Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?

n7axw wrote:

Annachie wrote:His background seems to be PR. Healthcare related PR admitadly. But still, it's not exactly a good background for his current job, unless it's again PR.

His major was economics, not public health. It sounds to me as I read that article that he is the sort of guy who could head up a department and keep the gears moving. Evaluating CDC sounds more like systems analysis, something you would do if a department became dysfunctional. That's valuable work if he did it well.

The other thing is that at 37 he is still pretty young. If he is really going to be coordinating the Administration's response to the pandemic and be anything other than an errand boy, he lacks gravitas, not the well seasoned, public health professional they need.

So as much fun as the labradoodle bit was, I will agree that there is more to the guy than that. That is only fair. But it Doesn't establish that he is qualified for his position.

Don

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Agreed.

The problem we have is that the people who should be qualified to deal with a pandemic have FUBARed the response. The US response has been devastated by the incompetence of the CDC in developing a flawed test for the Coronavirus that was inherently vulnerable to a huge rate of false positives if not assembled perfectly, refusing to outsource ​production to competent labs, then lying to their superiors and ultimately President Trump that they had it under control.

The CDC also endorsed the lies by China then Europe that delayed President Trump's​ travel ban on Europe as well as China. Keep in mind that the infection rate in the US initially rose far more rapidly than almost any other country. Most Americans have been infected with strains from Europe rather than directly from China. Americans do travel internationally more than most people. However; it appears that someone was deliberately sending infected people to the US with the intent to infect Americans. If so, this was biological warfare. It is more like that the perpetrators of this biowarfare were our NATO "allies" rather than China.

At this point what is needed to manage the pandemic response is not a public health professional but a management professional who has the discernment to recognize whose ass and groin needs to be kicked and the steel toed boots to do the kicking.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The problem we have is that the people who should be qualified to deal with a pandemic have FUBARed the response. The US response has been devastated by the incompetence of the CDC in developing a flawed test for the Coronavirus that was inherently vulnerable to a huge rate of false positives if not assembled perfectly, refusing to outsource ​production to competent labs, then lying to their superiors and ultimately President Trump that they had it under control.

Oh ffs, anything to shift blame to anyone except the guy in charge. As usual.

The CDC has been kneecapped constantly by Trump from the very beginning.

They had advance personnel in China whose job was to look out for potential emerging pandemics. Trump spent the last two years eliminating them at the same time he as getting rid of the Pandemic response team in the Whit House.

The CDC issued a public health advisory about COVID on Jan 8, dispatched 100 people to airports to screen arrivals from Wuhan in mid January, issued public statements that they expected Covid to spread globally including inside the Unites States on Jan 21st... and Jan 22nd Trump declares in Davos that they are "not at all" worried about a pandemic and they have it totally under control. Directly contradicting and undermining the CDC warnings.

January 23rd CDC says they have concerns the Chinese are holding back vital data on the virus. The very next day, here comes Trump praising Chinese transparency, again directly contradicting and undercutting the CDC , and declaring everything will work out. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 5354923009

Over the next 2 weeks WHO reports global cases growing from 1,000 to 25,000. The day after WHO announces 25,000 global cases Trump is at it again praising China and saying they will stop the virus.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/sta ... 6456808448

Then 3 days later, while HOLDING A RALLY, he declares Covid looks like it will "miraculously go away" in April. Again, throwing around statements that have zero basis in science or anything those experts you claim were the ones "FUBAR"ing the situation were saying. Requiring the CDC director to go out afterwards and give an interview and make sure everoyne knows that no, COVID is with us at least through this entire season and likely through the entire year.

Over the next couple weeks global cases spike past 75k and climbing sharply. Feb 26th, at which point the CDC has been saying FOR OVER A MONTH that the virus is going to spread inside the US, Trump makes a public statement that he does not believe the virus spreading inside the US is inevitable. (To be clear, the virus was already widely spreading in the US at this time, but almost nobody was testing for it.)

