Why aren't you wearing an N95 Mask?

[Flopper]

L

N95 masks provide near complete protection for the wearer and others. Suppose there were enough for everyone in the country, imagine how few cases there would be. Business and schools could open almost immediately with little danger to employees and customers or students and teachers. So why aren’t we doing it?

As it turns out, the cost of manufacturing an N95 mask is only about 58 cents. The CDC recommends masks are changed every 8 hours of use. It might be a lot less for non-healthcare employees. Assuming a mask could be made available for $1 each and all employers and schools were required to provide masks for employees and students, the cost would be about $15 a month for each full time employee or student. The general public would be required to wear N95 masks in public places with the federal government subsidizing the cost for low income families.

Although the cost is high, about 4 or 5 billion a month it’s a lot less than what the epidemic is costing the country, not to mention the loss of lives and the disruption to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. We could open up schools and business as soon as the masks were available and we probably could do away with most restrictions. If the program was successful, there’s a good chance the virus could be almost eliminated within a few months. Sporting events and concerts and other mass gathering could continue. So why isn't it even being considered?

you realize those masks are supposed to be one time use. They’re not supposed to be used over & over again. They’re being done so because of because of necessity.

CDC recommends it be change every 8 hours, but that's in a hospital setting. When I calculated the number masks, I figured on a mask a day. That's why the numbers are so high. If the general public used them, most people would people would get more than a day's use because most people away from work, do not spend 8 hours a day in a public setting. There are some masks with changeable filters but I didn't look at those.

But a hospital setting is cleaner than being out and about. Wearing one outside of a hospital setting will cause it to be contaminated much faster as well as causing it to degrade faster.

Parachutes are extremely useful and save lives too..... in an extremely narrow set of circumstances.
Masks are the same way. If you think wearing one everywhere, all the time, is useful, then you're just not thinking.

Seriously? Are you that fucking stupid? I would not go to the doctor or hospital with my wife because every time I did, I caught some dread disease in the waiting room!

I work in an ER in downtown Houston, I get exposed to shit all the time. Harden the fuck up.

Quit being a drama queen, will you?

You don't wear PPE? Right! Have someone let us know when you die so we can symbolically piss on your grave.

The virus can also enter via your eyes. You planning on wearing goggles?

Listen up for possible penetration, wearing a mask is to prevent you spreading it to others. Take a minute and let that sink in. unless you are crying on someone, who gives a shit? Sneezes and coughs are the main method of transmission. Most of the fucking morons in America are confused by the purpose of the masks. They will not keep you safe. whatever you may be carrying.They are used to protect others FROM you.

Even healthcare workers don’t wear the N95 masks for long periods of time. They are particularly bad for people with respiratory issues.

Bullshit. Where do you dig up this crock of crap? An N95 is easy to breathe through that those paper masks.

It depends on the mask. There's a number of different designs. I think the ones with an intake value are better. Most of the give away masks you see at hospitals and clinics are not very comfortable.

LOL INTAKE valve?
WTF do you think the masks are supposed to be for? Why wear it at all if it has a valve that bypasses the mask? DUH!
However, it doesn't really matter because any mask that could filter out tiny little virus cells would likely suffocate you to death anyway.

No, the value does not bypass the intake filtering. It is a one way exhaust value with a built in filter. It reduces the problem of having to re-breath the same air but it does not filter any better than other N95 masks. The design of mask is more important than having a value according to a nurse I know who has had to wear them.

Coronavirus particles measure .05 microns to .5 microns. N95 filtering will filter out most coronavirus particles down to .3 microns. So no, they will not catch all particles. However most particles are carried through the air on large and small respiratory droplets. N95 masks do an excellent job of filtering out the droplets and their nasty little passengers but they have to fit tightly so the wearer is not pulling air from around the edges of the mask. For homemade masks and those commonly available, having a tight fit is less important because these masks are designed to catch large large respiratory droplets expelled by the wearer. They have little value in protecting the wearing from smaller droplets expelled by others.

 

[FA_Q2]

L

N95 masks provide near complete protection for the wearer and others. Suppose there were enough for everyone in the country, imagine how few cases there would be. Business and schools could open almost immediately with little danger to employees and customers or students and teachers. So why aren’t we doing it?

As it turns out, the cost of manufacturing an N95 mask is only about 58 cents. The CDC recommends masks are changed every 8 hours of use. It might be a lot less for non-healthcare employees. Assuming a mask could be made available for $1 each and all employers and schools were required to provide masks for employees and students, the cost would be about $15 a month for each full time employee or student. The general public would be required to wear N95 masks in public places with the federal government subsidizing the cost for low income families.

Although the cost is high, about 4 or 5 billion a month it’s a lot less than what the epidemic is costing the country, not to mention the loss of lives and the disruption to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. We could open up schools and business as soon as the masks were available and we probably could do away with most restrictions. If the program was successful, there’s a good chance the virus could be almost eliminated within a few months. Sporting events and concerts and other mass gathering could continue. So why isn't it even being considered?

you realize those masks are supposed to be one time use. They’re not supposed to be used over & over again. They’re being done so because of because of necessity.

CDC recommends it be change every 8 hours, but that's in a hospital setting. When I calculated the number masks, I figured on a mask a day. That's why the numbers are so high. If the general public used them, most people would people would get more than a day's use because most people away from work, do not spend 8 hours a day in a public setting. There are some masks with changeable filters but I didn't look at those.

But a hospital setting is cleaner than being out and about. Wearing one outside of a hospital setting will cause it to be contaminated much faster as well as causing it to degrade faster.

Parachutes are extremely useful and save lives too..... in an extremely narrow set of circumstances.
Masks are the same way. If you think wearing one everywhere, all the time, is useful, then you're just not thinking.

Seriously? Are you that fucking stupid? I would not go to the doctor or hospital with my wife because every time I did, I caught some dread disease in the waiting room!

I work in an ER in downtown Houston, I get exposed to shit all the time. Harden the fuck up.

Quit being a drama queen, will you?

You don't wear PPE? Right! Have someone let us know when you die so we can symbolically piss on your grave.

The virus can also enter via your eyes. You planning on wearing goggles?

Listen up for possible penetration, wearing a mask is to prevent you spreading it to others. Take a minute and let that sink in. unless you are crying on someone, who gives a shit? Sneezes and coughs are the main method of transmission. Most of the fucking morons in America are confused by the purpose of the masks. They will not keep you safe. whatever you may be carrying.They are used to protect others FROM you.

Even healthcare workers don’t wear the N95 masks for long periods of time. They are particularly bad for people with respiratory issues.

Bullshit. Where do you dig up this crock of crap? An N95 is easy to breathe through that those paper masks.

It depends on the mask. There's a number of different designs. I think the ones with an intake value are better. Most of the give away masks you see at hospitals and clinics are not very comfortable.

LOL INTAKE valve?
WTF do you think the masks are supposed to be for? Why wear it at all if it has a valve that bypasses the mask? DUH!
However, it doesn't really matter because any mask that could filter out tiny little virus cells would likely suffocate you to death anyway.

No, the value does not bypass the intake filtering. It is a one way exhaust value with a built in filter. It reduces the problem of having to re-breath the same air but it does not filter any better than other N95 masks. The design of mask is more important than having a value according to a nurse I know who has had to wear them.

Coronavirus particles measure .05 microns to .5 microns. N95 filtering will filter out most coronavirus particles down to .3 microns. So no, they will not catch all particles. However most particles are carried through the air on large and small respiratory droplets. N95 masks do an excellent job of filtering out the droplets and their nasty little passengers but they have to fit tightly so the wearer is not pulling air from around the edges of the mask. For homemade masks and those commonly available, having a tight fit is less important because these masks are designed to catch large large respiratory droplets expelled by the wearer. They have little value in protecting the wearing from smaller droplets expelled by others.

I think it is worth noting that viral load does matter and even an imperfect filter is going to reduce load somewhat.

 

[Flopper]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

 

[Flopper]

L

N95 masks provide near complete protection for the wearer and others. Suppose there were enough for everyone in the country, imagine how few cases there would be. Business and schools could open almost immediately with little danger to employees and customers or students and teachers. So why aren’t we doing it?

As it turns out, the cost of manufacturing an N95 mask is only about 58 cents. The CDC recommends masks are changed every 8 hours of use. It might be a lot less for non-healthcare employees. Assuming a mask could be made available for $1 each and all employers and schools were required to provide masks for employees and students, the cost would be about $15 a month for each full time employee or student. The general public would be required to wear N95 masks in public places with the federal government subsidizing the cost for low income families.

