Tag: Trump trying to weasel out of blame for COVID deaths

Pompeo immediately flip-flops on claim ‘experts’ think coronavirus was manmade after ABC host educates him on the true scientific ‘consensus’

AlterNet logoU.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is engaging is a campaign of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and gaslighting in efforts to shore up President Donald Trump’s MAGA base while ramping up their attacks on China over the coronavirus that to date has killed more than 66,000 people in America.

On Sunday’s ABC News’ “This Week” (video below) Pompeo said the “best experts” think it was “manmade,” referring to the novel coronavirus, then immediately switched and said he believes and trusts the Intelligence Community which says it was not.

“We’ve said from the beginning this was a virus that originated in Wuhan, China,” Pompeo  told ABC’s Martha Radditz.  “We took a lot of grief for that from the outset but I think the whole world can see now.” Continue reading.

House panel: White House blocks Fauci testimony on coronavirus

Axios logoThe Trump administration has blocked Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, from testifying on the coronavirus pandemic.

Why it matters: Fauci has often given Americans a reality check on the administration’s response to the coronavirus and has garnered bipartisan credibility for his straight-forward approach to the crisis.

  • The Washington Post first reported that the administration rejected the House committee’s request for Fauci’s testimony, quoting a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee.

Flashback: Fauci testified in March that America’s system of making coronavirus tests available is not set up in a way it needs to be.

  • Fauci and Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, are set to “take a back seat” to the White House messaging on coronavirus, a White House official told Axios’ Jonathan Swan this week.

Was the new coronavirus accidentally released from a Wuhan lab? It’s doubtful.

Washington Post logo“I will tell you, more and more, we’re hearing the story [that the new coronavirus emerged from a Wuhan lab].”

— President Trump, in a news conference, April 15, 2020

President Trump isn’t the only one hearing this tale. The political world, Internet theorists, intelligence analysts and global public health officials are abuzz with a big question: Is it possible that the new coronavirus — which causes covid-19 — leaked from a lab?

For months, Chinese authorities have pointed to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan as the virus’s likely origin. A cluster of early cases had contact with the market. It sold a wide variety of wildlife which, officials hypothesized, was critical to the virus’s formation and spread. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which cause similar symptoms, were formed after a coronavirus from a bat transformed in another animal and then jumped to humans.

The logic seems straightforward. But a more complete analysis of early cases suggests that locating the origin of the virus may not be so simple. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that of the first 425 patients, only 45 percent had connections to the market. A separate Jan. 24 analysis published in the Lancet found that three of the first four cases — including the first known case — did not have market links. Continue reading.

Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release

Washington Post logoFor nearly a decade, a team of scientists from Wuhan, China, crisscrossed southern Asia in a high-stakes search for bats and the strange diseases they harbor. They crawled through caves, catching the razor-toothed mammals with nets and scooping up liters of their excrement. They trapped insects and mice living near bat roosts and collected blood from villagers who hunt bats for food or folk medicine.

They returned to their state-of-the-art laboratory in central China with tubes and vials containing known killers — pathogens associated with diseases that are deadly in humans — and also a few surprises. On multiple occasions, their takings included exotic coronaviruses previously unknown to science.

The highlights of the Wuhan researchers’ work on bat viruses are spelled out in more than 40 published studies and academic papers that describe a sprawling, ambitious effort to document the connection between bats and recent disease outbreaks in China. The experiments were intended to illuminate how dangerous pathogens sometimes jump from animal hosts to humans. But experts say the research also carried an implicit risk: the possibility that the lab itself could facilitate the spread of the very diseases the scientists were trying to prevent. Continue reading.

Gov. Cuomo hits back with condescending mockery after Trump’s attack

AlterNet logoNew York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been enjoying a great deal of praise from Democrats — as well from some Never Trump conservatives — for the leadership he has shown during the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday, however, President Donald Trump accused Cuomo of being a complainer rather than a leader, and Cuomo responded with biting commentary of his own.

New York City has been hit especially hard by the pandemic in recent weeks. Researchers at John Hopkins University in Baltimore were reporting, on Friday afternoon, that more than 11,400 people had died from coronavirus in the region. And Cuomo has been stressing that NYC’s hospitals are absolutely overwhelmed.

Friday on Twitter, Trump posted, “Governor Cuomo should spend more time ‘doing’ and less time ‘complaining.’ Get out there and get the job done. Stop talking! We built you thousands of hospital beds that you didn’t need or use, gave large numbers of Ventilators that you should have had, and helped you with testing that you should be doing. We have given New York far more money, help and equipment than any other state, by far, & these great men & women who did the job never hear you say thanks. Your numbers are not good. Less talk and more action!” Continue reading.