Nobody is alleging Trump and Team Trump are the cause of the crisis, but they have not exactly covered themselves in glory with their slow, late, dishonest and shambolic response.

Mar 15, 2020 at 6:42 PM Phil Clarke

Not corrupt, greedy, dishonest and shambolic as lying Climate Scientists.

Check the title of the thread, Tomo.

He and his team of inepts have fumbled the ball bigtime on this one, with probably massively fatal consequences.

He and his team of inepts have fumbled the ball bigtime on this one, with probably massively fatal consequences.

Mar 15, 2020 at 10:09 PM Phil Clarke

Yes, Mann's Hockey Stick has been a disaster, and has already caused massive and fatal consequences.

The folk who should've called the alarm are the officials + bureaucrats who are purportedly tasked with monitoring and evaluating the appearance and progress of novel and dangerous infections.

Yeah, except Trump sacked them.

One ex-member of the Donald Trump’s National Security Council task force on epidemiology, who left after the global health unit was purged, resorted to the Wall Street Journal in January

The novel coronavirus now epidemic in China has features that may make it very difficult to control. If public-health authorities don’t interrupt the spread soon, the virus could infect many thousands more around the globe, disrupt air travel, overwhelm health-care systems, and, worst of all, claim more lives. The good news: There’s still an opening to prevent a grim outcome.

And again on Feb 4

The Wuhan coronavirus continues to spread at an alarming rate. More than 20,000 cases have been confirmed in China, with another 23,000 suspected. Many in China aren’t even being tested due to a shortage of diagnostic supplies. The true number infected is likely much higher than reported. The virus has turned up in 28 other countries, including the U.S. A pandemic seems inevitable.

Around the same time, Trump was seeking to defund the relevant health departments and claiming in public that 'We only have five people. Hopefully, everything's going to be great,” and “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

Dangerous bullshit. I am not sure people have grasped the gravity of this. In Lombardy, right now, Italian doctors are having to decide who to treat and who to let die. I hope I am wrong, but it is possible to see the US (and us) in a similar situation in a few months given the huge gap between the number of hospital beds available and needed. Assuming a 'moderate' outbreak there would be roughly 17 patients chasing each bed. But the chances of the US experiencing a 'moderate' outbreak have been torpedoed by a complacent Government response. Yes, you can blame the bureaucrats, (or maybe not), but Trump was elected to lead and take responsibility. The buck is meant to stop here, remember?

This is not just going to miraculously 'go away', humanitarian considerations aside, we're in for a global recession lasting at least a year.

Trump is the wrong person, in the wrong job, at the wrong time.

Trump is the wrong person, in the wrong job, at the wrong time.

Mar 15, 2020 at 11:20 PM | Phil Clarke

He is the right person to pull the financial plug on Climate Scientists, as 97% are liars or incompetent or both. Coronavirus is proving how damaging Green New Deals causing mass austerity will be. Cheap reliable power is what the World needs, not windmills.

It would save money and energy being wasted on COP 26 if it was cancelled now.

DJT obviously didn't totally ignore warnings about China + virus - but also one has to ask if the danger was under-presented or it was discounted ...? - it seems unlikely that DJT would take that essentially technical decision himself.

Oh, Pleeez. He disbanded the relevant department, he consistently ignores and disparages expert advice and he gets his advice from Fox and friends. In place of responsible preparation he deployed wishful thinking. He is culpable.

He is culpable.

Mar 16, 2020 at 12:08 AM | Phil Clarke

Apart from Mann, how many should be held financially liable for keeping the Hockey Stick alive?

If previous US Presidents hadn't been conned into wasting so much money on Climate Scientists, some very useful medical research might have been done.

Golf Charlie,

Just a note to say thanks for reminding me why I started ignoring you.

OBiden

"Everybody knows who Donald Trump is. Even his supporters know who he is. We got to let him know who we are. We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts."

/www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/trumps_ultrasonic_whistle_exposes_vermin_infestation.html

Seattle infectious disease expert Dr. Helen Chu had, by January, collected a huge number of nasal swabs from local residents who were experiencing symptoms as part of a research project on flu. She proposed, to federal and state officials, testing those samples for coronavirus infections. As the Times reports, the CDC told Chu and her team that they could not test the samples unless their laboratory test was approved by the FDA. The FDA refused to approve Chu's test on the grounds that her lab, according to the Times, "was not certified as a clinical laboratory under regulations established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a process that could take months."

