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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJPMorgan's Dimon: 'There should have been a pandemic playbook'
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon says there should have been a pandemic playbook to tackle the COVID-19 crisis, and the lack of preparation is part of a larger set of problems facing the country.
As a nation, we were clearly not equipped for this global pandemic, and the consequences have been devastating, Dimon wrote in his firms widely-read annual letter to JPMorgan shareholders.
The outspoken bank CEO went on to provide a laundry list of flaws in the U.S. beyond the lack of preparedness for the pandemic, from education to infrastructure, which he argues can be fixed in a non-partisan manner.
Dimon wrote: Our inner city schools dont graduate half of their students and dont give our children an education that leads to a livelihood; our healthcare system is increasingly costly with many of our citizens lacking any access; and nutrition and personal health arent even being taught at many schools. Obesity has become a national scourge. We have a litigation and regulatory system that cripples small businesses with red tape and bureaucracy; ineffective infrastructure planning and investment; and huge waste and inefficiency at both the state and federal levels. We have failed to put proper immigration policies in place; our social safety nets are poorly designed; and the share of wages for the bottom 30% of Americans has effectively been going down.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jamie-dimon-on-covid-19-crisis-114330705.html
Coulda woulha shoulda. We had a pandemic response team. President "Shit For Brains" got rid of it.
underpants
(182,902 posts)Trump's cabinet was in the room for a meeting with the Obama team during the transition.
How does Dimon not know that?
Wounded Bear
(58,719 posts)Selective memory, Dunning-Kruger, etc...
Pick your option.
Dream Girl
(5,111 posts)SoonerPride
(12,286 posts)But president dumbfuck knows more than the experts.
So there you go
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)On the one hand I am furious at the outright lying that Dr. Brix did on CBN. On the other hand, I guess we are left with this religious semi-nut as the only firewall between us and Dr. Oz and total chaos.
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/27/21197074/deborah-birx-praised-trump-scientific-literature-coronavirus
Hes been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data, Birx said. I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)of their employees and the ever increasing service organizations who support their facilities and employees. Why doesn't he go ask what the janitor from xxx Services that cleans his office gets paid? How about the workers in their corporate cafeteria?
blitzen
(4,572 posts)RockRaven
(15,010 posts)The word "Playbook" is even in the official fucking name of the document.
KT2000
(20,588 posts)we cannot say this enough. An intelligent, thoughtful president was prepared but the trump idiots would not listen, would not attend the meetings, and threw the manuals in the garbage.
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)He could have just said that Neo-liberal economics and politics mean you burn any playbooks on first sight. They are not profitable. This has been anticipated for decades.
The playbook was just ignored and what a load of distraction and corporate noise Dimon can spin as a super shill:
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/obama-era-pandemic-playbook-was-thrown-shelf-n1170276
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285
...and on and on and on.
And there are scores of sites, blogs, etc. You would have to be blind to miss it.
https://www.thepandemicplaybook.com/
KY_EnviroGuy
(14,494 posts)This caught my eye in the last one:
During the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, Dr. Na'eem Abdullah observed many incorrect analyses given to the public and politicians concerning Ebola virus and other microbes that cause epidemics and pandemics. The age of newly emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) and their outbreaks has arrived. Along with many others, Dr. Abdullah wrote and sent information to global leaders advising that swift intervention was necessary to stop the 2014 Ebola virus outbreak. These events led Dr. Abdullah to write other articles on EIDs. As EID outbreaks increased over the recent decades, he collected and converted his articles into a forthcoming book on EIDs and epidemics.
As the first draft of Dr. Abdullahs book on EIDs and epidemics was near completion in 2018, the fall-spring 2018-2019 Ebola virus outbreak in Democratic Republic of the Congo began. The Pandemic Playbook website was launched with its first multi-blog article Wake Up: This is War! Stop the DRC Ebola virus Outbreak in July 2019. With new outbreaks of lethal EIDs occurring every few months, the eminent EID wars are here. We can commit to unifying humanity for our survival against global 21st century biosecurity threats or reject and deny these realities and face the consequences.
