Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response

[berg80]

WATCH: Azar Answered Apparent Q’s On Whistleblower Complaint Before It Went Public
WATCH: Azar Answered Apparent Q's On Whistleblower Complaint Before It Went Public

During a congressional hearing Thursday, the Trump administration secretary for Health and Human Services answered questions apparently drawn from a coronavirus whistleblower’s complaint, before the complaint went public.

The complaint, from an anonymous official at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, alleges that the team of officials sent to receive patients from China was not properly prepared to protect itself from the virus.

Without saying whether his information was from a whistleblower complaint, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) on Thursday pressed Health Secretary Alex Azar on details that matched the complaint.

“Do you think breaking basic protocols and exposing untrained human service employees to the coronavirus before allowing them to be dispersed around the country could have endangered the employees and other Americans?” Gomez asked Azar, after a string of questions that matched the whistleblower’s complaint.

“I don’t believe that has taken place,” Azar responded. “And the isolation and quarantine protocols should always be followed according to whatever CDC or state and local public health officials have recommended.”

Gomez pressed: “If they were not followed? Say, they weren’t followed. What would be the steps to deal with those employees?”

“I’d want to know the full facts, and we’d take appropriate remedial measures,” Azar said.
.......................................................................................................
For Azar the "appropriate remedial measures" apparently involve threatening to fire the whistleblower.

 

[OKTexas]

You would think, with Trump being such a germaphobe, he would be on top of this

So what should he be doing different?

He should not have defunded and dismantled the structure set up to handle a pandemic.

The AP says you commies and the media are fucking liars. Nothing was defunded.

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

.

 

[Meister]

You might want your country to button down it's borders, stop worrying about ours.
Seems that the EU is starting to feel the squeeze.
God Bless Donald Trump

"The complaint raised questions about whether the Trump administration had taken adequate precautions in its handling of the virus, and whether Mr. Trump’s minimization of the risks had been mirrored by other top officials when confronted with potentially disturbing developments.

The workers who were sent to the scene were not medical professionals and usually help low-income Americans returning to the United States from foreign countries during crises.

In a narrative prepared for Congress, the whistle-blower painted a grim portrait of staff members who found themselves suddenly thrust into a federal effort to confront the coronavirus in the United States. The whistle-blower said their own health concerns were dismissed by senior administration officials as detrimental to staff “morale.” They were “admonished,” the complainant said, and “accused of not being team players,” and had their “mental health and emotional stability questioned.”
U.S. Health Workers Responding to Coronavirus Lacked Training and Protective Gear, Whistle-Blower Says

How many have died in the US. From what I've read there has been no deaths in the US. Have you heard of any?
Didn't Trump put a hold on Chinese flights right from the get-go? Wasn't it the democrats chastising him for doing so?
You and your masters are politicizing this, shameful.

So the left came up with another unnamed whistleblower, huh? How does that not surprise me.
Good grief, you buffoons are transparent.

 

[Meister]

You would think, with Trump being such a germaphobe, he would be on top of this

So what should he be doing different?

He should not have defunded and dismantled the structure set up to handle a pandemic.

The AP says you commies and the media are fucking liars. Nothing was defunded.

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

.

berg80 Olde Europe

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

Thanks, OKTexas...some good read for Berg and the foreigner.

 

[OKTexas]

You would think, with Trump being such a germaphobe, he would be on top of this

So what should he be doing different?

He should not have defunded and dismantled the structure set up to handle a pandemic.

The AP says you commies and the media are fucking liars. Nothing was defunded.

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

.

berg80 Olde Europe

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

Thanks, OKTexas...some good read for Berg and the foreigner.

They'll ignore it in favor of their propaganda, as always. Facts don't matter to commies.

.

 

[Stryker___777]

Considering the AP is generally a leftist MSM organization and even they are forced to admit this, means that "berg" has utterly wasted his time here, has lost the arguement and that this thread is officially over.

/thread

GG

 

[OKTexas]

You would think, with Trump being such a germaphobe, he would be on top of this

So what should he be doing different?

He should not have defunded and dismantled the structure set up to handle a pandemic.

The AP says you commies and the media are fucking liars. Nothing was defunded.

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

.

berg80 Olde Europe

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

Thanks, OKTexas...some good read for Berg and the foreigner.

BTW, Thanks goes to Don't Taz Me Bro for starting a thread on the article from AP.

.

 

[berg80]

The woman in CA who was the first person to contract the virus from an unknown source appears to have been infected by virtue of the HHS sending unqualified, ill-equipped people to handle the return of US citizens from China. It's the incident that is the subject of the whistleblower complaint made against HHS for which the person filing the complaint was threatened with being fired.

