Tag: Trump mishandling pandemic crisis

Trump Disputes Ominous Death Projections With Fox News Talking Points

In an interview with ABC anchor David Muir, President Donald Trump repeated Fox News talking points about coronavirus models. This was his first broadcast network television interview since he spoke to NBC’s Chuck Todd in June 2019.

Fox News personalities have been using the wide array of COVID-19 models and projections to cast doubt on all modeling predicting the number of coronavirus-related cases and deaths. In response to rising projections of COVID-19 deaths in the country — and seizing on confusion about the number of the models, what they mean, and which ones are used by whom — Fox figures are downplaying the accuracy of models in general, calling them “a bit of a crapshoot,” and dismissing their predictions since “we don’t factor in human ingenuity.”

In his interview on ABC World News Tonight, Trump directly echoed that language: Continue reading.

Furious Texans revolt after governor gets caught on hot mic admitting his reopen order will worsen the pandemic

AlterNet logoOn Tuesday, leaked audio of a call with state lawmakers revealed that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) admitted his decision to lift lockdowns in Texas will cause more people to be infected with COVID-19.

Progress Texas@ProgressTX

BREAKING: As @GovAbbott reopens the state in the midst of a rising infection and death rate, leaked audio from a call with Texas Legislators reveals that he knows reopening puts more Texans at risk.

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Commenters on social media exploded with fury at Abbott’s seeming lack of concern for the health of his constituents. Continue reading.

 

Trump backs off plans to wind down task force after backlash

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Wednesday said he backed off plans to dissolve the White House coronavirus task force after public outcry, saying he didn’t realize how “popular” the group of medical experts and government leaders was.

“I thought we could wind it down sooner,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office event recognizing National Nurses Day. “But I had no idea how popular the task force is until actually yesterday when I started talking about winding down. … It is appreciated by the public.”

Trump said he received calls from “very respected people” who urged him to keep the task force intact. Continue reading.

Ousted vaccine official alleges he was demoted for prioritizing ‘science and safety’

Washington Post logoRick Bright says in a whistleblower complaint that he resisted pressure from HHS leaders to make ‘potentially harmful’ antimalarial drugs more widely available

A former top vaccine official removed from his post last month alleged in a whistleblower complaint on Tuesday that he was reassigned to a less prestigious role because he tried to “prioritize science and safety over political expediency” and raised health concerns over a drug repeatedly pushed by President Trump as a possible cure for coronavirus.

Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, was removed April 20 after having served as BARDA director for nearly four years. He was reassigned to a narrower role at the National Institutes of Health that the Department of Health and Human Services touted as part of a “bold new plan” to improve testing to defeat covid-19, the disease caused by coronavirus.

Bright portrays himself in the 89-page complaint as an administration health official trying to sound the alarm about the virus beginning in early January. He said he called for the rapid development of treatments and vaccines, as well as the stockpiling of additional N95 face masks and ventilators, at a time when HHS political leadership, including Secretary Alex Azar, appeared to him to be underestimating the threat. Continue reading.

With New Hot Spots Emerging, No Sign of a Respite

New York Times logoWhile cities like New York have seen a hopeful drop in cases, upticks in other major cities and smaller communities have offset those decreases.

In New York City, the daily onslaught of death from the coronavirus has dropped to half of what it was. In Chicago, a makeshift hospital in a lakefront convention center is closing, deemed no longer needed. And in New Orleans, new cases have dwindled to a handful each day.

Yet across America, those signs of progress obscure a darker reality.

The country is still in the firm grip of a pandemic with little hope of release. For every indication of improvement in controlling the virus, new outbreaks have emerged elsewhere, leaving the nation stuck in a steady, unrelenting march of deaths and infections. Continue reading.

This could be Trump’s worst mistake ever

The Trump administration has made any number of mistakes as it has grappled with the worst crisis since World War II; if it goes through with its plans to wind down its coronavirus task force around Memorial Day that decision will surely rank among the worst.

It’s as if in 1942, three years before Germany was defeated, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had said, “Gee, it’s well past time to wrap up this tiresome war against the Nazis.”

The coronavirus task force has provided much-needed scientific and public health expertise to President Donald Trump, who generally places great store on the findings of his own gut rather than on the findings of experts. Trump, understandably, wants to change the narrative from fighting the virus to opening up the economy, but biology won’t be so easily corralled. Continue reading.

The Memo: Trump runs into trouble with expectations game

The Hill logoPresident Trump is mired in controversy over projections about the total number of deaths from COVID-19.

His detractors accuse him of pulling figures out of thin air, giving the nation false hope and seeking to boost his reelection odds.

Trump’s defenders, however, assert he is simply fulfilling the traditional role of a president in trying to bolster morale during a crisis. Continue reading.

Trump won’t allow Fauci to testify before House because it’s ‘a bunch of Trump haters’

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Tuesday said Anthony Fauci will be allowed to testify before the Senate next week, but that he would prevent the government’s top infectious diseases expert from appearing before the House because he believes it’s full of “Trump haters.”

“The House is a set up. The House is a bunch of Trump haters,” the president told reporters as he departed the White House to visit a Honeywell factory in Arizona.

“But Dr. Fauci will be testifying in front of the Senate, and he looks forward to doing that,” Trump added. “But the House I will tell you, the House, they should be ashamed of themselves. And, frankly, the Democrats should be ashamed, because they don’t want us to succeed. They want us to fail so they can win an election.” Continue reading.

Fauci: No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab

In an exclusive interview, the face of America’s COVID-19 response cautions against the rush for states to reopen, and offers his tips for handling the pandemic’s information deluge.

ANTHONY “TONY” FAUCI has become the scientific face of America’s COVID-19 response, and he says the best evidence shows the virus behind the pandemic was not made in a lab in China.

Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shot down the discussion that has been raging among politicians and pundits, calling it “a circular argument” in a conversation Monday with National Geographic.

“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,” Fauci says. Based on the scientific evidence, he also doesn’t entertain an alternate theory—that someone found the coronavirus in the wild, brought it to a lab, and then it accidentally escaped. Continue reading.

Trump’s new vaccine timeline met with deep skepticism

The Hill logoPublic health experts are pushing back on President Trump‘s claim that a COVID-19 vaccine will be available by the end of the year.

The Trump administration is racing to get a vaccine to the market quickly with “Operation Warp Speed” and has started to whittle down candidates.

The project’s goal is to have 300 million vaccine doses available by January, an accelerated version of the administration’s previous projections of needing 12-18 months to get a vaccine ready for the public. Continue reading.