The world came together for a virtual vaccine summit. The U.S. was conspicuously absent.

[spanone]

May 4, 2020 at 1:53 p.m. CDT

LONDON — World leaders came together in a virtual summit Monday to pledge billions of dollars to quickly develop vaccines and drugs to fight the coronavirus.

Missing from the roster was the Trump administration, which declined to participate but highlighted from Washington what one official called its “whole-of-America” efforts in the United States and its generosity to global health efforts.

The online conference, led by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and a half-dozen countries, was set to raise $8.2 billion from governments, philanthropies and the private sector to fund research and mass-produce drugs, vaccines and testing kits to combat the virus, which has killed more than 250,000 people worldwide.

With the money came soaring rhetoric about international solidarity and a good bit of boasting about each country’s efforts and achievements, live and prerecorded, by Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Boris Johnson, Japan’s Shinzo Abe — alongside Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

--PayWall--
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-world-comes-together-for-a-virtual-vaccine-summit-the-us-is-conspicuously-absent/2020/05/04/ac5b6754-8a5c-11ea-80df-d24b35a568ae_story.html

[gratuitous]

1. Why would the U.S. participate?

There was going to be lots of boring reports and people talking for minutes on end about things that weren't Donald Trump, his unparalleled greatness, and how unfair everything is to him, with smoochy promises by the rest of the world to make it all up to him.

[BigmanPigman]

2. What happened to "We are the greatest country ever"?

We ARE the greatest at fucking this pandemic up. We are no longest the most fantastic, wonderful, blah, blah, blah. We suck and the world sees us for who we (didn't) vote for as our Dear Leader. The US will not get its reputation back in the eyes of the world for a long, long time and defiantly not in my lifetime.

[spanone]

3. We have told the world to fuck off from Paris to Iran...etc. We will reap what we sow.

Maybe for generations after trump expires.

So sad.

GOTV AMERICA

[sinkingfeeling]

4. It does say "world leaders" were in the summit. Guess the

US doesn't have one of those.

[spanone]

5. You have made a very succinct point.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

6. Deadbeat Donnie

MAGA!!!!!!