most schools, also delaying Lunar New Year celebrations. All flights and high-speed trains from Wuhan and most of the Hubei Province are suspended. Malaysia (pop. 32.7M), Australia (pop. 27.7M) and Canada (pop. 37.9M) bring the infected country count to 12.

Hello?

Jan. 26; Central Chinese authorities confirm that before the lockdown on Wuhan, nearly 5 million people left the city. Within days, 14 more cities around Wuhan have enough reported cases to cause each of them to also come under a lockdown.

Jan. 27; Li Keqiang, the Chinese Premiere and pretty much the #2 person in their top-heavy government, visits Wuhan to officially inspect work being done to contain the outbreak.

Jan. 29; Starting to show concern, the U.S. evacuates their citizenry from Wuhan. Japan does the same. Almost 100 nurses from hospitals in Hong Kong have taken leave from their jobs in protest against both their city/states’ government and the Chinese central government refusing to close the border with mainland China.

Jan. 30; Hong Kong closes 6 of the 13 checkpoints to/from mainland China, and ends bus service and flights. Few transportation services remain open. The WHO declares a pa ndemic, a public health emergency of international concern. This is the day China confirms each of its 31 provinces and regions have active infection bases and The Philippines (pop. 107M) becomes the 13th country to have the virus.

Feb. 2; The Philippines has its first death from the coronavirus.

Feb. 3; In Wuhan, the Houshenshan hospital, after only a week of construction, is finished, with about 1,000 beds for Covid-19 patients. At 10am this day, it took its first patient. Japan quarantines the Diamond Princess cruise ship in its port at Yokohama.

Feb. 4; Hong Kong reports its first death. Casinos in the semi-autonomous state of Macau (pop. 670,000) are closed for at least 15 days after at least 1 hotel worker was locally infected.

Feb. 7; Taiwan tightens travel restrictions and orders all persons who have been to any part of China be quarantined for 14 days. This is also the day Li Wenliang, one of the first of several coronavirus whistle-blowers, a doctor in Wuhan, dies. He is instantly canonized by the Chinese public. Anger and grief flood the Chinese states’ ability to control its social media content.

Feb. 8; Hong Kong requires a mandatory 14 day quarantine for anyone entering from the mainland.

Feb. 9; At 900, the Chinese death toll surpasses the numbers from the 2003 SARS outbreak.

Hello? Is anybody there? This thing is coming, America, you better get your fucking shit together!

Feb. 11; China’s daily death toll surpasses 100 for the first time, a number which will continue to grow.

Feb. 12; The WHO officially names the fast-spreading virus SARS-CoV2, severe acute respiratory syndrome 2, or Covid-19. Now, death has a name.

Feb. 13; At a minimum, there are 218 cases on the Diamond Princess. The Hubei province reports a nearly 10-fold increase in new cases from the previous day at 14,840. This jump occurs as numbers begin to be compiled utilizing symptoms rather than only with test results. Multiple Hubei province officials are replaced over their mishandling of the outbreak.

Feb. 14; Egypt confirms their first case. It is also the first in Africa.

Feb. 15; Taiwan has its first Coronavirus death. First known cases in Italy (pop. 60M) at 3.

Feb. 19; The South Korean city of Daegu (pop. 2.5M) is the center of 20 new cases, most involving a church in that city. 106 natives of Hong Kong are removed from the Diamond Princess, still docked in Japan, for return to their state.

Feb. 23; In Italy, the case number jumps from 3 to 130.

Feb. 26; Iraj Harirchi, the Deputy Health Minister of Iran, while on state television looking feverish and weak, states “[this disease] doesn’t distinguish between statesman and ordinary citizen”. He has the virus as well as several other top Iranian officials.

Feb. 27; With 16 cases in the U.S., President* Trump states in an offhand manner “We’ve done an incredible job. We’re going to continue. It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”

Feb. 29; Two days after Trump says “We’ve done an incredible job” and “It’s going to disappear”, Washington state reports America’s first Covid-19 death. In just a few days, the toll will reach double digits.

Mar. 3; South Korea has the highest number of cases outside of China. Nearly 3 dozen MPs and other officials of the Iranian government are infected. That same day, one of the closest spiritual advisers to Iran’s Supreme Leader dies.