Feb 29th, at which point still nearly NO testing is happening, Trump declares the US is "leading in testing".

March 17th, a week after WHO has declared it officially a pandemic Trump declares he always knew it would be a pandemic and felt it was a pandemic long before other people. Which, considering what he had been saying for the months leading up to that, is an impressive whopper even for him.

Trump spends the next week holding "briefings" where he speaks endlessly himself while providing no actual plans or useful data and constantly contradicting the medical experts, leading to Fauci saying in an interview on March 17th that he "can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time."

March 24th. Trump announces a targeted opening date for the country of April 12th. In contradiction to what ANY model says is going to be safe.

March 30th. Trump claims his administration inherited a "broken" test for COVID 19 from Obama. You know, the guy who was president before Covid 19 existed.


April 4, Trump starts hyping and pushing Hydroxychloroquine, refusing to listen to experts who say there is no solid evidence it is effective and it hasn't been tested for harmful side effects as a COVID treatment. We all know where that has since gone so far...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/health/n ... index.html
https://apnews.com/a5077c7227b8eb8b0dc23423c0bbe2b2

And then of course there was the great "look into injecting people with disinfectant" debacle. And refusing to take responsibility for testing failures. And telling all the states to fend for themselves for PPE after he squandered months of lead time not stockpiling anything, inciting a bidding war between states in which the Feds also constantly became involved so that states that were ordered by the Federal government to secure their own supplies then kept getting outbid by the federal government for those supplies, skyrocketing equipment prices as a result.

Nobody in the entire United States has been more responsible for cutting the legs out from underneath all those professionals you mentioned and sabotaging the US ability to respond effectively to the pandemic than Donald Trump.


FFS, stop twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to rewrite everything that is happening and face reality. He's an incompetent narcissistic pathologically lying moron who is more concerned over what TV ratings his briefings are getting than how many people are dying and the US is paying the price for it. Fortunately there are a lot of mostly competent governors mitigating the damage as much as they can or it would be a lot worse.

gcomeau wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The problem we have is that the people who should be qualified to deal with a pandemic have FUBARed the response. The US response has been devastated by the incompetence of the CDC in developing a flawed test for the Coronavirus that was inherently vulnerable to a huge rate of false positives if not assembled perfectly, refusing to outsource ​production to competent labs, then lying to their superiors and ultimately President Trump that they had it under control.

Oh ffs, anything to shift blame to anyone except the guy in charge. As usual.

The CDC has been kneecapped constantly by Trump from the very beginning.

They had advance personnel in China whose job was to look out for potential emerging pandemics. Trump spent the last two years eliminating them at the same time he as getting rid of the Pandemic response team in the Whit House.

The CDC issued a public health advisory about COVID on Jan 8, dispatched 100 people to airports to screen arrivals from Wuhan in mid January, issued public statements that they expected Covid to spread globally including inside the Unites States on Jan 21st... and Jan 22nd Trump declares in Davos that they are "not at all" worried about a pandemic and they have it totally under control. Directly contradicting and undermining the CDC warnings.

January 23rd CDC says they have concerns the Chinese are holding back vital data on the virus. The very next day, here comes Trump praising Chinese transparency, again directly contradicting and undercutting the CDC , and declaring everything will work out. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 5354923009

Over the next 2 weeks WHO reports global cases growing from 1,000 to 25,000. The day after WHO announces 25,000 global cases Trump is at it again praising China and saying they will stop the virus.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/sta ... 6456808448

Then 3 days later, while HOLDING A RALLY, he declares Covid looks like it will "miraculously go away" in April. Again, throwing around statements that have zero basis in science or anything those experts you claim were the ones "FUBAR"ing the situation were saying. Requiring the CDC director to go out afterwards and give an interview and make sure everoyne knows that no, COVID is with us at least through this entire season and likely through the entire year.