Although the cost is high, about 4 or 5 billion a month it’s a lot less than what the epidemic is costing the country, not to mention the loss of lives and the disruption to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. We could open up schools and business as soon as the masks were available and we probably could do away with most restrictions. If the program was successful, there’s a good chance the virus could be almost eliminated within a few months. Sporting events and concerts and other mass gathering could continue. So why isn't it even being considered?

you realize those masks are supposed to be one time use. They’re not supposed to be used over & over again. They’re being done so because of because of necessity.

CDC recommends it be change every 8 hours, but that's in a hospital setting. When I calculated the number masks, I figured on a mask a day. That's why the numbers are so high. If the general public used them, most people would people would get more than a day's use because most people away from work, do not spend 8 hours a day in a public setting. There are some masks with changeable filters but I didn't look at those.

But a hospital setting is cleaner than being out and about. Wearing one outside of a hospital setting will cause it to be contaminated much faster as well as causing it to degrade faster.

Parachutes are extremely useful and save lives too..... in an extremely narrow set of circumstances.
Masks are the same way. If you think wearing one everywhere, all the time, is useful, then you're just not thinking.

Seriously? Are you that fucking stupid? I would not go to the doctor or hospital with my wife because every time I did, I caught some dread disease in the waiting room!

I work in an ER in downtown Houston, I get exposed to shit all the time. Harden the fuck up.

Quit being a drama queen, will you?

You don't wear PPE? Right! Have someone let us know when you die so we can symbolically piss on your grave.

The virus can also enter via your eyes. You planning on wearing goggles?

Listen up for possible penetration, wearing a mask is to prevent you spreading it to others. Take a minute and let that sink in. unless you are crying on someone, who gives a shit? Sneezes and coughs are the main method of transmission. Most of the fucking morons in America are confused by the purpose of the masks. They will not keep you safe. whatever you may be carrying.They are used to protect others FROM you.

Even healthcare workers don’t wear the N95 masks for long periods of time. They are particularly bad for people with respiratory issues.

Bullshit. Where do you dig up this crock of crap? An N95 is easy to breathe through that those paper masks.

It depends on the mask. There's a number of different designs. I think the ones with an intake value are better. Most of the give away masks you see at hospitals and clinics are not very comfortable.

LOL INTAKE valve?
WTF do you think the masks are supposed to be for? Why wear it at all if it has a valve that bypasses the mask? DUH!
However, it doesn't really matter because any mask that could filter out tiny little virus cells would likely suffocate you to death anyway.

No, the value does not bypass the intake filtering. It is a one way exhaust value with a built in filter. It reduces the problem of having to re-breath the same air but it does not filter any better than other N95 masks. The design of mask is more important than having a value according to a nurse I know who has had to wear them.

Coronavirus particles measure .05 microns to .5 microns. N95 filtering will filter out most coronavirus particles down to .3 microns. So no, they will not catch all particles. However most particles are carried through the air on large and small respiratory droplets. N95 masks do an excellent job of filtering out the droplets and their nasty little passengers but they have to fit tightly so the wearer is not pulling air from around the edges of the mask. For homemade masks and those commonly available, having a tight fit is less important because these masks are designed to catch large large respiratory droplets expelled by the wearer. They have little value in protecting the wearing from smaller droplets expelled by others.

I think it is worth noting that viral load does matter and even an imperfect filter is going to reduce load somewhat.

Yes, that is something the public overlooks. A viral infection occurs when there are enough viral particles to overcome the bodies natural defenses. While it's true that a single particle of the corornavirus can start an infection that would lead to Covid 19 is certainly possible, it is not very likely.

The virus can not control it's movements. The primary entry point for the virus is through the mouth, nose, or eyes on respiratory droplets. When it goes then it's movement is beyond it's control. To replicate it must come in contact with certain types of cells in the body and break into those cells successfully, replicate, and survive the defense mechanisms of the body. The more intense the concentration of virus particles, the more likely the infection will develop. People in nursing homes, prisons, and other facilities with active cases of covid 19, and very crowded places with little ventilation are far more likely to be infected than someone shopping at the grocery or the drug store or taking a ride on their bike. It's really all about concentration of virus particles in the air.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

 

[Flopper]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

You just disagreed with yourself in one simple post. You really are a fool!

 

[WEATHER53]

Both bands have broken on my 95 mask and one twice. Pretty old two pack with just this one left

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

Okay, lets go with that. If they had no authority, how would they (if still intact) have made a difference? President Trump had to work with these same bureaucracies to get FDA approval of the private sector to help out with what our CDC failed. And they dragged ass doing so. They dragged ass on approving tests from South Korea, they dragged ass on permitting hydroxychlorquine to be used on Covid patients, they dragged ass in allowing new test kits to be acceptable without the results meeting their approval, they dragged ass on everything, just like any other bureaucracy does.

President Trump had to threaten 3-M into selling a majority of their masks to the US. Without Trump, they would have continued their high-volume N-95 sales overseas, especially to China. Those hospital ships being dispatched to places like CA, NY (who hate Trump and still do) were in construction en-route to their destinations to be prepared for a possible overflow. Those same amazing military people converted civic centers into temporary hospitals in a matter of days.

We do not reside in an Autocracy. We do not have one decider on all matters. President Trump is not a medical expert. President Trump is not an economics professor. President Trump is not a military expert. No President is. This is why Presidents have people in their cabinet and administration who are experts. President Trump did what any other President would have done, and that is to rely on those experts for enough input for him to make rational decisions.

 

[Flopper]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

Okay, lets go with that. If they had no authority, how would they (if still intact) have made a difference? President Trump had to work with these same bureaucracies to get FDA approval of the private sector to help out with what our CDC failed. And they dragged ass doing so. They dragged ass on approving tests from South Korea, they dragged ass on permitting hydroxychlorquine to be used on Covid patients, they dragged ass in allowing new test kits to be acceptable without the results meeting their approval, they dragged ass on everything, just like any other bureaucracy does.

President Trump had to threaten 3-M into selling a majority of their masks to the US. Without Trump, they would have continued their high-volume N-95 sales overseas, especially to China. Those hospital ships being dispatched to places like CA, NY (who hate Trump and still do) were in construction en-route to their destinations to be prepared for a possible overflow. Those same amazing military people converted civic centers into temporary hospitals in a matter of days.

We do not reside in an Autocracy. We do not have one decider on all matters. President Trump is not a medical expert. President Trump is not an economics professor. President Trump is not a military expert. No President is. This is why Presidents have people in their cabinet and administration who are experts. President Trump did what any other President would have done, and that is to rely on those experts for enough input for him to make rational decisions.

I'm not faulting Trump for what happen after he actually started taking the pandemic seriously, about March 10th. As you say he did do things then that any president would have done but by then getting the virus under control was just about impossible considering the situation with the lack of testing and the rapid spread of the virus. I'm sure at that point his medical advisors new the only reasonable course of action was mediation; that is, reducing contact between people to slow the spread of virus and reduce hospitalization giving our healthcare people a chance to prepare for the next wave of cases. Those measures to reduce human contact have reduced new cases and new deaths in the country and would have probably controlled the spread of virus if we would have continued. However, the need to open up the economy has made that impossible and most probably will result in a second wave.

As I said, the pandemic response team that Trump organized was strictly and advisor group. They had no authority. They advised the president and the president managed the response. IMHO, that was a terrible mistake, both from a political and managerial standpoint. He should have assigned someone to manage the project which means coordinating activities between a half dozen federal agencies and between the federal government, and the states.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

Okay, lets go with that. If they had no authority, how would they (if still intact) have made a difference? President Trump had to work with these same bureaucracies to get FDA approval of the private sector to help out with what our CDC failed. And they dragged ass doing so. They dragged ass on approving tests from South Korea, they dragged ass on permitting hydroxychlorquine to be used on Covid patients, they dragged ass in allowing new test kits to be acceptable without the results meeting their approval, they dragged ass on everything, just like any other bureaucracy does.

President Trump had to threaten 3-M into selling a majority of their masks to the US. Without Trump, they would have continued their high-volume N-95 sales overseas, especially to China. Those hospital ships being dispatched to places like CA, NY (who hate Trump and still do) were in construction en-route to their destinations to be prepared for a possible overflow. Those same amazing military people converted civic centers into temporary hospitals in a matter of days.

We do not reside in an Autocracy. We do not have one decider on all matters. President Trump is not a medical expert. President Trump is not an economics professor. President Trump is not a military expert. No President is. This is why Presidents have people in their cabinet and administration who are experts. President Trump did what any other President would have done, and that is to rely on those experts for enough input for him to make rational decisions.