Mar. 6; Trump states, while at the CDC in Atlanta “Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is.” More than a month later, that would be far from true.

Mar. 8; In Italy, 16 million people in the north are put under a lockdown.

Mar. 9; The Italy, the death toll reaches 366 as reported cases reach 7,375. The lockdown is expanded to the entire nation.

Mar. 11; The WHO calls the growing threat a pandemic.

Mar. 13; The U.S. death toll reaches 48 (a week later, 255) with 2,183 cases. The alarming rise is beginning to cause other countries to restrict travel from the U.S. After weeks of deflecting and a “do-nothing” attitude, Trump finally declares a national emergency, while blaming his predecessor 3 years on, for his own failures.

Earlier that day he made a claim on Twitter, stating, inaccurately, that Obama administration’s response to the swine flu outbreak was “a very big failure”. The numbers don’t check out (shock, huh?). The H1N1’s fatality rate was .02 percent, extremely lower than the lowest U.S. fatality estimates for the coronavirus.

On this day, also, Trump proves he is certainly not a “buck stops here” President*.

Asked Friday at his press conference by NBC News’ Kristen Welker whether he should take responsibility for the failure to disseminate larger quantities of tests earlier, Trump declined. “I don’t take responsibility at all,” he said¹⁴

Sad.

Mar. 18; America has almost 10,500 C-19 cases with 150 deaths. Possibly responding to a desperate letter pleading him to do so signed by 27 Senators, Trump states he will invoke the Defense Production Act to compel (force) major manufacturers to produce items needed to fight the expanding American epidemic/pandemic.

Mar. 19; In one day, 56 more Americans die as the curve of both daily cases and deaths curve drastically upward. During a press conference, asked about the previous day’s Defense Production Act statement, in response to a question about the President*’s own words, Trump states he “… is not a shipping clerk.” A month later, the DPA has yet to produce a single ventilator or mask.

Mar. 31; The U.S. death count exceeds 4,000.

Apr. 12 [Easter]; The U.S. death count exceeds 12,000.¹⁵

^^Back To Top^^

Response & Previous Knowledge

A common defense of the bungling of our country’s top-down response to this disaster through lack of official foresight and preparedness can be summed up by the President’s* own words: “Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion.”¹⁶.

I call bullshit on a galactic scale.

Many public health experts, and even Bill Gates, have been warning for decades of such an upcoming epidemic. Gates¹⁷ himself for nearly a decade, and gave what should have been an influential and alarming TED talk. There, he warned “There’s no need to panic … but we need to get going.”¹⁸

Less than 2 years ago the CDC held a symposium on past and future pandemics. For a good analysis see https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-03-03/pandemic-disease-threat-national-security and click the picture for a link.

The first thing to consider is President* tRump’s predecessor, and what President Barack Obama did in response to the possibility for an upcoming pandemic on a national level (since Trump sure loves blaming the previous administration for his administration’s follies), and what opportunities and warnings the current administration had in preparation for this; and what was done by it in response.

Major Warning # 1; 2012: The non-profit Rand Corporation, funded by the U.S. government, private corporations, non-profits and public interest NPOs, is a think-tank that, according to its Website, does “research and analysis [to] address issues that impact people around the world including security, health, education, sustainability, growth, and development. Much of this research is carried out on behalf of public and private grantors and clients.”¹⁹ In a 2012 survey of threats to American interests, they publicly warned that a viral pandemic, if not responded to in an expeditious manner, could change the American way of life²⁰.

Major Warning # 2; Dec. 2, 2014: On December 2, 2014, a prescient and intelligent member of government said:

“There may — and likely will — come a time in which we have an airborne disease that is deadly. And in order for us to deal with that effectively, we have to put in place an infrastructure, not just here at home but globally, that allows us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly. … So that if and when a new strain of flu like the Spanish flu crops up, 5 years from now or a decade from now, we’ve made the investment, and we’re further along to catch it. … I cannot think of a better example of an area where we should all agree than passing this emergency funding to fight Ebola and to set up some of the public health infrastructure that we need to deal with potential outbreaks in the future. How do you argue with that? That is not a partisan issue. There’s a basic common sense issue that all Americans can agree on. … For the most part people have recognized that’s not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, it’s about the safety and security of the American people.”²¹

During the previous administration, a bureau was added to the National Security Council — the Global Health Security and Biodefense section — under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), led by Jeremy Konyndyk, currently the Senior Policy Fellow for the Center for Global Development.