Over the next couple weeks global cases spike past 75k and climbing sharply. Feb 26th, at which point the CDC has been saying FOR OVER A MONTH that the virus is going to spread inside the US, Trump makes a public statement that he does not believe the virus spreading inside the US is inevitable. (To be clear, the virus was already widely spreading in the US at this time, but almost nobody was testing for it.)

Feb 29th, at which point still nearly NO testing is happening, Trump declares the US is "leading in testing".

March 17th, a week after WHO has declared it officially a pandemic Trump declares he always knew it would be a pandemic and felt it was a pandemic long before other people. Which, considering what he had been saying for the months leading up to that, is an impressive whopper even for him.

Trump spends the next week holding "briefings" where he speaks endlessly himself while providing no actual plans or useful data and constantly contradicting the medical experts, leading to Fauci saying in an interview on March 17th that he "can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time."

March 24th. Trump announces a targeted opening date for the country of April 12th. In contradiction to what ANY model says is going to be safe.

March 30th. Trump claims his administration inherited a "broken" test for COVID 19 from Obama. You know, the guy who was president before Covid 19 existed.


April 4, Trump starts hyping and pushing Hydroxychloroquine, refusing to listen to experts who say there is no solid evidence it is effective and it hasn't been tested for harmful side effects as a COVID treatment. We all know where that has since gone so far...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/health/n ... index.html
https://apnews.com/a5077c7227b8eb8b0dc23423c0bbe2b2

And then of course there was the great "look into injecting people with disinfectant" debacle. And refusing to take responsibility for testing failures. And telling all the states to fend for themselves for PPE after he squandered months of lead time not stockpiling anything, inciting a bidding war between states in which the Feds also constantly became involved so that states that were ordered by the Federal government to secure their own supplies then kept getting outbid by the federal government for those supplies, skyrocketing equipment prices as a result.

Nobody in the entire United States has been more responsible for cutting the legs out from underneath all those professionals you mentioned and sabotaging the US ability to respond effectively to the pandemic than Donald Trump.


FFS, stop twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to rewrite everything that is happening and face reality. He's an incompetent narcissistic pathologically lying moron who is more concerned over what TV ratings his briefings are getting than how many people are dying and the US is paying the price for it. Fortunately there are a lot of mostly competent governors mitigating the damage as much as they can or it would be a lot worse.

This is no longer a discussion about Brian Harrison. I think you have stated the overall situation very well. I will only add that I disagree with TFLY that what is needed in Harrison's post is primarily a management professional. Good management skills are needed, but the primary qualification should be a public health professional with experience in dealing with pandemics. Then give that individual his/her head with full backing and authority to call the shots. Nothing less could restore confidence in the Administration's response to covid

Also, it looks like Trump might take himself off center stage for a while. That would be nice. Not that I have any faith that it will last.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Also, it looks like Trump might take himself off center stage for a while. That would be nice. Not that I have any faith that it will last.

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I'm guessing that after that "inject disinfectant" train wreck Fauci and possibly even Birx threatened to resign if Trump kept going in front of the cameras and spouting his constant torrent of lies, nonsense and disinformation.

About China... I want to share the gist of a story in Quora about the experience of British/American couple who stayed housebound in China (not Wuhan) but a place away from the epicenter, through the worst of the pandemic.

Their story was very positive. They were confined to home, but they believe that the Chinese government went out of its way to provide information in a timely manner and make sure they were comfortable. Their neighbors also kept track of them to be sure everything was ok.

This little story is strictly anecdotal and should not be the basis of any conclusions of any kind. But it does suggest that there could be more to the Chinese story than what we normally hear and be cautious about our conclusions.

Don

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gcomeau wrote:And refusing to take responsibility for testing failures. And telling all the states to fend for themselves for PPE after he squandered months of lead time not stockpiling anything, inciting a bidding war between states in which the Feds also constantly became involved so that states that were ordered by the Federal government to secure their own supplies then kept getting outbid by the federal government for those supplies, skyrocketing equipment prices as a result.