I'm not faulting Trump for what happen after he actually started taking the pandemic seriously, about March 10th. As you say he did do things then that any president would have done but by then getting the virus under control was just about impossible considering the situation with the lack of testing and the rapid spread of the virus. I'm sure at that point his medical advisors new the only reasonable course of action was mediation; that is, reducing contact between people to slow the spread of virus and reduce hospitalization giving our healthcare people a chance to prepare for the next wave of cases. Those measures to reduce human contact have reduced new cases and new deaths in the country and would have probably controlled the spread of virus if we would have continued. However, the need to open up the economy has made that impossible and most probably will result in a second wave.

As I said, the pandemic response team that Trump organized was strictly and advisor group. They had no authority. They advised the president and the president managed the response. IMHO, that was a terrible mistake, both from a political and managerial standpoint. He should have assigned someone to manage the project which means coordinating activities between a half dozen federal agencies and between the federal government, and the states.

If nobody in any of our health agencies knew this was possible, if nobody on Trump's medical staff knew this was a possibility, if nobody at the WHO knew this was a possibility, how do you figure Trump should have known?

The White House started taking smaller precautionary steps as early as January 31st, when the WHO first announced this "could be" a problem. We can't go slapping masks on, closing down the economy, stopping all international flight, sending our country into a frenzy with every single threat we find out about. Where would our country be before Covid if we did that with H1N1, H1N5, SARS, Ebola, West Niles virus?

The CDC announced today that 35% of people that had Covid-19 were asymptomatic. They don't feel anything, but of course were contagious. They were kissing family and friends, drinking at the bars, eating at the restaurants, squeezing fruits and vegetables at the store before making a final selection. Just carrying on a normal life.

As to the people (especially younger people) who were not asymptomatic, many of the symptoms are similar to a bad cold or even a mild flu, which most don't seek medical help for until it gets bad.

In other words, we have no idea how long Covid has been in this country and already spreading. The WHO is in bed with China and also does their bidding. China has been less than honest with us and the world right from the beginning, and still are from what I've been reading. Bottom line since all the above is proven to be true, there was nothing Trump nor any President could have done to prevent this.

 

[Shawnee_b]

One study showed that students touch their face 26 times per hour and 44% of the time it involved contact with mucous membrane.

Those were democrat students. Picking boogers and eating them.

 

[Flopper]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

Okay, lets go with that. If they had no authority, how would they (if still intact) have made a difference? President Trump had to work with these same bureaucracies to get FDA approval of the private sector to help out with what our CDC failed. And they dragged ass doing so. They dragged ass on approving tests from South Korea, they dragged ass on permitting hydroxychlorquine to be used on Covid patients, they dragged ass in allowing new test kits to be acceptable without the results meeting their approval, they dragged ass on everything, just like any other bureaucracy does.

President Trump had to threaten 3-M into selling a majority of their masks to the US. Without Trump, they would have continued their high-volume N-95 sales overseas, especially to China. Those hospital ships being dispatched to places like CA, NY (who hate Trump and still do) were in construction en-route to their destinations to be prepared for a possible overflow. Those same amazing military people converted civic centers into temporary hospitals in a matter of days.

We do not reside in an Autocracy. We do not have one decider on all matters. President Trump is not a medical expert. President Trump is not an economics professor. President Trump is not a military expert. No President is. This is why Presidents have people in their cabinet and administration who are experts. President Trump did what any other President would have done, and that is to rely on those experts for enough input for him to make rational decisions.

I'm not faulting Trump for what happen after he actually started taking the pandemic seriously, about March 10th. As you say he did do things then that any president would have done but by then getting the virus under control was just about impossible considering the situation with the lack of testing and the rapid spread of the virus. I'm sure at that point his medical advisors new the only reasonable course of action was mediation; that is, reducing contact between people to slow the spread of virus and reduce hospitalization giving our healthcare people a chance to prepare for the next wave of cases. Those measures to reduce human contact have reduced new cases and new deaths in the country and would have probably controlled the spread of virus if we would have continued. However, the need to open up the economy has made that impossible and most probably will result in a second wave.

As I said, the pandemic response team that Trump organized was strictly and advisor group. They had no authority. They advised the president and the president managed the response. IMHO, that was a terrible mistake, both from a political and managerial standpoint. He should have assigned someone to manage the project which means coordinating activities between a half dozen federal agencies and between the federal government, and the states.

If nobody in any of our health agencies knew this was possible, if nobody on Trump's medical staff knew this was a possibility, if nobody at the WHO knew this was a possibility, how do you figure Trump should have known?

The White House started taking smaller precautionary steps as early as January 31st, when the WHO first announced this "could be" a problem. We can't go slapping masks on, closing down the economy, stopping all international flight, sending our country into a frenzy with every single threat we find out about. Where would our country be before Covid if we did that with H1N1, H1N5, SARS, Ebola, West Niles virus?

The CDC announced today that 35% of people that had Covid-19 were asymptomatic. They don't feel anything, but of course were contagious. They were kissing family and friends, drinking at the bars, eating at the restaurants, squeezing fruits and vegetables at the store before making a final selection. Just carrying on a normal life.

As to the people (especially younger people) who were not asymptomatic, many of the symptoms are similar to a bad cold or even a mild flu, which most don't seek medical help for until it gets bad.

In other words, we have no idea how long Covid has been in this country and already spreading. The WHO is in bed with China and also does their bidding. China has been less than honest with us and the world right from the beginning, and still are from what I've been reading. Bottom line since all the above is proven to be true, there was nothing Trump nor any President could have done to prevent this.

I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. I said getting the virus under control was just about impossible due to lack test kits and spread of the outbreaks. This was the beginning of the 2nd week of March. We had over 4,000 cases spread over a dozen states and new cases breaking out at a rate of a thousand a day. In order to get the virus under control, we would have needed tens of thousands of test kits. We had only a couple of thousand and most of those were defective. That means the most important tool in stopping the spread of the virus, testing/tracking/quarantining/monitoring was not available to us. So we had to go on to the mitigation phase, separating people to slow the spread of virus. We lost the first of battle, containing the virus during the first few months due primarily to the lack of testing. However, the war was certainly not over.

The CDC was not able to delivery enough working test kits in February and early March. On Jan 10, China released the genome for the virus which had all the information needed to build test kits. The WHO, South Korea, and a dozen other countries began putting together tests kits, and arranging for manufacture in large quantities. All this of this occurred before China announced they had scientific data of human to human transmission.

Meanwhile in the US, the CDC was struggling to produce test kits. They had contamination problems in the labs which delayed the first kits. Then they failed to purchase sufficient reagents. Whoever was responsible for arranging for the manufacture of kits in large quantity dropped the ball. When the kits first were sent out in February, an equal number was sent to all states even though the virus was only in 5 states so only a few kits were delivered where they were needed. Next, in early March, states found out the CDC regulations stopped them from testing. All the swabs had to sent to Atlanta. Once that was resolved, state labs were sent specimens but states did not have the PPE equipment for the labs because they thought the federal goverment would be supplying it out the federal stockpile which was apparently depleted. So the states had to compete against each other buying up what PPEs they could find. Finally. the states got authorization from the CDC to use local labs to process. Then the FDA stopped them because that was against FDA regulations. Next, the labs were short on reagents needed for processing. Apparently the CDC did not order enough in early January before the rest of the world did. All this got resolved by late March but then states were running out of tests kits because not enough were ordered.

I think this was about the time Trump declared war on China, accusing them of being dishonest and withholding information. I have no doubt that China was not completely forthcoming because they never are. However, I have no doubt that America's failure to contain the epidemic had nothing to do with China withholding information. If that were the case, countries like South Korea and others would have experience the problems the US did but they didn't. The fact is the poor response to the epidemic during those first critical months was due to the disorganization and slow response of of the administration. The US had no plan and no management and no coordination. There is no way to know how many of the 1.1 million cases and 95,000 deaths could have been avoided if the administration had been prepared, but common sense tells us it would have been a lot.

 

[lennypartiv]

Both bands have broken on my 95 mask and one twice. Pretty old two pack with just this one left

Duct tape fixes everything.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

Okay, lets go with that. If they had no authority, how would they (if still intact) have made a difference? President Trump had to work with these same bureaucracies to get FDA approval of the private sector to help out with what our CDC failed. And they dragged ass doing so. They dragged ass on approving tests from South Korea, they dragged ass on permitting hydroxychlorquine to be used on Covid patients, they dragged ass in allowing new test kits to be acceptable without the results meeting their approval, they dragged ass on everything, just like any other bureaucracy does.