Konyndyk’s words are very illustrative, and it is worth 6:35 minutes to see his interview in full by clicking the video to the left. Or read the un-toggled complete transcript below. He describes the proactive and forward-looking nature of the administration, and the challenges of saving lives during an upcoming pandemic. Part of the complexity is due to “… all those parts, it’s Homeland Security, for the immigration and border stuff, it’s the FAA for the airlines, and the air travel, it’s of course, the CDC and Health and Human Services, it’s USAID for the overseas part. You know, it’s a very complex operation, and you need that core of expertise at the White House that know where those capabilities sit, and the government knows how to make them work together.” Or at least it used to.

“Then that new team at the White House pulled together what we called ‘the playbook’. That was a document that laid out the different stages of readiness that the federal government would need to go through …” in response to a pandemic. The office stressed the need for testing, PPE, supply coordination, and “It was very explicit in the document that that sort of scenario needed to trigger great concern and a lot of active preparation.” The full transcript of the above video is below, and it is full of interesting information which was given to the incoming administration. See Major Warning # 5.

Major Warning # 3; 2015: Bill Gates, who had been making the case for many years that such a pandemic would be extremely disruptive to American economic interests and create piles of bodies buried surreptitiously if we didn’t respond right, became one of the leading advocates for a forward thinking pandemic response. Ezra Klein’s efforts at getting this information to the public did a commendable job of warning those who would listed and learn.

In Vox, Klein wrote about Gates’:

… algorithmic model for how a new strain of flu could spread rapidly in today’s globalized world, wrote that “a pandemic disease is the most predictable catastrophe in the history of the human race, if only because it has happened to the human race so many, many times before.” If there was anything humanity could be certain that it needed to prepare for to prevent the deaths of a lot of people in little time, it was this.²²

Major Warning # 4; March, 2015: Bill Gates gives his TED Talk on the upcoming pandemic and what we, as a (supposedly) civilized society needs to do to prepare and prevent major catastrophic consequences.

Thus, the next.

Major Warning # 5; Jan. 13, 2017: Officials of the incoming administration held, with top officials of the Obama administration — including Lisa Monaco, the Homeland Security Adviser — a meeting regarding a rapidly spreading virus. Raging hard in London and Seoul, countries were restricting travel. Trump’s aides were informed cases had come to California and Texas, and that this could rival the 1918-20 flu epidemic which took the lives of 50 million people.

The briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. But unlike the coronavirus pandemic currently ravaging the globe, this 2017 crisis didn’t really happen — it was among a handful of scenarios presented to Trump’s top aides as part of a legally required transition exercise with members of the outgoing administration …²³

The Obama and Bush II admins had dealt with similar except somewhat smaller pandemics, from swine flu and Zika to Ebola. The hypothetical situation covered disruptions to travel, the stock market, global supply chains and limitations in the health care situation which could all occur without a strong response.

Pandemic Transition Documents

Full Konyndyk Transcript

Jeremy Konyndyk, the former Director of Foreign Disaster Assistance for USAID. Inteview transcript:

“[t]here was a lot of energy in the last few years of the Obama administration to try and put in place what we could to leave the government in a better place. One was to set up a team at the White House that was solely dedicated to health security preparedness and response. The idea there was having a cell of people at the White House who could pull together all of the different parts of the federal government that had a roll in this, and, you know, you think of all those parts, it’s Homeland Security, for the immigration and border stuff, it’s the FAA for the airlines, and the air travel, it’s of course, the CDC and Health and Human Services, it’s USAID for the overseas part. You know, it’s a very complex operation, and you need that core of expertise at the White House that know where those capabilities sit, and the government knows how to make them work together.