Not just outbidding, but outright confiscating supplies states purchased.

gcomeau wrote:

n7axw wrote:Also, it looks like Trump might take himself off center stage for a while. That would be nice. Not that I have any faith that it will last.

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I'm guessing that after that "inject disinfectant" train wreck Fauci and possibly even Birx threatened to resign if Trump kept going in front of the cameras and spouting his constant torrent of lies, nonsense and disinformation.

Trump is rather desperate now. Pandemic essentially destroyed his main card - the economical boom & record-low unemployment. Now, he is forced to face an economical decline, and record-HIGH unemployment. Millions of American citizens suddenly realized that the whole slogan of "social security is only for lazy bunch who wanted to rob the honest workers" isn't exactly reassuring anymore...

It's ironic, how unforeseen effect could change political battleground in just a few months. In February, I was near-absolutely sure that Trump would won the 2020 elections. He have a seemingly good basic - mostly provided by stable economy and weakness of Democrats. And now, just two month after, Trump is struggling to find ANY ground to stand on facing the tidal wave of people displeasure.

gcomeau wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The problem we have is that the people who should be qualified to deal with a pandemic have FUBARed the response. The US response has been devastated by the incompetence of the CDC in developing a flawed test for the Coronavirus that was inherently vulnerable to a huge rate of false positives if not assembled perfectly, refusing to outsource ​production to competent labs, then lying to their superiors and ultimately President Trump that they had it under control.

Oh ffs, anything to shift blame to anyone except the guy in charge. As usual.

The CDC has been kneecapped constantly by Trump from the very beginning.

They had advance personnel in China whose job was to look out for potential emerging pandemics. Trump spent the last two years eliminating them at the same time he as getting rid of the Pandemic response team in the Whit House.

The CDC issued a public health advisory about COVID on Jan 8, dispatched 100 people to airports to screen arrivals from Wuhan in mid January, issued public statements that they expected Covid to spread globally including inside the Unites States on Jan 21st... and Jan 22nd Trump declares in Davos that they are "not at all" worried about a pandemic and they have it totally under control. Directly contradicting and undermining the CDC warnings.

January 23rd CDC says they have concerns the Chinese are holding back vital data on the virus. The very next day, here comes Trump praising Chinese transparency, again directly contradicting and undercutting the CDC , and declaring everything will work out. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 5354923009

Over the next 2 weeks WHO reports global cases growing from 1,000 to 25,000. The day after WHO announces 25,000 global cases Trump is at it again praising China and saying they will stop the virus.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/sta ... 6456808448

Then 3 days later, while HOLDING A RALLY, he declares Covid looks like it will "miraculously go away" in April. Again, throwing around statements that have zero basis in science or anything those experts you claim were the ones "FUBAR"ing the situation were saying. Requiring the CDC director to go out afterwards and give an interview and make sure everoyne knows that no, COVID is with us at least through this entire season and likely through the entire year.

Over the next couple weeks global cases spike past 75k and climbing sharply. Feb 26th, at which point the CDC has been saying FOR OVER A MONTH that the virus is going to spread inside the US, Trump makes a public statement that he does not believe the virus spreading inside the US is inevitable. (To be clear, the virus was already widely spreading in the US at this time, but almost nobody was testing for it.)

Feb 29th, at which point still nearly NO testing is happening, Trump declares the US is "leading in testing".

March 17th, a week after WHO has declared it officially a pandemic Trump declares he always knew it would be a pandemic and felt it was a pandemic long before other people. Which, considering what he had been saying for the months leading up to that, is an impressive whopper even for him.

Trump spends the next week holding "briefings" where he speaks endlessly himself while providing no actual plans or useful data and constantly contradicting the medical experts, leading to Fauci saying in an interview on March 17th that he "can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. OK, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time."

