WaPo: Squandered time: How the Trump administration lost control of the coronavirus crisis

[Miles Archer]

Squandered time: How the Trump administration lost control of the coronavirus crisis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-squandered-time/2020/03/07/5c47d3d0-5fcb-11ea-9055-5fa12981bbbf_story.html

The coronavirus had already begun to spiral out of control when Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, during routine Senate testimony, made a surprising claim.

“As of today, I can announce that the CDC has begun working with health departments in five cities to use its flu surveillance network to begin testing individuals with flu-like symptoms for the Chinese coronavirus,” Azar said. “This effort will help see whether there is broader spread than we have been able to detect so far.”

But there were two major problems: The cities weren’t ready, and the tests didn’t work.

In fact, when Azar’s team had sent his prepared remarks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before delivery, the agency pushed back and urged him to soften his language. State health departments had not yet been informed of the plans — and were certain to be upset by them — and the coronavirus test kits contained a faulty component that caused a spike in inconclusive results. Azar announced the plans anyway, in part because “it would be really valuable for him [to] have the news,” as one HHS official put it in an internal email.

[PJMcK]

1. The Trump administration screwed up?!

Who could have thought that was possible?

(snark)

[uponit7771]

2. K&R, China reported CV19 genetic sequence on Jan 12!! We still don't have WHO's mass test kits !!

[Dennis Donovan]

3. More:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-response-squandered-time/2020/03/07/5c47d3d0-5fcb-11ea-9055-5fa12981bbbf_story.html

<snip>

Infighting quickly materialized among agencies that have long had poor relationships — feuding was especially intense between the CDC and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response — and when the situation went awry, recriminations were swift. Public health officials and experts also struggled to find an uneasy equilibrium between doing their jobs honestly and transparently while trying to manage a mercurial president, who griped about what he viewed as overheated rhetoric by officials and the media.

At the White House, Trump and many of his aides were initially skeptical of just how serious the coronavirus threat was, while the president often seemed uninterested as long as the virus was abroad. At first, when he began to engage, he downplayed the threat — “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” he tweeted in late February — and became a font of misinformation and confusion, further muddling his administration’s response.

</snip>

[tanyev]

4. Honestly, was there ever a chance in hell that they would be in control of it?

[Brainfodder]

5. The guy hiding his bald spot with the most famous awful comb over?

Going with a perfectly beautiful NO!

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

6. Kick