“Then that new team at the White House pulled together what we called ‘the playbook’. That was a document that laid out the different stages of readiness that the federal government would need to go through: OK, here are the indicators that suggest that you are in the lowest phase of activation, and if you see these indicators, you need to move up to this phse of activation, and here are the key questions you need to ask, here are the different parts of the government you need to be talking to. Well, one of the tings that was identified as an early priority was testing. PPE availability, personal protective equipment, was another priority focus within that document because we knew that was an area of potential weakness. And so that would have to be an early focus if we saw a novel virus overseas. And it was very explicit in the document that something like Covid shoulde set off alarm bells. The document specifically talked about a novel virus … for which we had no medical countermeasures and which was showing the ability to efficiently spread from human to human. It was very explicit in the document that that sort of scenario needed to trigger great concern and a lot of active preparation. And I think what we saw instead, partly because they ignored that playbook, was that scenario emerged overseas, and the main response of the Trump administration initially was just to shut down travel from China and to basically assure the American public that the risk was low, but not to trigger the sort of domestic readiness measures that were very explicitly laid out in that document.

“So initially when the Trump administration came in they retained the pandemic preparedness team at the White House. But when John Bolton arrived as National Security Adviser, he got rid of that team. The playbook that we left behind clearly was not used, because if they had asked themselves some of those very basic questions at the beginning of this, I think they’d have been in a very different place than we — than they now are. Biologists, virologists, and pandemic planners have been pointing out for years that it was basically inevitable that we would see another novel pathogen at some point that would combine very high transmissibility with a significant case fatality rate. To anyone who had worked pandemic preparedness before, it was very clear in late January that we were facing a huge risk in the United States. Watching what was happening in Wuhan, with hospitals being overwhelmed with the aggressive spread of the virus, there was no reason to look at that and think that we were not equally vulnerable to that here in this country.

“But we were lucky. We had a head start that China didn’t have. We had time to prepare. However to trigger that preparation, the federal government needed to say very loudly and very forthrightly, but very calmly and professionally, ‘This is a real risk. Hospitals need to be preparing. the public needs to be preparing for disruption in your lives.’ And that wasn’t being said. That, in effect, sent a message to hospital executives, and to the public, and to business leaders that, basically, that this was under control and they didn’t need to make any major adjustments. And that was how it was heard. And it was just clearly the wrong message, and part of the reason now we’re in such a scramble is because of that poor messaging and that poor risk assessment that we saw throughout the whole month of February from the Administration. And I thing what is strongly suggested by the reporting of the president’s preferences on this is that he didn’t want that kind of forward-leaning risk managing. He was worried that it would spook the stock markets.

“It’s very frustrating for those of us who have worked these issues from inside the government, who know how this works and how it should be done, to then see him try to avoid any responsibility and claim that this was totally unforseeable because literally everyone in the public health field has known that this was a real possibility. And anyone who’s paid any attention to it, and there are a lot of us, has known how vulnerable we are. So for him to act as though it is somehow — it somehow absolves him that he was unaware this was a possibility, it doesn’t absolve him. It just shows how ignorant he was of the risk.

“The lack of a coordinated federal response is really damaging. And I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few weeks talking to local mayors’ offices and governors’ offices around the country, and all of them use terms like ‘a free-for-all,’ ‘Wild West,’ ‘we’re all competing with each other.’ You cannot run a 50 state emergency that way. You cannot run a 50 state emergency in which all 50 states are competing for the same pool of supplies, for the same pool of expertise, where they need policy consistency in how they’re applying measures, but they’re basically left to their own devices to figure out what those measures should look like.

“The governor of Florida allowed spring break to go forward and allowed the beaches to stay open, allowed the bars to stay open. And all of those kids came down, partied on the Florida beaches for a few weeks, and then went back to places all over the country. And some of them will have brought back coronavirus with them to those communities. That is a decision by one governor in one state that poses risks to almost every state in the country. So when you don’t have consistent policy coherence on how we fight this coming from the federal level, you leave it to each governor and each locality to be making their own decisions, and they’re gonna make those decisions differently. And it basically becomes the lowest common denominator effort.

“The basic reality of why we are in the trouble we are in in the United States now is that preparedness is a choice. And poor preparedness is a choice. The decision not to prepare in the face of an obvious threat is no excuse when you then find that that threat is overwhelming you later on.”

