'Trump is going to try to spin this, but what he's going to find...is that you can't spin death.'
- Dr. Dena Grayson (
Source, March 12, 2020)
'SHAMEFUL - America has done 23 tests per million people - Korea 3692 tests per million people. US is 160x behind! Japan is very behind too. Same with UK, Netherlands, and Italy- but much better than US.'
- Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (
Source, March 12, 2020)
'Rather than acting on these recurrent warnings and bolstering America’s ability to respond to an outbreak, the Trump administration has instead cut back money and personnel from pandemic preparedness. In May 2018, Trump’s aides dismissed the National Security Council’s global health security staff and moved to cut its budget. The White House also cut the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services, and closed the federal government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund.''An annual intelligence report that has been postponed without explanation by President Donald Trump’s administration warns that the U.S. remains unprepared for a global pandemic, two senior government officials who have reviewed a draft of the report tell TIME.
..
The final draft of the report remains classified but the two officials who have read it say it contains warnings similar to those in the last installment, which was published on January 29, 2019. The 2019 report warns on page 29 that, “The United States will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”
..
Rather than acting on these recurrent warnings and bolstering America’s ability to respond to an outbreak, the Trump administration has instead cut back money and personnel from pandemic preparedness. In May 2018, Trump’s aides dismissed the National Security Council’s global health security staff and moved to cut its budget. The White House also cut the budgets of the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services, and closed the federal government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund.'
- Time,
The Trump Administration Is Stalling an Intel Report That Warns the U.S. Isn’t Ready for a Global Pandemic, March 9, 2020
'Ever since the first case of Covid-19 was detected in the US on January 20, the government’s blunders in creating and distributing diagnostic testing have greatly handicapped our response to the growing pandemic..''The US lags just about every developed country on testing for Covid-19 disease.
In late February, Julie Eaker, a physician assistant and supervisor at a small, rural, tribal community health clinic in Siskiyou County, California, had a patient who had a possible exposure to Covid-19. It wasn’t direct: They had been exposed to a person, and that person had been in direct contact with a confirmed Covid-19 case. Eaker’s patient was developing an upper respiratory infection too, and she wanted to ease their peace of mind — and protect the community — by getting them tested for Covid-19.
To this day, the patient still hasn’t been tested for the illness. And it’s not because Eaker didn’t try. The story she describes is Kafkaesque.
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Meanwhile, the commercial tests the clinic ordered still haven’t arrived. And Eaker wonders if Covid-19 has been spreading in her community of 3,000 people. Siskiyou County might not have big sports arenas or universities where disease can infect masses. But it has multigenerational family homes where viruses can quickly infect a whole family, and a health clinic that’s already at capacity due to the flu.
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Ever since the first case of Covid-19 was detected in the US on January 20, the government’s blunders in creating and distributing diagnostic testing have greatly handicapped our response to the growing pandemic. Eaker’s story is not unique: Reports suggest providers everywhere are struggling to help their patients, while receiving frustrating guidance from authorities.'
- Vox,
America’s shamefully slow coronavirus testing threatens all of us, March 12, 2020
Context(Trump Is Clueless About the Coronavirus) - Trump address sparks chaos as coronavirus crisis deepens - '[Trump hampering] U.S. government’s response to the contagion..'Rep. Katie Porter Makes Trump's CDC Director Look Like a Fool, March 13, 2020
(Bloomberg) - Coronavirus Can Live in Patients for Five Weeks After Contagion(BBC) Coronavirus confirmed as pandemic by World Health Organization - 'He said he was "deeply concerned" by "alarming levels of inaction" over the virus.' - 'The case of the Netherlands..'