President Trump had to threaten 3-M into selling a majority of their masks to the US. Without Trump, they would have continued their high-volume N-95 sales overseas, especially to China. Those hospital ships being dispatched to places like CA, NY (who hate Trump and still do) were in construction en-route to their destinations to be prepared for a possible overflow. Those same amazing military people converted civic centers into temporary hospitals in a matter of days.

We do not reside in an Autocracy. We do not have one decider on all matters. President Trump is not a medical expert. President Trump is not an economics professor. President Trump is not a military expert. No President is. This is why Presidents have people in their cabinet and administration who are experts. President Trump did what any other President would have done, and that is to rely on those experts for enough input for him to make rational decisions.

I'm not faulting Trump for what happen after he actually started taking the pandemic seriously, about March 10th. As you say he did do things then that any president would have done but by then getting the virus under control was just about impossible considering the situation with the lack of testing and the rapid spread of the virus. I'm sure at that point his medical advisors new the only reasonable course of action was mediation; that is, reducing contact between people to slow the spread of virus and reduce hospitalization giving our healthcare people a chance to prepare for the next wave of cases. Those measures to reduce human contact have reduced new cases and new deaths in the country and would have probably controlled the spread of virus if we would have continued. However, the need to open up the economy has made that impossible and most probably will result in a second wave.

As I said, the pandemic response team that Trump organized was strictly and advisor group. They had no authority. They advised the president and the president managed the response. IMHO, that was a terrible mistake, both from a political and managerial standpoint. He should have assigned someone to manage the project which means coordinating activities between a half dozen federal agencies and between the federal government, and the states.

If nobody in any of our health agencies knew this was possible, if nobody on Trump's medical staff knew this was a possibility, if nobody at the WHO knew this was a possibility, how do you figure Trump should have known?

The White House started taking smaller precautionary steps as early as January 31st, when the WHO first announced this "could be" a problem. We can't go slapping masks on, closing down the economy, stopping all international flight, sending our country into a frenzy with every single threat we find out about. Where would our country be before Covid if we did that with H1N1, H1N5, SARS, Ebola, West Niles virus?

The CDC announced today that 35% of people that had Covid-19 were asymptomatic. They don't feel anything, but of course were contagious. They were kissing family and friends, drinking at the bars, eating at the restaurants, squeezing fruits and vegetables at the store before making a final selection. Just carrying on a normal life.

As to the people (especially younger people) who were not asymptomatic, many of the symptoms are similar to a bad cold or even a mild flu, which most don't seek medical help for until it gets bad.

In other words, we have no idea how long Covid has been in this country and already spreading. The WHO is in bed with China and also does their bidding. China has been less than honest with us and the world right from the beginning, and still are from what I've been reading. Bottom line since all the above is proven to be true, there was nothing Trump nor any President could have done to prevent this.

I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. I said getting the virus under control was just about impossible due to lack test kits and spread of the outbreaks. This was the beginning of the 2nd week of March. We had over 4,000 cases spread over a dozen states and new cases breaking out at a rate of a thousand a day. In order to get the virus under control, we would have needed tens of thousands of test kits. We had only a couple of thousand and most of those were defective. That means the most important tool in stopping the spread of the virus, testing/tracking/quarantining/monitoring was not available to us. So we had to go on to the mitigation phase, separating people to slow the spread of virus. We lost the first of battle, containing the virus during the first few months due primarily to the lack of testing. However, the war was certainly not over.

The CDC was not able to delivery enough working test kits in February and early March. On Jan 10, China released the genome for the virus which had all the information needed to build test kits. The WHO, South Korea, and a dozen other countries began putting together tests kits, and arranging for manufacture in large quantities. All this of this occurred before China announced they had scientific data of human to human transmission.

Meanwhile in the US, the CDC was struggling to produce test kits. They had contamination problems in the labs which delayed the first kits. Then they failed to purchase sufficient reagents. Whoever was responsible for arranging for the manufacture of kits in large quantity dropped the ball. When the kits first were sent out in February, an equal number was sent to all states even though the virus was only in 5 states so only a few kits were delivered where they were needed. Next, in early March, states found out the CDC regulations stopped them from testing. All the swabs had to sent to Atlanta. Once that was resolved, state labs were sent specimens but states did not have the PPE equipment for the labs because they thought the federal goverment would be supplying it out the federal stockpile which was apparently depleted. So the states had to compete against each other buying up what PPEs they could find. Finally. the states got authorization from the CDC to use local labs to process. Then the FDA stopped them because that was against FDA regulations. Next, the labs were short on reagents needed for processing. Apparently the CDC did not order enough in early January before the rest of the world did. All this got resolved by late March but then states were running out of tests kits because not enough were ordered.

I think this was about the time Trump declared war on China, accusing them of being dishonest and withholding information. I have no doubt that China was not completely forthcoming because they never are. However, I have no doubt that America's failure to contain the epidemic had nothing to do with China withholding information. If that were the case, countries like South Korea and others would have experience the problems the US did but they didn't. The fact is the poor response to the epidemic during those first critical months was due to the disorganization and slow response of of the administration. The US had no plan and no management and no coordination. There is no way to know how many of the 1.1 million cases and 95,000 deaths could have been avoided if the administration had been prepared, but common sense tells us it would have been a lot.

You did what I have been doing all along, and that is pointing out which entitles were actually responsible, and it isn't the President.

South Korea didn't have to deal with these clowns in the CDC, the FDA, the NSA. When they needed to do something, they didn't have all the red tape we and the President hand to endure. They just did it.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it's not that we have a less than competent President, it's that our agencies are bureaucracies need a major overhaul. Many of them need to be eliminated totally; perhaps not in this instance, but in general.

We have over 2.5 million Americans occupying these bureaucracies. WTF do we need all these people? Why do they have so much power--even more so than our Congress and President?

And it's not like we need these entities and millions of people because our Congress is so overworked. Most of the time these MF's are on vacation, in spite of making well into six figures a year plus great retirement benefits. Most of them retire multi-millionaires doing a part-time job.

Many years ago I used to teach guitar. One of my students worked at a bolt factory. His company had a government contract to make bolts for the space shuttle. Each bolt used in the shuttle cost over $200.00. So I asked him what was the difference between the bolts they made for the shuttle, and the bolts I buy at the hardware store for thirty cents? He told me there was no difference. The cost involved was all the government paperwork. Each bolt had to have QC paperwork that was over 100 pages long. If they didn't accept the paperwork, they couldn't just correct any errors. The government insisted an entirely new document for the bolt in question.

 

[FA_Q2]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

Okay, lets go with that. If they had no authority, how would they (if still intact) have made a difference? President Trump had to work with these same bureaucracies to get FDA approval of the private sector to help out with what our CDC failed. And they dragged ass doing so. They dragged ass on approving tests from South Korea, they dragged ass on permitting hydroxychlorquine to be used on Covid patients, they dragged ass in allowing new test kits to be acceptable without the results meeting their approval, they dragged ass on everything, just like any other bureaucracy does.

President Trump had to threaten 3-M into selling a majority of their masks to the US. Without Trump, they would have continued their high-volume N-95 sales overseas, especially to China. Those hospital ships being dispatched to places like CA, NY (who hate Trump and still do) were in construction en-route to their destinations to be prepared for a possible overflow. Those same amazing military people converted civic centers into temporary hospitals in a matter of days.

We do not reside in an Autocracy. We do not have one decider on all matters. President Trump is not a medical expert. President Trump is not an economics professor. President Trump is not a military expert. No President is. This is why Presidents have people in their cabinet and administration who are experts. President Trump did what any other President would have done, and that is to rely on those experts for enough input for him to make rational decisions.

I'm not faulting Trump for what happen after he actually started taking the pandemic seriously, about March 10th. As you say he did do things then that any president would have done but by then getting the virus under control was just about impossible considering the situation with the lack of testing and the rapid spread of the virus. I'm sure at that point his medical advisors new the only reasonable course of action was mediation; that is, reducing contact between people to slow the spread of virus and reduce hospitalization giving our healthcare people a chance to prepare for the next wave of cases. Those measures to reduce human contact have reduced new cases and new deaths in the country and would have probably controlled the spread of virus if we would have continued. However, the need to open up the economy has made that impossible and most probably will result in a second wave.

