Tag: Trump mishandling pandemic crisis

Americans at World Health Organization transmitted real-time information about coronavirus to Trump administration

Washington Post logoMore than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.

A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.

The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s assertion that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States. Continue reading.

USDA under pressure as food safety concerns grow

The Hill logoThe U.S. Department of Agriculture (UDSA) is facing growing pressure to ensure the safety of the nation’s food supply during the coronavirus outbreak.

Experts who spoke to The Hill stressed that the food supply was safe now. But they also pointed to growing challenges for the USDA as food industry workers fall sick and inspectors scramble for limited resources, questioning whether officials responsible for food supply safety are ready for the task at hand.

Experts noted that the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has recalled only one product over the last two months. On Feb. 8, a product from Family Traditions Meat Company was recalled due to misbranding. But there were no other recalls until April 10, when the USDA recalled chicken bowls from Conagra Brands over possible foreign matter contamination and pork products from Jowett Farms for missing some inspections.  Continue reading.

Trump Uttered 59 Lies About The Pandemic In One Month

Since March 14, Donald Trump has been holding daily press briefings, ostensibly about the COVID-19 pandemic and what his administration is doing to combat it.

In the process, he’s told numerous lies on everything from the severity of the virus to his administration’s response.

Over the past month, the American Independent has been tracking Trump’s lies and distortions.

The list is by no means exhaustive. He has also repeated many of these lies on multiple occasions. However, here are 59 of the worst lies he told in the course of a month, in chronological order:  Continue reading.

Trump Warned His Tweets Inciting Insurrection Were ‘Illegal’

President Donald Trump may have gotten more than he bargained for Friday, when he posted three tweets, just sixteen words in total, that stunned and infuriated the nation and have legal experts weighing in on just how much trouble he could be in.

One, a former U.S. Dept. of Justice official, suggests possibly a lot.

But first, the tweets:

The average Trump supporter might say, “So?” Or, as Trump has often defended his actions, he has a First Amendment right to say what he wants.

A Key G.O.P. Strategy: Blame China. But Trump Goes Off Message.

New York Times logoRepublicans increasingly believe that elevating China’s culpability for spreading the coronavirus may be the best way to improve their difficult election chances. The president is muddying the message.

Republican lawmakers blanketing Fox News to new ads from President Trump’s super PAC to the biting criticism on Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter feed, the G.O.P. is attempting to divert attention from the administration’s heavily criticized response to the coronavirus by pinning the blame on China.

With the death toll from the pandemic already surpassing 34,000 Americans and unemployment soaring to levels not seen since the Great Depression, Republicans increasingly believe that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America’s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.

Republican senators locked in difficult races are preparing commercials condemning China. Conservatives with future presidential ambitions of their own, like Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, are competing to see who can talk tougher toward the country where the virus first emerged. Party officials are publicly and privately brandishing polling data in hopes Mr. Trump will confront Beijing. Continue reading.

Some may have to die to save the economy? How about offering testing and basic protections?

Washington Post logoThe sentiment has been mouthed by every fool from Dr. Oz to the Cheetos-dusted flimflam man in the Oval Office: Rather than damage the economy further, we must accept a certain number of novel coronavirus casualties so the rest of us can go back to restaurants and football games. It’s a false moral equation and a false choice. And the people putting it forward smack of panic.

How about we wait to have the discussion of how many deaths are acceptable among which sorts of people — elders? asthmatics? — until after we have taken common-sense measures to prevent the preventable. Such as, a ramped-up national testing and tracing system that would allow Americans to make legitimate personal-risk assessments and reduce the chance of new outbreaks as they return to work and to their amusements. People need to work — but they also need to know they won’t carry the virus home.

It’s called informed consent. And right now, we don’t have it. None of us. Only about 1 percent of Americans have been tested as we approach reopening. Continue reading.

U.S. sent millions of face masks to China early this year, ignoring pandemic warning signs

Washington Post logoU.S. manufacturers shipped millions of dollars’ worth of face masks and other protective medical equipment to China in January and February with encouragement from the federal government, a Washington Post review of economic data and internal government documents has found. The move underscores the Trump administration’s failure to recognize and prepare for the growing pandemic threat.

In those two months, the value of protective masks and related items exported from the United States to China grew more than 1,000 percent compared with the same time last year — from $1.4 million to about $17.6 million, according to a Post analysis of customs categories which, according to research by Public Citizen, contain key personal protective equipment (PPE). Similarly, shipments of ventilators and protective garments jumped by triple digits.

“Instead of taking steps to prepare, they ignored the advice of one expert after another,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.). “People right now, as we speak, are dying because there have been inadequate supplies of PPE.” Continue reading.

Coronavirus steals Trump economic edge

The Hill logoPresident Trump has the money, the bully pulpit and a firm grip on his party as he leans into his reelection race, but he no longer has what was long seen as the greatest strength of his presidency: a strong economy.

With less than 200 days to go before the election, Trump is now running as a president seeking to rebuild an economy that a little more than a month ago was riding along with historically low unemployment.

Since then, about 22 million people have filed unemployment claims, inviting comparisons to the Great Depression. Continue reading.

The Trump administration is muzzling government scientists. It’s essential to let them speak candidly to the press again.

Washington Post logoKathryn Foxhall remembers a time when reporters could call up any doctor or researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ask them questions on the record. A journalist might even get them to open up for a “background” interview, offering candid information on the condition the expert’s name would not be used.

“There was the official story and then there was everything else,” the former editor of the Nation’s Health, an industry publication, told me. “We took this for granted.”

Foxhall watched with dismay as that openness disintegrated radically over the past two decades. Federal agencies, including the CDC, began to require media inquiries to go through a public information officer. Direct contact was minimized and tightly monitored. Interviews might take place with a public-relations “minder” present. Continue reading.

This chart speaks volumes about the Trump pandemic — and the Trump depression

AlterNet logoThe jobs market carnage is shown in sharp focus in the graphic below from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

In just four weeks we have seen 22 million jobs disappear. That’s a huge number, the equivalent of the combined workforces of Georgia, Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania. A Federal Reserve study suggests we will reach a 32% unemployment, far worse than in the depths of the 1930s Great Depression, when the rate was just shy of 25%.

Job losses during the 1990, 2001 and 2008 recessions rose slowly and steadily. Each took more than six months to reach their peaks, giving people warnings and time to adjust as best they could. Continue reading.