Coronavirus safety protocols not followed at federal quarantine sites, whistleblower says
Coronavirus safety protocols not followed at federal quarantine sites, whistleblower says
............................................................................................................................
This is exactly the kind of incompetent response that happens when you put a hack like Azar, a pharmaceutical company lobbyist, in charge of an agency he is unqualified to run.

Bottom line, the lacking of testing kits, the lack of a coherent message warning the public about what is to come, the lack of a plan to be able to handle the flood of patients once hospitals become overwhelmed, the downplaying of the threat the virus posed because Trump denied something like this could happen, the lack of health experts to coordinate the response after they were fired, all these things put on display how Trump has already bungled the government's reaction to the severity of the threat.

 

[berg80]

You would think, with Trump being such a germaphobe, he would be on top of this

So what should he be doing different?

He should not have defunded and dismantled the structure set up to handle a pandemic.

The AP says you commies and the media are fucking liars. Nothing was defunded.

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

.

berg80 Olde Europe

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

Thanks, OKTexas...some good read for Berg and the foreigner.

CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...t-efforts-to-prevent-global-disease-outbreak/

Feb. 1, 2018 at 11:53 a.m. MST

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.

 

[berg80]

From the day Donald Trump was elected, some of us worried how his administration would deal with a crisis not of its own making. Remarkably, we’ve gone three years without finding out: Until now, every serious problem facing the Trump administration, from trade wars to confrontation with Iran, has been self-created. But the coronavirus is looking as if it might be the test we’ve been fearing.

And the results aren’t looking good.

The story of the Trump pandemic response actually began several years ago. Almost as soon as he took office, Trump began cutting funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading in turn to an 80 percent cut in the resources the agency devotes to global disease outbreaks. Trump also shut down the entire global-health-security unit of the National Security Council.

Experts warned that these moves were exposing America to severe risks. “We’ll leave the field open to microbes,” declared Tom Frieden, a much-admired former head of the C.D.C., more than two years ago. But the Trump administration has a preconceived notion about where national security threats come from — basically, scary brown people — and is hostile to science in general. So we entered the current crisis in an already weakened condition.

And the microbes came.

The first reaction of the Trumpers was to see the coronavirus as a Chinese problem — and to see whatever is bad for China as being good for us. Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, cheered it on as a development that would “accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”


The story changed once it became clear that the virus was spreading well beyond China. At that point it became a hoax perpetrated by the news media. Rush Limbaugh weighed in: “It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. … The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”

Limbaugh was, you may not be surprised to hear, projecting. Back in 2014 right-wing politicians and media did indeed try to politically weaponize a disease outbreak, the Ebola virus, with Trump himself responsible for more than 100 tweets denouncing the Obama administration’s response (which was actually competent and effective).

And in case you’re wondering, no, the coronavirus isn’t like the common cold. In fact, early indications are that the virus may be as lethal as the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed as many as 50 million people.

Financial markets evidently don’t agree that the virus is a hoax; by Thursday afternoon the Dow was off more than 3,000 points since last week. Falling markets appear to worry the administration more than the prospect of, you know, people dying. So Larry Kudlow, the administration’s top economist, made a point of declaring that the virus was “contained” — contradicting the C.D.C. — and suggested that Americans buy stocks. The market continued to drop.

At that point the administration appears to have finally realized that it might need to do something beyond insisting that things were great. But according to The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, it initially proposed paying for a virus response by cutting aid to the poor — specifically, low-income heating subsidies. Cruelty in all things.

On Wednesday Trump held a news conference on the virus, much of it devoted to incoherent jabs at Democrats and the media. He did, however, announce the leader of the government response to the threat. Instead of putting a health care professional in charge, however, he handed the job to Vice President Mike Pence, who has an interesting relationship with both health policy and science.

Early in his political career, Pence staked out a distinctive position on public health, declaring that smoking doesn’t kill people. He has also repeatedly insisted that evolution is just a theory. As governor of Indiana, he blocked a needle exchange program that could have prevented a significant H.I.V. outbreak, calling for prayer instead.

And now, according to The Times, government scientists will need to get Pence’s approval before making public statements about the coronavirus.
Opinion | When a Pandemic Meets a Personality Cult

 

[berg80]

Behind our sluggish response to coronavirus, an unnecessary battle over funding

It’s now looking like coronavirus is threatening a potential public health emergency. And a battle has broken out between the White House and Democrats over how much money to allocate to the crisis, with the White House pushing for less than Democrats think is called for.

But at the core of this dispute is something that’s hasn’t yet gotten public exposure — and is potentially very troubling.

House Democrats tell us they are outraged by one aspect of the White House response in particular: The White House appears to have informed Democrats that they want to fund the emergency response in part by taking money from a program that funds low-income home heating assistance.

A document that the Trump administration sent to Congress, which we have seen, indicates that the administration is transferring $37 million to emergency funding for the coronavirus response from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which funds heating for poor families.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ronavirus-an-unnecessary-battle-over-funding/

 

[berg80]

Wait............who's in charge?

