Tag: Trump mishandling pandemic crisis

Lysol maker: Please don’t drink our cleaning products

NEW YORK (CNN BUSINESS) — The company that makes Lysol and Dettol is urging customers not to consume its cleaning products after President Donald Trump suggested the possibility of injecting disinfectants to protect people from coronavirus.

Reckitt Benckiser (RBGLY), a British company, warned Friday that human consumption of disinfectant products is dangerous. It issued the statement following “recent speculation and social media activity.”
“As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),” the company said in a statement. Continue reading.

Fifty Thousand Americans Dead from the Coronavirus, and a President Who Refuses to Mourn Them

NOTE:  This is a free article provided by The New Yorker magazine.

In just the past few days, President Trump has blamed immigrants, China, the “fake news” and, of course, “the invisible enemy” of the coronavirus for America’s present troubles. He has opined extemporaneously about his plans to hold a grand Fourth of July celebration on the National Mall and has announced that he planted a tree on the White House lawn in honor of Earth Day. He has offered his opinion on matters small and large, bragged about himself as “the king of ventilators,” and spent much time lamenting the pandemic-inflicted passing of what he invariably (and inaccurately) calls “the greatest economy in the history of the world.”

Despite the flood of words, though, what has struck me the most this week is what Trump does not talk about: the mounting toll of those who have died in this crisis. So voluble that he regularly talks well past dinnertime at his nightly briefings, the President somehow never seems to find time to pay tribute to those who have been lost, aside from reading an occasional scripted line or two at the start of his lengthy press conferences, or a brief mention of a friend in New York who died of the disease soon after calling him at the White House. “He said, ‘I tested positive.’ Four days later he was dead,” the President recounted. “So this is a tough deal.” It was not exactly the prayerful, if often politically expedient, mournfulness Americans generally expect of their elected leaders. Trump, for the most part, dispenses even with the ritualistic clichés that other politicians, regardless of party or creed, have always offered in times of crisis.

But the numbers are the numbers, and, notwithstanding Trump’s relentless happy talk, the coronavirus epidemic has, as of this week, already produced some fifty thousand American dead. This is not, needless to say, a best-case scenario, or anything close to it. Just a few weeks ago, a survey of scientific experts predicted forty-seven thousand U.S. dead by the beginning of May, according to the Web site FiveThirtyEight. Instead, forty-seven thousand deaths were recorded by this Wednesday, April 22nd, well before the experts had anticipated. On April 8th, a leading model at the University of Washington had revised its projections downward to forecast a total of sixty thousand American deaths by the beginning of August. But the nation now looks to hit that number by May 1st, meaning that, just a few days from now, more Americans will have died from covid-19 than the entire toll from the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, Trump talks of reopening the country, and of the “tremendous strides against this invisible enemy.” Continue reading.

Mixed messages and martial metaphors: Trump sows confusion about how to reopen the country

Washington Post logoPresident Trump calls himself a “wartime president” and favors martial metaphors when describing the coronavirus pandemic, but as shown with his about-face this week on whether Georgia should start reopening businesses, the commanding general’s orders to the troops can, at times, be clear as mud.

Trump has issued contradictory advice to Americans and contradictory or inchoate directives to governors, mayors, Congress and the scientists who flank him at daily news briefings intended to showcase his leadership. Much of the confusion surrounds when and how to lift safety restrictions that have closed businesses, schools, parks and casinos as a means of slowing transmission of a virus that has killed nearly 50,000 Americans.

On Thursday, the day before barbershops, nail salons and other businesses were to reopen in Georgia over Trump’s objection and against the advice of the task force he empowered to guide the national response, Trump spoke glowingly about states that are reopening. Continue reading.

Home Alone at the White House: A Sour President, With TV His Constant Companion

New York Times logoAs his administration grapples with reopening the economy and responding to the coronavirus crisis, President Trump worries about his re-election and how the news media is portraying him.

WASHINGTON — President Trump arrives in the Oval Office these days as late as noon, when he is usually in a sour mood after his morning marathon of television.

He has been up in the White House master bedroom as early as 5 a.m. watching Fox News, then CNN, with a dollop of MSNBC thrown in for rage viewing. He makes calls with the TV on in the background, his routine since he first arrived at the White House.

But now there are differences. Continue reading.

The Daily 202: Ousted vaccine expert, alleging retaliation, is not the first scientist sidelined in Trump era

Washington Post logoPresident Trump said three times Wednesday that he had “never heard of” Rick Bright, the scientist who alleges he was removed as the leader of the federal agency working on a coronavirus vaccine because he resisted efforts to “provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public.”