As I said, the pandemic response team that Trump organized was strictly and advisor group. They had no authority. They advised the president and the president managed the response. IMHO, that was a terrible mistake, both from a political and managerial standpoint. He should have assigned someone to manage the project which means coordinating activities between a half dozen federal agencies and between the federal government, and the states.

If nobody in any of our health agencies knew this was possible, if nobody on Trump's medical staff knew this was a possibility, if nobody at the WHO knew this was a possibility, how do you figure Trump should have known?

The White House started taking smaller precautionary steps as early as January 31st, when the WHO first announced this "could be" a problem. We can't go slapping masks on, closing down the economy, stopping all international flight, sending our country into a frenzy with every single threat we find out about. Where would our country be before Covid if we did that with H1N1, H1N5, SARS, Ebola, West Niles virus?

The CDC announced today that 35% of people that had Covid-19 were asymptomatic. They don't feel anything, but of course were contagious. They were kissing family and friends, drinking at the bars, eating at the restaurants, squeezing fruits and vegetables at the store before making a final selection. Just carrying on a normal life.

As to the people (especially younger people) who were not asymptomatic, many of the symptoms are similar to a bad cold or even a mild flu, which most don't seek medical help for until it gets bad.

In other words, we have no idea how long Covid has been in this country and already spreading. The WHO is in bed with China and also does their bidding. China has been less than honest with us and the world right from the beginning, and still are from what I've been reading. Bottom line since all the above is proven to be true, there was nothing Trump nor any President could have done to prevent this.

I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. I said getting the virus under control was just about impossible due to lack test kits and spread of the outbreaks. This was the beginning of the 2nd week of March. We had over 4,000 cases spread over a dozen states and new cases breaking out at a rate of a thousand a day. In order to get the virus under control, we would have needed tens of thousands of test kits. We had only a couple of thousand and most of those were defective. That means the most important tool in stopping the spread of the virus, testing/tracking/quarantining/monitoring was not available to us. So we had to go on to the mitigation phase, separating people to slow the spread of virus. We lost the first of battle, containing the virus during the first few months due primarily to the lack of testing. However, the war was certainly not over.

The CDC was not able to delivery enough working test kits in February and early March. On Jan 10, China released the genome for the virus which had all the information needed to build test kits. The WHO, South Korea, and a dozen other countries began putting together tests kits, and arranging for manufacture in large quantities. All this of this occurred before China announced they had scientific data of human to human transmission.

Meanwhile in the US, the CDC was struggling to produce test kits. They had contamination problems in the labs which delayed the first kits. Then they failed to purchase sufficient reagents. Whoever was responsible for arranging for the manufacture of kits in large quantity dropped the ball. When the kits first were sent out in February, an equal number was sent to all states even though the virus was only in 5 states so only a few kits were delivered where they were needed. Next, in early March, states found out the CDC regulations stopped them from testing. All the swabs had to sent to Atlanta. Once that was resolved, state labs were sent specimens but states did not have the PPE equipment for the labs because they thought the federal goverment would be supplying it out the federal stockpile which was apparently depleted. So the states had to compete against each other buying up what PPEs they could find. Finally. the states got authorization from the CDC to use local labs to process. Then the FDA stopped them because that was against FDA regulations. Next, the labs were short on reagents needed for processing. Apparently the CDC did not order enough in early January before the rest of the world did. All this got resolved by late March but then states were running out of tests kits because not enough were ordered.

I think this was about the time Trump declared war on China, accusing them of being dishonest and withholding information. I have no doubt that China was not completely forthcoming because they never are. However, I have no doubt that America's failure to contain the epidemic had nothing to do with China withholding information. If that were the case, countries like South Korea and others would have experience the problems the US did but they didn't. The fact is the poor response to the epidemic during those first critical months was due to the disorganization and slow response of of the administration. The US had no plan and no management and no coordination. There is no way to know how many of the 1.1 million cases and 95,000 deaths could have been avoided if the administration had been prepared, but common sense tells us it would have been a lot.

There are other contingencies as well - there are things that South Korea can do that the US simply cannot both because the size and makeup of the nation as well as the framework that our governments operate under.

There are costs to the freedom and democracy we enjoy. One of those is that the government does not have the same tool set to deal with something like this.

 

[Flopper]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

Okay, lets go with that. If they had no authority, how would they (if still intact) have made a difference? President Trump had to work with these same bureaucracies to get FDA approval of the private sector to help out with what our CDC failed. And they dragged ass doing so. They dragged ass on approving tests from South Korea, they dragged ass on permitting hydroxychlorquine to be used on Covid patients, they dragged ass in allowing new test kits to be acceptable without the results meeting their approval, they dragged ass on everything, just like any other bureaucracy does.

President Trump had to threaten 3-M into selling a majority of their masks to the US. Without Trump, they would have continued their high-volume N-95 sales overseas, especially to China. Those hospital ships being dispatched to places like CA, NY (who hate Trump and still do) were in construction en-route to their destinations to be prepared for a possible overflow. Those same amazing military people converted civic centers into temporary hospitals in a matter of days.

We do not reside in an Autocracy. We do not have one decider on all matters. President Trump is not a medical expert. President Trump is not an economics professor. President Trump is not a military expert. No President is. This is why Presidents have people in their cabinet and administration who are experts. President Trump did what any other President would have done, and that is to rely on those experts for enough input for him to make rational decisions.

I'm not faulting Trump for what happen after he actually started taking the pandemic seriously, about March 10th. As you say he did do things then that any president would have done but by then getting the virus under control was just about impossible considering the situation with the lack of testing and the rapid spread of the virus. I'm sure at that point his medical advisors new the only reasonable course of action was mediation; that is, reducing contact between people to slow the spread of virus and reduce hospitalization giving our healthcare people a chance to prepare for the next wave of cases. Those measures to reduce human contact have reduced new cases and new deaths in the country and would have probably controlled the spread of virus if we would have continued. However, the need to open up the economy has made that impossible and most probably will result in a second wave.

As I said, the pandemic response team that Trump organized was strictly and advisor group. They had no authority. They advised the president and the president managed the response. IMHO, that was a terrible mistake, both from a political and managerial standpoint. He should have assigned someone to manage the project which means coordinating activities between a half dozen federal agencies and between the federal government, and the states.

If nobody in any of our health agencies knew this was possible, if nobody on Trump's medical staff knew this was a possibility, if nobody at the WHO knew this was a possibility, how do you figure Trump should have known?

The White House started taking smaller precautionary steps as early as January 31st, when the WHO first announced this "could be" a problem. We can't go slapping masks on, closing down the economy, stopping all international flight, sending our country into a frenzy with every single threat we find out about. Where would our country be before Covid if we did that with H1N1, H1N5, SARS, Ebola, West Niles virus?

The CDC announced today that 35% of people that had Covid-19 were asymptomatic. They don't feel anything, but of course were contagious. They were kissing family and friends, drinking at the bars, eating at the restaurants, squeezing fruits and vegetables at the store before making a final selection. Just carrying on a normal life.

As to the people (especially younger people) who were not asymptomatic, many of the symptoms are similar to a bad cold or even a mild flu, which most don't seek medical help for until it gets bad.

In other words, we have no idea how long Covid has been in this country and already spreading. The WHO is in bed with China and also does their bidding. China has been less than honest with us and the world right from the beginning, and still are from what I've been reading. Bottom line since all the above is proven to be true, there was nothing Trump nor any President could have done to prevent this.

I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. I said getting the virus under control was just about impossible due to lack test kits and spread of the outbreaks. This was the beginning of the 2nd week of March. We had over 4,000 cases spread over a dozen states and new cases breaking out at a rate of a thousand a day. In order to get the virus under control, we would have needed tens of thousands of test kits. We had only a couple of thousand and most of those were defective. That means the most important tool in stopping the spread of the virus, testing/tracking/quarantining/monitoring was not available to us. So we had to go on to the mitigation phase, separating people to slow the spread of virus. We lost the first of battle, containing the virus during the first few months due primarily to the lack of testing. However, the war was certainly not over.

The CDC was not able to delivery enough working test kits in February and early March. On Jan 10, China released the genome for the virus which had all the information needed to build test kits. The WHO, South Korea, and a dozen other countries began putting together tests kits, and arranging for manufacture in large quantities. All this of this occurred before China announced they had scientific data of human to human transmission.