FROM 'SMOKING DOESN'T KILL' TO CONVERSION THERAPY—MIKE PENCE'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL SCIENCE REMARKS
From "smoking doesn't kill" to conversion therapy—Mike Pence's most controversial science remarks

The solution to the HIV epidemic: "Pray on it"
When his state was facing an HIV outbreak between 2011 and 2015, then-Governor Pence chose to "pray on it" rather than introduce a needle exchange to limit its spread—as recommended by health officials.

He eventually caved, calling the situation a "a public health emergency," but the delay resulted in substantially more infections. According to a study published in The Lancet, the outbreak could have been avoided if elected officials had taken action sooner.

It's also been pointed out that Pence and others' mission to shutdown Planned Parenthood, one of the leading HIV testing centers in the state, contributed (if not led to) to the outbreak in the first place. In 2013, the county affected (Scott County) lost the only provider offering free HIV testing.
............................................................
You need to pray harder, Mike.

 

[Fueri]

You would think, with Trump being such a germaphobe, he would be on top of this

So what should he be doing different?

He should not have defunded and dismantled the structure set up to handle a pandemic.

The AP says you commies and the media are fucking liars. Nothing was defunded.

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

.

berg80 Olde Europe

AP FACT CHECK: Democrats distort coronavirus readiness

Thanks, OKTexas...some good read for Berg and the foreigner.

They'll ignore it in favor of their propaganda, as always. Facts don't matter to commies.

.

Dumbe Europe certainly will. Made up his own narrative based on nothing to explain why the US scored so high on the preparedness study, claiming with no evidence whatsoever that the data was old (taken before Trump made these cuts, which we now know never happened) then was railing on others as morons for not accepting his non-facts, which have now conclusively been proven false.

I haven't seen a pantsing like that in a while. Utterly delicious considering the hauty attitude of that lying shitbag.

Will he suck it up and admit he was wrong after accusing others of having no integrity for not accepting his falsehoods?

I think we all know the answer to that one.....LOL.

 

[berg80]

Dumb Europe certainly will. Made up his own narrative based on nothing, then was railing on others for not accepting his non-facts, which have now conclusively been proven false.

Your capacity for believing bullshit is limitless.

 

[22lcidw]

Behind our sluggish response to coronavirus, an unnecessary battle over funding

It’s now looking like coronavirus is threatening a potential public health emergency. And a battle has broken out between the White House and Democrats over how much money to allocate to the crisis, with the White House pushing for less than Democrats think is called for.

But at the core of this dispute is something that’s hasn’t yet gotten public exposure — and is potentially very troubling.

House Democrats tell us they are outraged by one aspect of the White House response in particular: The White House appears to have informed Democrats that they want to fund the emergency response in part by taking money from a program that funds low-income home heating assistance.

A document that the Trump administration sent to Congress, which we have seen, indicates that the administration is transferring $37 million to emergency funding for the coronavirus response from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which funds heating for poor families.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ronavirus-an-unnecessary-battle-over-funding/

When anyone including government does something for bad personal behaviors, it is not owed. People should be grateful. And most are not.

 

[Fueri]

Dumb Europe certainly will. Made up his own narrative based on nothing, then was railing on others for not accepting his non-facts, which have now conclusively been proven false.

Your capacity for believing bullshit is limitless.

You might want to find a mirror, considering your entire thread has been proven to be utter bullshit fabricated by lying shitbags to gain political advantage.

You gobbled it up, started this thread and now, when presented facts proving it wrong, are telling others that didn't believe the bullshit that their capacity for believing bullshit is limitless.

That's utterly hilarious....

 

[berg80]

CDC to Scale Back Work in Dozens of Foreign Countries Amid Funding Worries
Efforts to prevent infectious-disease epidemics and other health threats were funded mostly through a five-year supplemental package
CDC to Scale Back Work in Dozens of Foreign Countries Amid Funding Worries

Jan. 19, 2018 4:51 pm EST
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to scale back or discontinue its work to prevent infectious-disease epidemics and other health threats in 39 foreign countries because it expects funding for the work to end, the agency told employees.
....................................................................................................................

Trump spent the past 2 years slashing the government agencies responsible for handling the coronavirus outbreak
Trump spent the past 2 years slashing the government agencies responsible for handling the coronavirus outbreak

"It's not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a press call on Tuesday. "We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad."

Messonnier also said the agency was "preparing as if we are going to see community spread in the near term," adding that the outbreak could soon lead to a "disruption to everyday life."

Fears of a pandemic come after the Trump administration spent the past several years gutting the very government programs that are tasked with combatting such a crisis.

In 2018, for instance, the CDC cut 80% of its efforts to prevent global disease outbreaks because it was running out of money. Ultimately, the department went from working in 49 countries to just 10.