In the meantime, the CDC required that public health officials could only use the diagnostic test designed by the agency. That test released on February 5 turned out to be badly flawed. The CDC's insistence on a top-down centralized testing regime greatly slowed down the process of disease detection as the infection rate was accelerating.

A frustrated Chu and her colleagues began testing on February 25 without government approval. They almost immediately detected a coronavirus infection in a local teenager with no recent travel history. Chu warned local public health officials of her lab's finding and the teenager's school was closed as a precaution. The teen's diagnosis strongly suggested that the disease had been circulating throughout the western part of Washington for weeks. We now know that that is likely true.

Did the FDA and CDC functionaries commend Chu for being proactive? Not at all. Washington state epidemiologist Scott Lindquist recalled, "What they said on that phone call very clearly was cease and desist to Helen Chu. Stop testing." On February 29, the FDA finally agreed to unleash America's vibrant biotech companies and academic labs by allowing them to develop and deploy new tests for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Due to red tape, the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. will be worse than it should have been.

"Those who advocate for more government control assume, I suppose, that old procedures and regulations will periodically be reviewed and reformed. I’ve never seen that happen. Have you? The hampering regulations here dated back to FDR in 1938. After the swine flu botch they knew this, even if they’d earlier overlooked it. The straitjacket was not loosened even then."

As the president tweeted:

For decades the ‪@CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further...

...Their response to H1N1 Swine Flu was a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem, until now. The changes have been made and testing will soon happen on a very large scale basis. All Red Tape has been cut, ready to go!

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/trumps_ultrasonic_whistle_exposes_vermin_infestation.html

Looks like there's some scummy virus scaremongering going on in Seattle

Golf Charlie,

Just a note to say thanks for reminding me why I started ignoring you.

Mar 16, 2020 at 1:05 AM Phil Clarke

You still have not explained why you prefer to believe lying Climate Scientists and politicians that fund them with taxpayer funding.

Golf Charlie,

Just a note to say thanks for reminding me why I started ignoring you.
Mar 16, 2020 at 1:05 AM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

"why I started ignoring you"

Started?

Something is chronologically wrong here

Started.

Ever been under the wing of Concorde during engine start?

With Phill the aircraft would run out of fuel before it got 'started'..

More on the stable genius Trump's brilliant money-saving initiatives.

Four years after the United States pledged to help the world fight infectious-disease epidemics such as Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dramatically downsizing its epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries because money is running out, U.S. government officials said.

The CDC programs, part of a global health security initiative, train front-line workers in outbreak detection and work to strengthen laboratory and emergency response systems in countries where disease risks are greatest. The goal is to stop future outbreaks at their source.

Most of the funding comes from a one-time, five-year emergency package that Congress approved to respond to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. About $600 million was awarded to the CDC to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics. That money is slated to run out by September 2019. Despite statements from President Trump and senior administration officials affirming the importance of controlling outbreaks, officials and global infectious-disease experts are not anticipating that the administration will budget additional resources.

Two weeks ago, the CDC began notifying staffers and officials abroad about its plan to downsize these activities, because officials assume there will be “no new resources,” said a senior government official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss budget matters. Notice is being given now to CDC country directors “as the very first phase of a transition,” the official said. There is a need for “forward planning,” the official said, to accommodate longer advance notice for staffers and for leases and property agreements. The downsizing decision was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The CDC plans to narrow its focus to 10 “priority countries,” starting in October 2019, the official said. They are India, Thailand and Vietnam in Asia; Jordan in the Middle East; Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal in Africa; and Guatemala in Central America.
Countries where the CDC is planning to scale back include some of the world’s hot spots for emerging infectious disease, such as China, Pakistan, Haiti, Rwanda and Congo. Last year, when Congo experienced a potentially deadly Ebola outbreak in a remote, forested area, CDC-trained disease detectives and rapid responders helped contain it quickly.

In Congo's capital of Kinshasa, an emergency operations center established last year with CDC funding is operational but still needs staffers to be trained and protocols and systems to be put in place so data can be collected accurately from across the country, said Carolyn Reynolds, a vice president at PATH, a global health technology nonprofit group that helped the Congolese set up the center.

This next phase of work may be at risk if CDC cuts back its support, she said. “It would be akin to building the firehouse without providing the trained firemen and information and tools to fight the fire,” Reynolds said in an email.
If more funding becomes available in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, the CDC could resume work in China and Congo, as well as Ethiopia, Indonesia and Sierra Leone, another government official said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss budget matters.