Meanwhile in the US, the CDC was struggling to produce test kits. They had contamination problems in the labs which delayed the first kits. Then they failed to purchase sufficient reagents. Whoever was responsible for arranging for the manufacture of kits in large quantity dropped the ball. When the kits first were sent out in February, an equal number was sent to all states even though the virus was only in 5 states so only a few kits were delivered where they were needed. Next, in early March, states found out the CDC regulations stopped them from testing. All the swabs had to sent to Atlanta. Once that was resolved, state labs were sent specimens but states did not have the PPE equipment for the labs because they thought the federal goverment would be supplying it out the federal stockpile which was apparently depleted. So the states had to compete against each other buying up what PPEs they could find. Finally. the states got authorization from the CDC to use local labs to process. Then the FDA stopped them because that was against FDA regulations. Next, the labs were short on reagents needed for processing. Apparently the CDC did not order enough in early January before the rest of the world did. All this got resolved by late March but then states were running out of tests kits because not enough were ordered.

I think this was about the time Trump declared war on China, accusing them of being dishonest and withholding information. I have no doubt that China was not completely forthcoming because they never are. However, I have no doubt that America's failure to contain the epidemic had nothing to do with China withholding information. If that were the case, countries like South Korea and others would have experience the problems the US did but they didn't. The fact is the poor response to the epidemic during those first critical months was due to the disorganization and slow response of of the administration. The US had no plan and no management and no coordination. There is no way to know how many of the 1.1 million cases and 95,000 deaths could have been avoided if the administration had been prepared, but common sense tells us it would have been a lot.

You did what I have been doing all along, and that is pointing out which entitles were actually responsible, and it isn't the President.

South Korea didn't have to deal with these clowns in the CDC, the FDA, the NSA. When they needed to do something, they didn't have all the red tape we and the President hand to endure. They just did it.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it's not that we have a less than competent President, it's that our agencies are bureaucracies need a major overhaul. Many of them need to be eliminated totally; perhaps not in this instance, but in general.

We have over 2.5 million Americans occupying these bureaucracies. WTF do we need all these people? Why do they have so much power--even more so than our Congress and President?

And it's not like we need these entities and millions of people because our Congress is so overworked. Most of the time these MF's are on vacation, in spite of making well into six figures a year plus great retirement benefits. Most of them retire multi-millionaires doing a part-time job.

Many years ago I used to teach guitar. One of my students worked at a bolt factory. His company had a government contract to make bolts for the space shuttle. Each bolt used in the shuttle cost over $200.00. So I asked him what was the difference between the bolts they made for the shuttle, and the bolts I buy at the hardware store for thirty cents? He told me there was no difference. The cost involved was all the government paperwork. Each bolt had to have QC paperwork that was over 100 pages long. If they didn't accept the paperwork, they couldn't just correct any errors. The government insisted an entirely new document for the bolt in question.

I certainly agree that the US government is one huge bureaucracy. However, where we will probably disagree is that our bureaucratic government is a product of a democratic government in a large diverse country. If you eliminate that bureaucracy in our government, you will eliminate the checks and balances built into our system of government and congress's power to insure that tax payer dollars are used in according with the law.

What you don't seem to grasp is that every government agency is a part of the Trump administration. The president appoints each director who serves at the pleasure of the president. The president can issue an executive order that carries the weight of law ordering any agency to do as he says. The agency only bears responsibility for what has been defined in law by congress. The president however bears full responsibility for the performance of all agencies. It works like this. If the project is to control the epidemic and the CDC has responsibility to delivery to the states the tests needed to diagnosis the disease responsible for the epidermic and FEMA has responsibility to maintain the supplies needed to manage the epidermic and the Treasury has the responsibility of making the funds needed to pay for activities, the President has the overall responsibility of seeing that the project is successful. Although it may appear that each agency is autonomous, they are not. They all work for the president. If the project fails, that is the presidents responsibility and each agency is responsibility for their part.

Most of the "red tape" provides an audit trail as to how tax dollars are spent and how the agencies meet the requirement of the law. This is what every president including Donald Trump must support. However, red tape can be cut and regulations can be sidestepped in emergency situations and that is what did not happen. If Donald Trump had picked up the phone and told his CDC director Robert Redfield on Jan. 15th that, I want test kits delivery on Feb 15th to every state reporting Covid 19, it would have have happened. However, as we know Donald Trump number 1 priority was the the impeachment trial in the Senate followed by his re-election plans. The CDC did as best they could under the procedures they were working under.

I'm sure South Korea had much of the same bureaucracy that Trump was dealing with however, Moon Jae-in, the president recognized the seriousness of the situation and called a meeting of his CDC director, and a number of leading medical manufactures. He offered the a contract and the equivalent of 1 million US dollars bonus to the company that could deliver 100,000 test kits by Feb 15th. A company delivered the kits on time and they worked. South Korea used the test kits to detect positive cases, quarantine, and tracing contacts. The result was a 90% reduction in new cases in March. By comparison, the US had few if any test kit and had an increase of 190,000 cases.

 

[fncceo]

I've got an N96 Mask ...

I'm safer than all y'all.

 

[Deplorable Yankee]

N95 masks provide near complete protection for the wearer and others. Suppose there were enough for everyone in the country, imagine how few cases there would be. Business and schools could open almost immediately with little danger to employees and customers or students and teachers. So why aren’t we doing it?

As it turns out, the cost of manufacturing an N95 mask is only about 58 cents. The CDC recommends masks are changed every 8 hours of use. It might be a lot less for non-healthcare employees. Assuming a mask could be made available for $1 each and all employers and schools were required to provide masks for employees and students, the cost would be about $15 a month for each full time employee or student. The general public would be required to wear N95 masks in public places with the federal government subsidizing the cost for low income families.

Although the cost is high, about 4 or 5 billion a month it’s a lot less than what the epidemic is costing the country, not to mention the loss of lives and the disruption to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. We could open up schools and business as soon as the masks were available and we probably could do away with most restrictions. If the program was successful, there’s a good chance the virus could be almost eliminated within a few months. Sporting events and concerts and other mass gathering could continue. So why isn't it even being considered?

Required masks is not that far off from required chip implants
The new normal

You're being trained to accept it

That's what they told the westeen euros at every candlelight vigil
The new normal

My ass

 

[freyasman]

Everyone I get close enough to to infect, on the off chance I may have it, consented to me being that close to them.

Really? So the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line got your consent to be two feet away from you?

I was a mean, anti-social person before this, I don't get that close to people anyway.
The only way you have to worry about what I have is when your wife comes home from my place, but at least she'll be in a good mood.
You're welcome.

Family is a no no little man.

You go so far as call him a man?

View attachment 337245

We were originally told to save PPE for healthcare.
The surgical clinic my wife works for is running short, so I see the use of N95 masks as unhelpful and selfish to our healthcare workers.
Anything less than a proper mask is useless and nothing but virtue signaling.

My niece made masks for everybody in the family. Of course, they are not N-95's. She told me not to worry as the fabric she created the masks from are pretty protective for myself and others. She suggested that if I wear it frequently, perhaps spray it with Lysol at the end of the day. Every other day use, if there is any Covid on it, it will die on it's own.

While she is only a waitress at a restaurant in Florida, she is also a college graduate with a biology degree, hoping for a break in a medical laboratory. I place my trust in her judgment and education her truck driver Uncle doesn't have.

I don't doubt your niece doesn't have a biology degree but I would ask her if she is sure about spraying the lysol into the mask. I had read in a science magazine you shouldn't do that but rather after wearing put it in sun for a few hours. I know where your located probably doesn't have the amount of daily sunlight we have in down here but ask her what she think's. I have N95 and regular surgical masks the surgical I throw away most of the time with one use but do put them in the sun for a few hours. The N95's I have I do find very restricted in my breathing but probably because I have copd. I only wear either or when I go into a store and will when I go to the doctor.

I'll ask her next time I see her, but her opinion is that if I only wear it every other day or so, no cleaning is required unless it's a personal desire. What I got off the internet is that the virus can last up to one day on paper and cloth products, but three days on plastic. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

I don't wear the same one everyday and either place the one I took off in a paper bag or put it out in the sun for hours. I had bought my N95 at the end of January when I saw a letter from the Fl Dept of health to the Fl dept of Education. In early April when I saw things just might get out of hand ordered 50 of the surgical masks. I have thrown away about 10 of the surgical after wearing a couple times or if I went from one store to another. Maybe the lysol won't hurt you if you spray and then don't wear a few days.

Too bad the government didn't plan as well as you did.

They had the chance after all if the Fl Dept of health knew about it they had to have gotten their info from the Feds. BTW that letter said they had been monitoring it since end of November 2019.