— End of Transcript —

Major Warning # 6; 2018: With the 100th anniversary of the Spanish Flu pandemic — one of history’s worst²⁴ — many scientists and researchers warned the public, industry and governments about the deadly toll which could be exacted on an unprepared population from certain respiratory viruses.

Major Warning # 7; Jan. 18, 2020: Alex Azar, the Health and Human Services Secretary, briefs Trump on the upcoming threat of the virus during a phone conversation²⁵. Four days later, Trump makes his first public remarks about the virus. On Jan. 22, saying he states he is not concerned about the pandemic and that “we have it totally under control.”

Major Warning # 8; Jan. 27, 2020: During his sliver of time as the acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney discusses with WH aides an effort to get senior officials to consider the looming and expanding threat more seriously. The head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Joe Grogan, “… warned it could cost Trump his re-election”²⁶. The idea that this avoidable pandemic wiping out tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans unnecessarily is what it takes to avoid a 2nd term of the Orange Menace is just befuddling.

Major Warning # 9; Jan. 29, 2020: Peter Navarro, Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, warned the National Security Council, a bureau within the White House, that Covid-19 could take more than 500,000 lives and cost $6 trillion in economic harm to the American economy. In a memo which was a request for supplemental appropriation, he discusses the “increasing probability of a full-blown COVID-19 pandemic”²⁷.

Major Warning # 10; Jan. 30, 2020: Once again, Alex Azar warns Trump during another phone call that the virus could become a pandemic. Trump dismisses him as an alarmist.

Major Warning # 11; also on Jan. 30: The WHO declares a Global Health Emergency, its highest alert level.

Major Warning # 12; Feb. 5: “Once again, Alex Azar warns Trump during another phone call that the virus could become a pandemic. Trump dismisses him as an alarmist”²⁸.

Major Warning # 13; Feb. 14: Health officials working with members of the administration’s National Security Council draft a memo recommending the targeted use of “quarantine and isolation measures”. With the plan to present the memo and discuss the looming numbers upon Trump’s return from India, the meeting was canceled.

Major Warning # 14; Feb. 21: Officials in the administration conduct a mock exercise of the pandemic. Using statistics and computer modeling, they conclude aggressive social distancing, despite economic consequences, were needed.

Major Warning # 15; Feb. 23: Peter Navarro — again, the Trump-appointed Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy — once again tried to make the President aware, “doubling down on his warnings” with another memo (pic below) that 2 million Americans could die of the burgeoning crisis²⁹.

Major Warning # 16; Feb. 25: The Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), Nancy Messionnier, M.D., publishes with the CDC a warning that the Covid-19 crisis could be a great threat and “we need to be preparing for significant disruption in our lives.” Reportedly, Trump called Alex Azar complaining that Messonnier had scared people unnecessarily in public interviews with media, whic caused the stock market to plunge over the next few days³⁰.

Does anyone else here think Trump cares more about the stock market than human lives?

^^Back To Top^^

Last Words: Covid and Vietnam

As of April 18, 2020, Americans have been dying for 1 month and 20 days of Covid-19. Despite Trump’s promise on March 6 that “Anybody that wants a test can get a test”, still, less than 1% of the country’s population has been tested.

As of this day, also, this contagion has claimed 37,938 American lives³¹. During America’s entire 14 year involvement in the Vietnam War, we lost 58,220 lives³². Yet one fact should terrify you: By the end of this month, the Covid dead in 2 months will exceed the KIA number from 48 months in Vietnam.

America has a greater percentage of its population — based on wealth — dying of Covid-19 than any other country. In the richest and most powerful country in the history of our planet, that is ridiculously inexcusable.

If you were to tell me that Trump’s administration has done a good job in implementing the policies, testing and production needed to prevent the catastrophe this has been, I will come knocking at your door: no matter what I have, you are credulous enough to buy it.

There has been a growing call to investigate the early missed opportunities to greatly reduce the death toll with early action. Several other countries have done so, with President* Trump recently complimenting S. Korea on their response. So what should happen to Trump at the very moment he steps out of office? The image below should tell you what I think, and I’m not alone.

And an argument can be made that it shouldn’t have to wait that long.