In the meantime, the CDC will continue its work with dozens of countries on other public health issues, such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, polio eradication, vaccine-preventable diseases, influenza and emerging infectious diseases.
Global health organizations said critical momentum will be lost if epidemic prevention funding is reduced, leaving the world unprepared for the next outbreak. The risks of deadly and costly pandemic threats are higher than ever, especially in low- and middle-income countries with the weakest public health systems, experts say.
A rapid response by a country can mean the difference between an isolated outbreak and a global catastrophe. In less than 36 hours, infectious disease and pathogens can travel from a remote village to major cities on any continent to become a global crisis.

On Monday, a coalition of global health organizations representing more than 200 groups and companies sent a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar asking the administration to reconsider the planned reductions to programs they described as essential to health and national security.

“Not only will CDC be forced to narrow its countries of operations, but the U.S. also stands to lose vital information about epidemic threats garnered on the ground through trusted relationships, real-time surveillance, and research,” wrote the coalition, which included the Global Health Security Agenda Consortium and the Global Health Council.

The coalition also warned that complacency after outbreaks have been contained leads to funding cuts, followed by ever more costly outbreaks. The Ebola outbreak cost U.S. taxpayers $5.4 billion in emergency supplemental funding, forced several U.S. cities to spend millions in containment, disrupted global business and required the deployment of the U.S. military to address the threat.

“This is the front line against terrible organisms,” said Tom Frieden, the former CDC director who led the agency during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks. He now heads Resolve to Save Lives, a global initiative to prevent epidemics. Referring to dangerous pathogens, he said: “Like terrorism, you can’t fight it just within our borders. You’ve got to fight epidemic diseases where they emerge.”

Without additional help, low-income countries are not going to be able to maintain laboratory networks to detect dangerous pathogens, Frieden said. “Either we help or hope we get lucky it isn’t an epidemic that travelers will catch or spread to our country,” Frieden said.

The U.S. downsizing could also lead other countries to cut back or drop out from “the most serious multinational effort in many years to stop epidemics at their sources overseas,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

CDC spokeswoman Kathy Harben said the agency and federal partners remain committed to “prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease threats.”

The United States helped launch an initiative known as the Global Health Security Agenda in 2014 to help countries reduce their vulnerabilities to public health threats. More than 60 countries now participate in that effort. At a meeting in Uganda in the fall, administration officials led by Tim Ziemer, the White House senior director for global health security, affirmed U.S. support to extend the initiative to 2024.

“The world remains under-prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks, whether naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberately released,” Ziemer wrote in a blog post before the meeting. “. . . We recognize that the cost of failing to control outbreaks and losing lives is far greater than the cost of prevention.”

The CDC has about $150 million remaining from the one-time Ebola emergency package for these global health security programs, the senior government official said. That money will be used this year and in fiscal 2019, but without substantial new resources, that leaves only the agency's core annual budget, which has remained flat at about $50 million to $60 million.

Officials at the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Security Council pushed for more funding in the president's fiscal 2019 budget to be released this month. A senior government official said Thursday that the president's budget "will include details on global health security funding," but declined to elaborate.

Washington Post Feb 1, 2018.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

-HL Mencken.

and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
-HL Mencken.

Mar 16, 2020 at 11:27 PM Phil Clarke

Morons in The White House believed Climate Scientists.

Phil will be along to tell us he has started ignoring you me and everyone else.

But he won't go away.

Aphrodisiacal ?

Ah, Boys and their Toys.

But CDC actually has made a contribution in the current situation: using bureaucratic obstructionism and turf protection to slow development of private tests for the virus. From Ronald Bailey at Reason, March 11, relying substantially on reporting from the New York Times:

[O]fficials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stymied private and academic development of diagnostic tests that might have provided an early warning and a head start on controlling the epidemic that is now spreading across the country. . . . CDC required that public health officials could only use the diagnostic test designed by the agency. That test released on February 5 turned out to be badly flawed. The CDC's insistence on a top-down centralized testing regime greatly slowed down the process of disease detection as the infection rate was accelerating.

Somehow it’s always the same story with an entrenched bureaucracy. Thankfully we have a crisis management team at the White House, and a private sector, to step in and deal with the pandemic.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-3-15-manhattan-contrarian-tips-for-dealing-with-the-coronavirus