The CIA informed the White House in December as to seriousness of outbreak in China and the likelihood that it would spread outside of China. In early January, the National Security Advisor met with Trump about the danger the virus posed to the US. Rick Bright testified before congress that he informed the head of HHS in January of the shortage of masks. The Pandemic Response Committed formed by Trump at end January was charged with looking into mask shortages. Apparently Trump had decided that managing the pandemic in the US was the responsibility of the states so the federal didn't order masks till late March. Too bad he didn't make this clear to the states back in January.

OK, now prove that Trump received that information. It was also contradicted by China's lies about the COVID-19.

A president gets all the information he wants to receive. The president's staff determines what to bring to his attention based on his priorities. If Donald Trump had determine that the pandemic was a high priority item, you can bet his staff would keep him informed. However, we all know Trump wants plausible deniability. How many times have we heard him say about his people and administration issues, "Don't know who that is", "Never heard that", "Never seen that". It seems quite obvious that in January and February, the President wanted to distance himself from the epidemic, downplay it's seriousness, and even deny it exist. He was gambling on it just fading away. Too bad he lost.

So what you're saying is that Trump did what Cuomo was doing, what Piglosi was doing, what DeBlazio was doing, what Fauci was doing. Did you know that during the first two weeks of March, the Democrats were trying to pass a bill to stop Trump from issuing travel bans? How serious were they taking it?

It's not the job of a governor nor Speaker of House to track a pandemic and create a national response. Despite what Trump might say, protecting the nation is his responsibility. Attempting to shift the blame for America's pitiful pandemic response to the democrats, Obama, the WHO, China, the governors, and our hospitals is not going to fly, no matter how many times Trump says it. The buck does stop with president.

No it does not, especially when our government agencies were mostly responsible. I never said it was the job of Governors, Mayors or the Speaker of the House. I'm merely pointing out that nobody had any idea how bad this could or would get. My father is 88 years old, and in spite of growing up in extreme poverty, he said he's never experienced anything like this in his life.

When we used to talk about the great economy under President Trump, the left always inserted how it was really Hussein's economy that Trump came in with. Now that we are facing such a crisis, don't bring anybody into the mix. The buck stops at the President. It's amazing.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is 'minuscule'; skip mask and wash hands

Should I wear a mask? The U.S. infectious disease chief says no: "In the U.S. there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask right now."

www.usatoday.com

Those agencies that you’re holding responsible are part of the Trump administration. They work for Trump. And their director serves at his pleasure. Their performance is his responsibility and that responsibility cannot transferred or denied. As a CEO, he is well aware of this but he wants you to believe that he bears no responsibility for what any his agencies do.

In regard to the US response to the virus, the responsibility falls directly on the president because he failed to make the response to virus a priority within his administration. In fact he did just opposite. He called the virus just the common flu. He ridiculed the news media for raising the alarm and called it a hoax. When the subject of the virus would come up he claimed it was all under control. When this is the opinion of your boss, how high a priority would you give it? The CDC sure didn’t give it much priority in getting test kits that worked and FEMA who’s responsible for maintaining supplies and equipment needed in a national emergency certainly did nothing to increase the stockpile of PPEs and ventilators.

In short, the president sets the policy and the agencies carry out the tasks needed to fulfill the president’s policy. And that just didn’t happen and there is no one to blame but the president.

You on the left keep trying that. But most voters don't have severe TDS. Trying to blame a President for a virus that came out of China and affected over 180 countries won't fly in November.

No one is blaming Trump for the virus. They are blaming him for his response to it. The US has the worst record in fighting the virus of all major nations and Trump bears the responsibility, not China, not Obama, not the democrats, not the governors, not the hospitals, or anyone else he's tried to blamed.

There is a lot of blame, mostly with our bureaucracies and agencies. They are the ones who held up any and all progress. I provided the links. And don't say the President can direct them to do things they refuse to do. He can't, and even if he could, what do you suppose the Democrats would be saying about Trump if he acted against their recommendations?

Our entire country is mired in red tape. That's what needs to change, virus or no virus. The only mistake Trump actually made was not closing down at least 80% of our bureaucracies and agencies when he first took office that we never needed in the first place.

An according to you none of the responsibility lies with the president, the commander and chief. If Donald Trump does not bear the responsibility for the planning and coordination of American's response to the virus, who does? Maybe it's his CDC director he appointed or his FEMA director he appointed or his Secretary of Health and Human Services, he appointed ? No, not any of these guys? I guess it's just the whole damn federal government that's responsible.

The fact is nobody was in charge and that's the heart of problem. Trump wanted to be in the limelight making all the major decisions and taking none of the responsibility. Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

I think it's working not bad really. HIs favorable ratings (considering the circumstance) are not doing too bad, and some even have his approval ratings higher than DumBama at the same time of his presidency. I heard a statistic on the radio yesterday (that I didn't actually checkout) that our stock market actually recovered 60% of it's losses, and the country is not nearly totally opened up yet.

I never said "none" of the responsibility lies with Trump, but much of it doesn't. Because he puts people into positions of our agencies and bureaucracies doesn't mean they are all "yes" men and women. On the flip side, you people are saying this is all about Trump and nobody else responsible.

So while Cuomo and DeBlazio were selling off their ventilators like hot cakes, then they looked for Trump to magically come enough for their hospitals. Who was responsible for that? Trump came up with them, he came up with enough beds for a potential overload of Covid patients, he provided it all in a matter of days or a week or so. He's doing an excellent job.

November is a little less than 6 months away. A lot can change (good or bad) by then. So if you're going to put money on whether Trump serves a second term or not, make sure it's money you can afford to lose. After all, look at who your contender is.

Who is responsible for the management and coordination of the federal agencies? I really don't know. Trump's job seems to be that of a commentator about the shortfalls of government, the media, and democratic party. His primary roll when he meets with the pandemic response team seems to be to make comments about the issues, some pertinent and some inane, leaving it to various agents to decide what to do. However, whoever is responsible for management and coordination should be fired for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for the CDC to distribute test kits that can't be processed by the states. And even worse the CDC sending test kits out that the FDA does not allow to be processed, failing to order reagents needed to build test kits, and no PPE's for labs or instructions as to how to process tests. This is nuts.

Who said, I thought Trump would lose the election.. The odds are he will win the election, not because of his brilliant leadership, or his reduction in the size of government which he has actually increased nor anything else he promised but because Americans usually vote for the incumbent following the old adage, "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

At the very least, I'm glad you can come to the understanding of the actual responsible parties involved here. However we do not live in an autocracy, and were never founded on that. Our federal government is operated by giving a President only so much power. We also have a House, a Senate, bureaucracies and agencies, most of whom played a part in all this.

Who said you thought Trump would lose the election? You did! Here is your exact quote only a few posts from this one:

Trump's famous "not my responsibility" reply ain't going to work in November.

Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was like an enormous orchestra full of talented players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and without a conductor. Even worst, they had no sheet music. Trump took care that by disbanding the pandemic response team whose job was to create a pandemic response plan.

The primary problem in the US response is two fold. First there was no game plan for dealing with the pandemic and second there was no project manager. What that meant is the responsibilities within agencies and between the states and federal government had to be establish, along with coordination between all federal agencies and states, and other parties. Second, Trump formed a committee to deal with the epidemic; however, the committee was essentially just advisors to the president. There was no "czar" or project manager to coordinate between a half dozen federal agencies and 50 states. It was a project without a plan and without a manger. It was doomed to fail, which it did and Donald Trump is the primary reason it failed so badly.

You're correct in saying the president has limited powers. However, within the executive branch itself, the president has broad powers to manage the workings of the federal government. The president can issue rules, regulations and instructions, which have the binding force of law upon federal agencies, and within limits establish by congress he can move funds in the budget to finance a project as needed. The heads of ever agency involved in the response to pandemic were appointed by Trump and serve at his please. Trump is the boss and he bears full responsibility for the poor response of the federal government to the epidemic.

Trump never disbanded your so-called pandemic response team. It was reduced in an overhaul of the NSC. Why do we have a CDC and NIH if that is not their function? Where do Fauci and Birx normally work?

As you should be aware, the CDC has very specific responsibility. The CDC is primarily concerned with communicable diseases, and epidemics. It is most involved with healthcare aspects of the epidemic. However there lots of other agencies involve because of huge scope of the response. The NIH is a broad base medical research center consisting of 27 institutes that do medical research on everything from ingrowing toenails to cancer. America's response to the pandemic required coordination between many agencies plus all the states. The state plans should have been meshed with the federal plans except there were no federal plans. Thus we had an almost constant argument over responsibilities. Most states assumed the feds would do more and the feds assume the states would do more. To this day, I don't think the states and federal government are together on testing.

