Tag: Trump lack of leadership

Unreleased State Department review blames Trump for ‘delayed’ pandemic response: report

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An unreleased State Department report on the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic reportedly blames the former president for “delayed” warnings to Americans and a “void of U.S. international leadership.” 

According to excerpts of the State Department’s draft COVID-19 Interim Review obtained by Politico, diplomats and other career agency officials expressed frustrations with former President Trump’s response to the virus. 

The draft document reportedly argues that Trump’s withdrawal from international forums weakened U.S. global leadership in responding to the health crisis. Continue reading.

Trump doesn’t know what the ’19’ in ‘COVID-19’ means

Months into the worst pandemic in a generation, Trump still doesn’t know that the ’19’ in ‘COVID-19’ stands for the year the outbreak began.

Donald Trump on Tuesday said he has no idea what the “19” in “COVID-19” stands for, instead choosing to once again use a racist term for the deadly disease coronavirus causes.

The comment came during a speech in Arizona to members of Turning Point USA — a group of young, Trump-supporting, right-wing activists — in which he rattled off a list of names people had used to refer to coronavirus, including racist terms like “Wuhan” virus and “kung-flu.”

“Kung flu. ‘COVID.’ ‘COVID-19.’ ‘COVID.’ I said, ‘What’s the ’19?’ ‘COVID-19.’ Some people can’t explain what the 19 — give me the — ‘COVID-19.’ I said, ‘That’s an odd name.’ I could give you many, many names,” Trump said. Continue reading.

‘Coming back and biting us’: US sees virus resurgence

HOUSTON, TEXAS — A coronavirus resurgence is wiping out two months of progress in the U.S. and sending infections to dire new levels across the South and West, with hospital administrators and health experts warning Wednesday that politicians and a tired-of-being-cooped-up public are letting a disaster unfold.

The U.S. recorded a one-day total of 34,700 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, the highest level since late April, when the number peaked at 36,400, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

While newly confirmed infections have been declining steadily in early hot spots such as New York and New Jersey, several other states set single-day records this week, including Arizona, California, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas and Oklahoma. Some of them also broke hospitalization records, as did North Carolina and South Carolina. Continue reading.

Fauci gives Congress COVID-19 warning

The Hill logoAnthony Fauci, the administration’s top infectious disease doctor, told a House panel on Tuesday that rising U.S. cases of COVID-19 are “disturbing” as new signs emerged of the United States falling further behind other countries in containing the novel coronavirus.

The coronavirus is surging in more than half the country, and states like Florida, Texas and Arizona are setting records of new cases almost daily.

Yet states are continuing to push forward with reopening businesses and lifting restrictions, and Fauci warned that without the ability to fully identify, isolate and trace the contacts of the infected individuals, the situation could worsen. Continue reading.

Trump Administration Paid Millions To Sketchy Supplier For Useless Test Tubes

Since May, the Trump administration has paid a fledgling Texas company $7.3 million for test tubes needed in tracking the spread of the coronavirus nationwide. But, instead of the standard vials, Fillakit LLC has supplied plastic tubes made for bottling soda, which state health officials say are unusable.

The state officials say that these “preforms,” which are designed to be expanded with heat and pressure into 2-liter soda bottles, don’t fit the racks used in laboratory analysis of test samples. Even if the bottles were the right size, experts say, the company’s process likely contaminated the tubes and could yield false test results. Fillakit employees, some not wearing masks, gathered the miniature soda bottles with snow shovels and dumped them into plastic bins before squirting saline into them, all in the open air, according to former employees and ProPublica‘s observation of the company’s operations.

“It wasn’t even clean, let alone sterile,” said Teresa Green, a retired science teacher who worked at Fillakit’s makeshift warehouse outside of Houston for two weeks before leaving out of frustration. Continue reading.