The White House is considering winding down the coronavirus task force in the coming weeks.

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-updates.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur#link-717676f7


President Donald Trump with Vice President Mike Pence talk as and Dr. Deborah Birx speaks at a daily White House Coronavirus briefing at the White House in April.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Trump administration officials are telling members and staff of the coronavirus task force that the White House plans to wind down the operation in coming weeks despite growing evidence that the crisis is raging on, Maggie Haberman reports.

It is not clear whether any other group might replace the task force. But its gradual demise, which officials said might never be formally announced, would only intensify the questions about whether the administration is adequately organized to address the complex, life-and-death decisions related to the virus and giving adequate voice to scientists and public health experts in making policy.

While the task force’s advice has sometimes been swept aside by President Trump and its recommendations for criteria on reopening for business defied by a number of states, it has served as the closest thing the White House has for running a centralized response to the pandemic.

A top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who has helped oversee the task force, Olivia Troye, has told senior officials involved in the task force to expect the group to wind down within weeks, a notice echoed by other top White House officials. While the task force met Tuesday at the White House, Monday’s meeting was canceled, and a Saturday session, a staple of recent months, was never held.

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[Mike 03]

1. Trump is gradually removing all traces of Federal accountability.

Also it wouldn't be surprising if behind the scenes the Task force is coming apart by itself now, sort of like when Trump terminated those business task forces when people began resigning after the Charlottesville Unite the Right disaster. They began resigning and then he terminated the task forces and said "I made them go away" but the truth is business leaders were fleeing. That virus task force can't function under these circumstances.

Fauci needs to go help the governors and remain in the spotlight, telling the truth. And if Birx is capable of it, she should do the same.

[Bleacher Creature]

2. Mission Accomplished??

[hatrack]

3. Like they're fucking doing anything except as a PR excuse for Shitstain to whine . . .

Go ahead, disband this useless excuse for a "task force". Let the jackals and conmen take over the whole ball of dung and grift and grift and grift some more.

At least they'd stop wasting Fauci's time.

[gratuitous]

4. That may actually improve the situation

The optics are horrible, but thousands more are going to die anyway from the leadership vacuum that is the Trump administration.

[crickets]

5. Does this mean Kushner will stop ordering FEMA to steal medical supplies? nt

[Solly Mack]

6. People will continue to die and Trump will claim that the

other people bringing up the deaths just want him to fail.

That they are trying to hurt the economy and make him look bad by not focusing on all the good (that he defines).

Trump has decided all is well and he did everything he could. None of the bad is his fault. He's moving on.

The virus, the disease, the sick and the dying are all in his rearview now.

He wants to focus on what he thinks he does well - the economy. And if anyone brings up the unemployed, the hungry, the recent homeless, the newly evicted, the recently bankrupted...well, they're just trying to make him look bad.

It's not his fault.

[chia]

7. Everything Trump touches dies... and why does Pence hang his arms like Frankenstein?

It's like he doesn't realize they're attached to his torso