General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn 2018, the Trump administration fired the government's entire pandemic response chain of command
Maybe Jared is in charge now? Ivanka?
Link to tweet
?s=20
Tanuki
(14,914 posts)samnsara
(17,604 posts)Squinch
(50,911 posts)EleanorR
(2,388 posts)So it was of no use to him. Plus, science.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,254 posts)dewsgirl
(14,961 posts)to himself, hmmm what's the worst possible decision here? Ok sounds great, let's do that. Always the opposite of Obama.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)It is obviously a job for a sports mascot, so it shouldn't be hard to find somebody to take the wheel.
Of course, a sports mascot would be preferable to Jared or Ivanka, in fact there are several cartoon characters that would rank higher in the capacity to do it.
EleanorR
(2,388 posts)Maybe his old contact, the Moldovan oligarch, will come in handy in some way? Only the best.
hatrack
(59,574 posts)The level of brazen indifference, blazing incompetence and utter ideological blindness it documents is beyond my powers of description.
EleanorR
(2,388 posts)If you would, please post excerpts.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)What I could read was both maddening and terrifying.
CottonBear
(21,596 posts)Trump Has Sabotaged Americas Coronavirus Response
As it improvises its way through a public health crisis, the United States has never been less prepared for a pandemic.
Laurie GarrettJanuary 31, 2020, 11:07 AM
...Snip...
For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the governments entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it isnot just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.
If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is.
...snip...
On the domestic front, the real business of assuring public health and safety is a local matter, executed by state, county, and city departments that operate under a mosaic of laws and regulations that vary jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Some massive cities, such as New York City or Boston, have large budgets, clear regulations, and epidemic experiences that have left deep benches of medical and public health talent. But much of the United States is less fortunate on the local level, struggling with underfunded agencies, understaffing, and no genuine epidemic experience. Large and small, Americas localities rely in times of public health crisis on the federal government.
Bureaucracy matters. Without it, theres nothing to coherently manage an alphabet soup of agencies housed in departments ranging from Defense to Commerce, Homeland Security to Health and Human Services (HHS).
But thats all gone now.
In the spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the governments $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.
Read More
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/
hatrack
(59,574 posts)EDIT
In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSCs entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemers DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced.
Public health advocates have been ringing alarm bells to no avail. Klain has been warning for two years that the United States was in grave danger should a pandemic emerge. In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes. And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.
The next epidemic is now here; well soon know the costs imposed by the Trump administrations early negligence and present panic. On Jan. 29, Trump announced the creation of the Presidents Coronavirus Task Force, an all-male group of a dozen advisors, five from the White House staff. Chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, the task force includes men from the CDC, State Department, DHS, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Transportation Department. Its not clear how this task force will function or when it will even convene.
In the absence of a formal structure, the government has resorted to improvisation. In practical terms, the U.S. governments public health effort is led by Daniel Jernigan, the incident commander for the Wuhan coronavirus response at the CDC. Jernigan is responsible for convening meetings of the nations state health commissioners and briefing CDC Director Robert Redfield and his boss, Azar. Meanwhile, state-level health leaders told me that they have been sharing information with one another and deciding how best to prepare their medical and public health workers without waiting for instructions from federal leadership. The most important federal program for local medical worker and hospital epidemic training, however, will run out of money in May, as Congress has failed to vote on its funding. The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) is the bulwark between hospitals and health departments versus pandemic threats; last year HHS requested $2.58 billion, but Congress did not act.
EDIT
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/
EleanorR
(2,388 posts)avebury
(10,951 posts)an ad on this would be a good one to put out nationwide.
marlakay
(11,425 posts)But he might not want to create a national panic.
PatrickforO
(14,558 posts)see the United States ravaged by a pandemic.
I've been using the word 'traitor' for Trump since 2016, and the mo-fo IS a traitor. A traitor to the American people and to this republic and everything it stands for.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)We should be very thankful for those still holding the fort on the ground. The doctors, nurses, assistants, experts and all the others that continue to work and support us are heros.
DENVERPOPS
(8,790 posts)mahannah
(893 posts)EleanorR
(2,388 posts)SWBTATTReg
(22,065 posts)you get sick and die.
keithbvadu2
(36,655 posts)MrModerate
(9,753 posts)But I didn't think that included my aging aunt Alice.
kairos12
(12,842 posts)Texin
(2,590 posts)Aside from the few remaining American citizens not dead from Coronavirus who'll be dancing in the streets.
These motherfuckers seem to believe wholeheartedly that they're totally impervious to any contagion or any dire consequence of his doing. Or any Act of God - including a pandemic. Shit. For all I nor anyone else knows, he's been secretly inoculated from this plague.
jalan48
(13,841 posts)not to mention the effect it will have on financial markets and the economy.
EleanorR
(2,388 posts)Link to tweet
?s=20
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)He wants us all to die. He despises the American people. There is no limit to his cruelty.
calimary
(81,110 posts)Aussie105
(5,332 posts)Make me rich and prepare to die?
If that virus sets foot on American soil, it's going to get messy!