March 24th. Trump announces a targeted opening date for the country of April 12th. In contradiction to what ANY model says is going to be safe.

March 30th. Trump claims his administration inherited a "broken" test for COVID 19 from Obama. You know, the guy who was president before Covid 19 existed.


April 4, Trump starts hyping and pushing Hydroxychloroquine, refusing to listen to experts who say there is no solid evidence it is effective and it hasn't been tested for harmful side effects as a COVID treatment. We all know where that has since gone so far...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/health/n ... index.html
https://apnews.com/a5077c7227b8eb8b0dc23423c0bbe2b2

And then of course there was the great "look into injecting people with disinfectant" debacle. And refusing to take responsibility for testing failures. And telling all the states to fend for themselves for PPE after he squandered months of lead time not stockpiling anything, inciting a bidding war between states in which the Feds also constantly became involved so that states that were ordered by the Federal government to secure their own supplies then kept getting outbid by the federal government for those supplies, skyrocketing equipment prices as a result.

Nobody in the entire United States has been more responsible for cutting the legs out from underneath all those professionals you mentioned and sabotaging the US ability to respond effectively to the pandemic than Donald Trump.


FFS, stop twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to rewrite everything that is happening and face reality. He's an incompetent narcissistic pathologically lying moron who is more concerned over what TV ratings his briefings are getting than how many people are dying and the US is paying the price for it. Fortunately there are a lot of mostly competent governors mitigating the damage as much as they can or it would be a lot worse.

There you go again with more BS.

China was excluding WHO from Wuhan because they were so hostile to the CDC. There have been no funding cuts to the CDC.

I see you are having fun with the disinfect comments. Any competent obstruction will tell you that they often inject anti bacterial and antiviral mists into the lungs of newborns. They just don't use the word "disinfectant" although it is synonymous and Trump didn't say "Lysol.". There are ongoing experiments with treatments in which fiber optics are used to illuminate the interior of lungs with UV light to kill viruses and bacteria.

In other news, it appears that maybe the Coronavirus has been severely hyped:

https://www.aier.org/article/an-egregio ... s-accents/

I'm not certain I agree, but Dilandu certainly articulated why certain foreign countries and US bureaucrats might have overhauled the Coronavirus in an effort to damage President Trump.

FFS TFLY, either show us specifically where a single thing I said in my post was wrong or just stop wasting everyone's time with your clown show.

(And no, antibiotics and antivirals are not synonymous with disinfectants)

TFLYTSNBN wrote:
There you go again with more BS.

China was excluding WHO from Wuhan because they were so hostile to the CDC. There have been no funding cuts to the CDC.

I see you are having fun with the disinfect comments. Any competent obstruction will tell you that they often inject anti bacterial and antiviral mists into the lungs of newborns. They just don't use the word "disinfectant" although it is synonymous and Trump didn't say "Lysol.". There are ongoing experiments with treatments in which fiber optics are used to illuminate the interior of lungs with UV light to kill viruses and bacteria.

In other news, it appears that maybe the Coronavirus has been severely hyped:

https://www.aier.org/article/an-egregio ... s-accents/

I'm not certain I agree, but Dilandu certainly articulated why certain foreign countries and US bureaucrats might have overhauled the Coronavirus in an effort to damage President Trump.

What's bs TFLY? It appears to me that gcomeau pretty much laid things out the way they actually happened. I don't have the timetable itemized the way he does, but his post does jive with what I remember...

As for the disinfectant remarks, poison control centers have been getting calls from people who took Trump to heart and tried to take his "advice" a bit too literally.
It surely illustrates the need for someone in his position to watch his mouth. If you are being funny, sarcastic or just musing, don't do it in public. Do it in private with your friends where the country isn't listening.

So don't you start bingeing on Clorox. Along with me not being vindictive enough to want Trump to kill off his voters, it would be kinda boring around here without you...

Don

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