Here are some other actions the Trump administration undertook to dismantle government-spending programs related to fighting the spread of global diseases, according to Foreign Policy:

• Shutting down the entire global-health-security unit of the National Security Council.
• Eliminating the US government's $30 million Complex Crises Fund.
• Reducing national health spending by $15 billion.
• Consistently attacking Mark Green, the director of the US Agency for International Development.

The CDC is working on a new test to screen for the coronavirus, but according to New York magazine, problems with the test's development resulted in only three out of 100 public-health labs being equipped to screen for the virus. Moreover, each test costs as much as $250, and the Health and Human Services Department is already running out of money to finance an adequate response to the outbreak.

The Trump administration recently requested $2.5 billion in emergency funds — $1.25 billion in new funding and $1.25 billion to be diverted from other federal programs — to aid in preparing and responding to coronavirus cases in the US.

But Democratic lawmakers and health experts skewered the administration for not going far enough to combat the crisis.

 

[berg80]

You might want to find a mirror, considering your entire thread has been proven to be utter bullshit

I can see how badly you wish it had, you being a defender of all things Orange Fraud, but the facts tell a different story.

 

[dannyboys]

AP 'Fact Checks' Biden and Bloomberg for Claiming Disease-Control 'Cuts' by Trump
Listen to the Article!



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By Tim Graham | February 27, 2020 4:28 PM EST

The "fact checkers" at the Associated Press almost religiously stick to checking the claims of Donald Trump. But they drew widespread attention on Thursday for checking Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg on the U.S. government's coronavirus readiness.

AP's Lauran Neergaard and Calvin Woodward began:

Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and ham-handed leadership by President Donald Trump. That’s a distorted picture.

At the CBS debate, Bloomberg claimed “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.”

Biden made the usual Obama comparisons: "“We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. ... He’s wiped all that out. ... He cut the funding for the entire effort.”

AP rebutted:

They’re both wrong to say the agencies have seen their money cut. Bloomberg is repeating the false allegation in a new ad that states the U.S. is unprepared for the virus because of “reckless cuts” to the CDC. Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased.

Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies.




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Politicians would generally be frightened to cut anything named the "Centers for Disease Control," and Democrats are always poised to say spending cuts are going to kill people. But many budget proposals by the White House are ignored...which is why they say "the president proposes, the Congress disposes."

AP also questioned Bloomberg on the "there's nobody here" language, noting there's a "playbook" and a staff in place:

Among the health authorities overseeing the work are Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC’s principal deputy director and a veteran of previous outbreaks, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s infectious disease chief who has advised six presidents.

“The CDC’s response has been excellent, as it has been in the past,” said John Auerbach, president of the nonpartisan Trust for America’s Health, which works with government at all levels to improve the nation’s response to high-risk health crises. Some Democrats have charged that Trump decimated the nation’s public health leadership, but Auerbach said CDC’s top scientific ranks have remained stable during the past three years.

 

[Olde Europe]

US underprepared for coronavirus due to Trump cuts, say health experts

The White House global health “czar” was supposed to coordinate international, national, state and local organisations, public and private, to confront a global epidemic, backed by the direct authority of the president.

After he became national security adviser, John Bolton eliminated the office as part of an NSC reorganisation, as he did not see global health issues as a national security priority.

As the first person-to-person transmission of coronavirus in the US was reported, and as evidence emerges that it could be much more contagious than initially thought, health and disaster planning experts argued for contingency preparations for a global outbreak.

“You have to at least now be anticipating and responsibly planning against a sort of pandemic level scenario reaching the US,” Jeremy Konyndyk, who ran foreign disaster assistance in the Obama administration, said.

“The fact that they explicitly dismantled the office in the White House that was tasked with preparing for exactly this kind of a risk is hugely concerning,” said Konyndyk, now a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. “Both the structure and all the institutional memory is gone now.”

Funding has also been cut drastically to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), forcing it to reduce or discontinue epidemic-prevention efforts in 39 out of the 49 countries it had been helping. Among the countries where CDC efforts were scaled back were Haiti, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as China, where the agency provided technical assistance.

In its 2020 budget the Trump administration proposed a further 10% cut in CDC funding, equivalent to $750m. It zeroed out funding for epidemiology and laboratory capacity at state and local levels.​

The entire infrastructure to coordinate anti-pandemic efforts at the White House was eliminated, as was most of the international work to prevent outbreaks at the root, including in China. That, quite obviously, left the U.S. defenses weaker, following the universal rightarded guideline that a problem you cannot shoot dead doesn't exist, and, even if it does, it's not going to be solved by evil government anyway.

Of course, subservient authoritarians and other Trump sycophants have their work cut out for them: Whatever blame there might be for the lack of preparedness and the likely ensuing death and suffering, it cannot fall on the shoulders of the Orange Incompetent or his loyal cronies.