Right. If this so-called response team were in charge of coordinating efforts around the country, why did they allow NYC to sell off many of their ventilators? Why did they let the depleted medical stockpile remain under stock? Seems to me they didn't do their job.

The team charged with creating a pandemic response was disbanded in 2018. They had no authority other creating a plan. The new team formed by Trump on Jan 31, 2020 was basically and advisory group led by Mike Pence. Trump did not get involve with the team until early March. They simple gave advice to president. Trump seem to be in charge or maybe the project was designed and managed by committee. Either way, Trump was responsible for the nation's response to virus.

So who gave this pandemic team more authority than the CDC, the FDA, FEMA, and even the President of the Untied States? If you can show me this authority, then I'll believe you. But this so-called pandemic team was nothing more than any other bureaucracy, who must work with all the other ones.

VP Pence did not lead anybody. He was assigned to orchestrate all our other agencies so they worked in unison, particularly in the exchange of information.

The pandemic response team setup by Trump in January was an advisory committee to the president chaired by Pence. It had no authority. It was composed of about half the cabinet, Fauci and Birx and several economist. As far as I can tell. Trump never attended any meeting until around March 11, when he addressed the country about the virus. There was no project manager and thus there was no management of the response, unless you consider Trump wagging his head and saying that sound good a manager. I remember attending a Project Management class years ago. At the beginning of the class the instructor said the two essential requirements tor a project is a plan and a manager. The Pandemic Response Team had neither.

Okay, lets go with that. If they had no authority, how would they (if still intact) have made a difference? President Trump had to work with these same bureaucracies to get FDA approval of the private sector to help out with what our CDC failed. And they dragged ass doing so. They dragged ass on approving tests from South Korea, they dragged ass on permitting hydroxychlorquine to be used on Covid patients, they dragged ass in allowing new test kits to be acceptable without the results meeting their approval, they dragged ass on everything, just like any other bureaucracy does.

President Trump had to threaten 3-M into selling a majority of their masks to the US. Without Trump, they would have continued their high-volume N-95 sales overseas, especially to China. Those hospital ships being dispatched to places like CA, NY (who hate Trump and still do) were in construction en-route to their destinations to be prepared for a possible overflow. Those same amazing military people converted civic centers into temporary hospitals in a matter of days.

We do not reside in an Autocracy. We do not have one decider on all matters. President Trump is not a medical expert. President Trump is not an economics professor. President Trump is not a military expert. No President is. This is why Presidents have people in their cabinet and administration who are experts. President Trump did what any other President would have done, and that is to rely on those experts for enough input for him to make rational decisions.

I'm not faulting Trump for what happen after he actually started taking the pandemic seriously, about March 10th. As you say he did do things then that any president would have done but by then getting the virus under control was just about impossible considering the situation with the lack of testing and the rapid spread of the virus. I'm sure at that point his medical advisors new the only reasonable course of action was mediation; that is, reducing contact between people to slow the spread of virus and reduce hospitalization giving our healthcare people a chance to prepare for the next wave of cases. Those measures to reduce human contact have reduced new cases and new deaths in the country and would have probably controlled the spread of virus if we would have continued. However, the need to open up the economy has made that impossible and most probably will result in a second wave.

As I said, the pandemic response team that Trump organized was strictly and advisor group. They had no authority. They advised the president and the president managed the response. IMHO, that was a terrible mistake, both from a political and managerial standpoint. He should have assigned someone to manage the project which means coordinating activities between a half dozen federal agencies and between the federal government, and the states.

If nobody in any of our health agencies knew this was possible, if nobody on Trump's medical staff knew this was a possibility, if nobody at the WHO knew this was a possibility, how do you figure Trump should have known?

The White House started taking smaller precautionary steps as early as January 31st, when the WHO first announced this "could be" a problem. We can't go slapping masks on, closing down the economy, stopping all international flight, sending our country into a frenzy with every single threat we find out about. Where would our country be before Covid if we did that with H1N1, H1N5, SARS, Ebola, West Niles virus?

The CDC announced today that 35% of people that had Covid-19 were asymptomatic. They don't feel anything, but of course were contagious. They were kissing family and friends, drinking at the bars, eating at the restaurants, squeezing fruits and vegetables at the store before making a final selection. Just carrying on a normal life.

As to the people (especially younger people) who were not asymptomatic, many of the symptoms are similar to a bad cold or even a mild flu, which most don't seek medical help for until it gets bad.

In other words, we have no idea how long Covid has been in this country and already spreading. The WHO is in bed with China and also does their bidding. China has been less than honest with us and the world right from the beginning, and still are from what I've been reading. Bottom line since all the above is proven to be true, there was nothing Trump nor any President could have done to prevent this.

I don't think you quite understood what I was saying. I said getting the virus under control was just about impossible due to lack test kits and spread of the outbreaks. This was the beginning of the 2nd week of March. We had over 4,000 cases spread over a dozen states and new cases breaking out at a rate of a thousand a day. In order to get the virus under control, we would have needed tens of thousands of test kits. We had only a couple of thousand and most of those were defective. That means the most important tool in stopping the spread of the virus, testing/tracking/quarantining/monitoring was not available to us. So we had to go on to the mitigation phase, separating people to slow the spread of virus. We lost the first of battle, containing the virus during the first few months due primarily to the lack of testing. However, the war was certainly not over.

The CDC was not able to delivery enough working test kits in February and early March. On Jan 10, China released the genome for the virus which had all the information needed to build test kits. The WHO, South Korea, and a dozen other countries began putting together tests kits, and arranging for manufacture in large quantities. All this of this occurred before China announced they had scientific data of human to human transmission.

Meanwhile in the US, the CDC was struggling to produce test kits. They had contamination problems in the labs which delayed the first kits. Then they failed to purchase sufficient reagents. Whoever was responsible for arranging for the manufacture of kits in large quantity dropped the ball. When the kits first were sent out in February, an equal number was sent to all states even though the virus was only in 5 states so only a few kits were delivered where they were needed. Next, in early March, states found out the CDC regulations stopped them from testing. All the swabs had to sent to Atlanta. Once that was resolved, state labs were sent specimens but states did not have the PPE equipment for the labs because they thought the federal goverment would be supplying it out the federal stockpile which was apparently depleted. So the states had to compete against each other buying up what PPEs they could find. Finally. the states got authorization from the CDC to use local labs to process. Then the FDA stopped them because that was against FDA regulations. Next, the labs were short on reagents needed for processing. Apparently the CDC did not order enough in early January before the rest of the world did. All this got resolved by late March but then states were running out of tests kits because not enough were ordered.

I think this was about the time Trump declared war on China, accusing them of being dishonest and withholding information. I have no doubt that China was not completely forthcoming because they never are. However, I have no doubt that America's failure to contain the epidemic had nothing to do with China withholding information. If that were the case, countries like South Korea and others would have experience the problems the US did but they didn't. The fact is the poor response to the epidemic during those first critical months was due to the disorganization and slow response of of the administration. The US had no plan and no management and no coordination. There is no way to know how many of the 1.1 million cases and 95,000 deaths could have been avoided if the administration had been prepared, but common sense tells us it would have been a lot.

You did what I have been doing all along, and that is pointing out which entitles were actually responsible, and it isn't the President.

South Korea didn't have to deal with these clowns in the CDC, the FDA, the NSA. When they needed to do something, they didn't have all the red tape we and the President hand to endure. They just did it.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it's not that we have a less than competent President, it's that our agencies are bureaucracies need a major overhaul. Many of them need to be eliminated totally; perhaps not in this instance, but in general.

We have over 2.5 million Americans occupying these bureaucracies. WTF do we need all these people? Why do they have so much power--even more so than our Congress and President?

And it's not like we need these entities and millions of people because our Congress is so overworked. Most of the time these MF's are on vacation, in spite of making well into six figures a year plus great retirement benefits. Most of them retire multi-millionaires doing a part-time job.

Many years ago I used to teach guitar. One of my students worked at a bolt factory. His company had a government contract to make bolts for the space shuttle. Each bolt used in the shuttle cost over $200.00. So I asked him what was the difference between the bolts they made for the shuttle, and the bolts I buy at the hardware store for thirty cents? He told me there was no difference. The cost involved was all the government paperwork. Each bolt had to have QC paperwork that was over 100 pages long. If they didn't accept the paperwork, they couldn't just correct any errors. The government insisted an entirely new document for the bolt in question.

We could fire 75% of all government employees in this country and the only way people would notice is when they realize how much easier it made their lives.