And this from Politico:
But under the Trump administration, it just sat as a document that people worked on that was thrown onto a shelf, said one former U.S. official, who served in both the Obama and Trump administrations. Its hard to tell how much senior leaders at agencies were even aware that this existed or thought it was just another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy.
The NSC playbook would have been especially useful in helping to drive the administrations response to coronavirus, given that it was intended to guide urgent decisions and coordinate the all-of-government approach that Trump so far has struggled to muster, said people familiar with the document.
KY...........
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)Thanks for highlighting those parts.
Obviously, and most importantly, COVID-19 is a sign of what's to come, not an aberration. This can't be allowed to be covered up and canned after the peak and resolution. What it means is that we have to put as much money and preparation into potential pandemics to come now, maybe more than we have spent on wars, aggression and meddling interventions in the past. This is a war with imminent deadly diseases now and to come.
A decent chunk of our military budget should be diverted to this cause and a special department should be created to oversee it, though we won't see hide nor hair of that as long as Dr. Death is at the helm, i.e., Trump. In fact, it will be just the opposite because he is going to want to sweep it under the rug for his own sake as soon as possible and that's dangerous and deadly for us all.
KY_EnviroGuy
(14,494 posts)which is much slower spreading but also amplifies the rate of spread of COVID-19 and other diseases through forced migrations and poverty:
Climate change.
I notice that Dimon cleverly omitted that little issue.
As you said, "covered up and canned after the peak and resolution" is exactly what his class of people will do.
KY..........
appalachiablue
(41,177 posts)Make7
(8,543 posts)From The Executive Office Of The President Of The United States
Firestorm49
(4,037 posts)Better run administrations would have been prepared. We have the supplies, or, had. There is no rhyme or reason to this infantile administration. Nobody knows WTF is going on.
A little bit of organization goes a long way.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Trump doesn't usually pick a fight with someone who has more money than him.
Dimon's criticism, of course, overlooks a lot of salient facts, particularly about the state of the nation's schools and the social safety net. Mostly about how they're inadequate to the jobs they're tasked with because people in Dimon's income bracket don't pay their fair share of taxes. I'm going to guess that's not a solution he proffers.
mshasta
(2,108 posts)and the trump idiots didnt wanted to show up at the meetings
Glimmer of Hope
(5,823 posts)KY_EnviroGuy
(14,494 posts)Jamie, what about the malfeasance of international corporations, the incompetence of the Trump administration and the greed and elitism of the 1% who offshore their money and don't pay nearly enough taxes?
We're waiting on your prompt reply as the COVID-19 deaths skyrocket and as President Obama's pandemic playbook is in waiting for you to read.
KY..........
ProfessorGAC
(65,204 posts)Obviously, they didn't include pandemic in their actuarial models.
$5/ month to all policy holders since mid 2010 would have had a pandemic reserve fund and we wouldn't be hearing about sticker shock increases in premiums.
Hope he talks to those execs. He has to know several!
Caliman73
(11,744 posts)JP Morgan was a Robber Baron and Dimon is the equivalent in this era. Finance, money, and increasing power. that is what people like Dimon have been into. He has known the direction that the country has been going in since before the last time the economy was tanking under a Republican administration for similar incompetence.
These guys start "warning" and moralizing about how the "common man" has been left behind when they start getting scared that the pitchfork, the torches, and the guillotines are starting to come out. They are scared for themselves, not showing any special care for anyone else.
Dimon couldn't give a squirt of piss about the schools being underfunded or not teaching health. The banks are sitting on wealth that could fund schools completely and cure world hunger.
He had to get in that there is "waste and inefficiency" in the government. Yes, there will always be waste, but much of that is fairly negligible in the grand scheme of things, the inefficiency has largely been the result of special interests who have to try to squeeze profit out of programs. Medicare has less "waste and inefficiency" than ANY private payer for health care yet not discussion about that.
A "proper immigration policy". Well, those corporations that you fund Dimon, the ones that operate in foreign countries and corrupt their governments so that they can crush labor unions, pay low wages, and degrade the environment; those are the same companies that block any attempts at sane immigration policies.
This is bullshit.