“The guy says he was pushed out of a job. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t,” the president said during his evening news conference at the White House. “I’d have to hear the other side. I don’t know who he is.”

Trump’s professed unfamiliarity with a top official tasked with developing a cure for a contagion that has killed at least 46,782 and infected 842,000 Americans is in and of itself remarkable. But it captures in miniature Trump’s strained relationship with scientific experts, who polls show voters rely on most for accurate information about the coronavirus. Continue reading.

How Tucker Carlson is crafting a dangerous and preposterous conspiracy theory to prop up Trump

AlterNet logoDuring the months when Donald Trump thought he could somehow defeat the novel coronavirus by lying, minimizing it and calling concerns about the coming pandemic a “hoax,” most Fox News hosts were right there with him.  The one major exception, however, was popular prime time host Tucker Carlson. While Sean Hannity kept calling the coronavirus crisis a “hoax” and Laura Ingraham described people concerned about it as “panic pushers,” Carlson actually criticized Trump and his Fox colleagues for “minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” arguing that the virus was “a major event” that “will affect your life.” The fact Trump made a reluctant pivot and began to admit that the coronavirus was a real threat — even though he’s still trying to cover up the spread of the disease — is likely due to Carlson’s pressure.

In fact, the difference between Carlson’s approach and that of his fellow Fox News hosts, especially Hannity, was so pronounced that it likely altered the course of the disease. A new study shows that communities that favored Hannity’s show over Carlson’s show had more cases of COVID-19 and more deaths. The reason is simple: Because Hannity downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus, his viewers were less likely to follow stay-at-home recommendations and therefore more likely spread the disease.

Don’t get too soft on Tucker, however. He wasn’t motivated by a real concern about the safety of his audience, much less about Americans at large. He simply took a more opportunistic attitude, viewing the inevitable panic and instability that would result from the pandemic as a chance to push his white nationalist views by blaming immigrants. He encouraged people to embrace racist frames that implied people of color were dirtier than white people, and encouraged Trump to use the pandemic as an excuse to shut down immigration. Trump has taken that advice, although his ban — which only affects people seeking green cards, not those seeking temporary work visas — has already been criticized by Carlson, who thinks it doesn’t go far enough. Continue reading.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren loses brother to COVID-19

‘He was charming and funny, a natural leader,’ she says

Elizabeth Warren’s brother has died of COVID-19, she announced Thursday on Twitter.

Donald Reed Herring, oldest brother of the Democratic senator and former 2020 presidential candidate, died Tuesday evening in Oklahoma, weeks after testing positive for the new coronavirus, she said.

“I’m grateful to the nurses and other front-line staff who took care of my brother, but it is hard to know that there was no family to hold his hand,” Warren told the Boston Globe. “And now there’s no funeral for those of us who loved him to hold each other close.” Continue reading.

Enraged Trump Wanted To Fire CDC Official Who Warned Against Virus

In a deeply reported Wall Street Journal piece on Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, a bombshell detail buried in the story cast light on President Donald Trump’s own disastrous instincts.

According to the report, Trump wanted to fire Dr. Nancy Messonnier — the official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who first shared the gravity of the pandemic with the American people.

On Feb. 25, after Trump had spent a month downplaying the outbreak and defending China’s honesty in its response, Messonnier sent a clear signal about just how bad things could get. Continue reading.

Special Report: Former Labradoodle breeder was tapped to lead U.S. pandemic task force

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On January 21, the day the first U.S. case of coronavirus was reported, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services appeared on Fox News to report the latest on the disease as it ravaged China. Alex Azar, a 52-year-old lawyer and former drug industry executive, assured Americans the U.S. government was prepared.

“We developed a diagnostic test at the CDC, so we can confirm if somebody has this,” Azar said. “We will be spreading that diagnostic around the country so that we are able to do rapid testing on site.”

While coronavirus in Wuhan, China, was “potentially serious,” Azar assured viewers in America, it “was one for which we have a playbook.” Continue reading.

Under Trump, coronavirus scientists can speak — as long as they mostly toe the line

Washington Post logoRobert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a candid warning Tuesday in a Washington Post interview: A simultaneous flu and coronavirus outbreak next fall and winter “will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” adding that calls and protests to “liberate” states from stay-at-home orders — as President Trump has tweeted — were “not helpful.”

The next morning, Trump cracked down with a Twitter edict: Redfield had been totally misquoted in a cable news story summarizing the interview, he claimed, and would be putting out a statement shortly.

By Wednesday evening, Redfield appeared at the daily White House briefing — saying he had been accurately quoted after all, while also trying to soften his words as the president glowered next to him. Continue reading.