Comments by "wily wascal" (@wilywascal2024) on "Democrat DESTROYS Trump in MUST-WATCH speech over botched handling" video.
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@emmawillard1261 ~The highly-coveted Top Prize for our contestants today is an all-funeral-expenses-paid romantic getaway for two aboard the magnificent Corona Queen, taking you for an exclusive extended cruise, to a secluded stay on the exotic, remote, tropical Isle of Covid-19, where the fevered fun is SUPER-contagious, and you will luxuriously bask in fabulous face masks and rejuvenating oxygen respirators, with the wonderful scent of disinfectant surrounding you! Sure to be a lifetime experience for some lucky few! Just remember--the couple that dies together, stays together!
BONUS SPECIAL CASES: Providing accompanying entertainment is Chief Jester Roberts and the entire Trump comedy team, featuring the Clown Commander, for laughs and coughs! There just ain't no cure, for them ocean cruise blues! Bon voyage!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwE7EFyQDm0 (audio version)
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@emmawillard1261 ~We got a MAJOR malfunction in the White House responsible for senselessly killing thousands of Americans, but Republicans don't care, want the killing of Americans to continue, want to give him a shot at four more years of chaos, confusion, mayhem, devastation, degradation, and destruction! America is in serious trouble with another disease besides coronavirus, with Trump just the glaring, flaring symptom! No vaccine for ignorance, unfortunately.
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Trump’s False Claims About His Response to the Coronavirus
Linda Qiu - The New York Times - Friday, March 13, 2020
As he declared a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak, President Trump attempted to deflect criticisms of his administration’s response to the virus with inaccurate claims. Here’s a fact-check.
what the facts are
Mr. Trump wrongly blamed the Obama administration for coronavirus testing shortages and falsely said it “didn’t do testing” during the swine flu epidemic of 2009.
What Mr. Trump Said
“I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time.”
False. The Food and Drug Administration issued a “draft guidance” in 2014 in which it sought to extend its authority to regulate laboratory-developed tests. But it’s wrong to blame that effort for the scattered and insufficient delivery of coronavirus tests as the guidance was not particularly relevant to emergency situations and was never finalized or generally enforced.
A law enacted in 2004 created the process and requirements for the use of unapproved products in public health emergencies. Under the law and guidance set by the Trump administration itself, the Food and Drug Administration requires developers of laboratory-developed tests to submit information and to comply with certain procedures.
The agency said in early March that it would permit unapproved tests for the coronavirus for 15 days while developers are preparing their emergency authorization request. Neither the 2004 law nor subsequent amendments restricted the Trump administration from doing so, nor did it hamper previous administrations in fast-tracking testing for other health crises.
What Mr. Trump Said
“If you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this. They didn’t do testing like this, and actually they lost approximately 14,000 people, and they didn’t do the testing. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late.”
False. This is blatantly wrong. Diagnostic tests for the swine flu were approved and shipped out less than two weeks after the H1N1 virus was identified and a day before the first death in the United States.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified the first case of the virus on April 14, 2009. The Obama administration declared swine flu a public health emergency on April 26. The Food and Drug Administration approved a rapid test for the virus two days later. At the time, the C.D.C. had reported 64 cases and zero deaths. The C.D.C. began shipping test kits to public health laboratories on May 1 (at 141 cases and one death) and a second test was approved in July. From May to September 2009, the agency shipped more than 1,000 kits, each one able to test 1,000 specimens.
To be sure, researchers found flaws and limitations in the tests but testing was conducted. A vaccine became available in early October but, amid reports of shortages, President Obama declared the outbreak a national emergency later that month. The estimated death toll in the United States from the H1N1 epidemic was 12,469 from April 2009 to April 2010.
What the Facts Are
Mr. Trump inaccurately described a website in development to mitigate the outbreak.
What Mr. Trump Said
“I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.”
This is misleading. Mr. Trump misstated the company developing the website and exaggerated its scope. After Mr. Trump spoke, Google issued a statement on Twitter from Verily, a separate subsidiary of Google’s parent company.
“We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time,” the statement read.
A spokeswoman for Verily said it had originally intended for the website to be used only by health care workers. Mr. Trump’s statement prompted the company to make it available to the public. The site will direct people to “pilot sites” for testing in the Bay Area, the spokeswoman said.
what the facts are
Mr. Trump again mischaracterized travel restrictions imposed on certain European countries.
What Mr. Trump Said
“As you know, Europe was just designated as the hot spot right now and we closed that border a while ago.”
This is misleading. Mr. Trump imposed some travel restrictions on 26 European countries on Wednesday night, but those restrictions do not go into effect until midnight on Friday and do not amount to a total shutting down of the border.
The restrictions bar the entry of foreign nationals who have been to any of the 26 countries that make up Europe’s Schengen Area of open borders within 14 days. That area does not include more than 20 other European countries, including Britain. The proclamation also does not apply to American citizens, permanent residents, their immediate families, or those who are members of air or sea crews.
what the facts are
Mr. Trump described telemedicine technology as “fairly new,” though it’s been used for decades.
What Mr. Trump Said
“This includes the following critical authorities — the ability to waive laws to enable telehealth, a fairly new and incredible thing that has happened in the not-so-distant past.”
This is exaggerated. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services expanded access to telehealth services — for example, virtual check-ins and telephone consultations with doctors — for Medicare beneficiaries this week. But these technologies have beenin usesince the 1960s.
The University of Nebraska used video links to provide exams and diagnoses with a state hospital 112 miles in 1964. Three years later, the University of Miami and a local fire department transmitted cardiac rhythms using radio channels. Federal agencies initiated a host of other services in the 1970s and 1980s.
A 1997 government report noted a severely injured sailor aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln was able to be treated by a doctor in San Diego 6,000 miles away through telemedicine. By 2014, “more than 20 federal agencies were engaged in some aspect of telehealth,” according to the Congressional Research Service, with the Department of Veterans Affairs providing more than 2.1 million telehealth consultations in the 2015 fiscal year.
what the facts are
Mr. Trump said he was not responsible for disbanding the White House’s pandemic team.
what Mr. Trump said
“When you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people I could ask — perhaps my administration — but I could perhaps ask Tony about that because I don’t know anything about it.”
This is misleading. The top White House official tasked with leading the country’s response to a pandemic left the administration in May 2018 and his team was disbanded by Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, John R. Bolton, The Washington Post has reported.
While there is no evidence that Mr. Trump personally directed the ousting of these officials, he also did not replace them in the nearly two years since, despite repeated bipartisan urgings from lawmakers and experts.
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Market drops over 3,000 in just three days, wiping out $3.6 TRILLION from our accounts and economy in one WEEK--setting records for biggest losses EVER in the stock market for a day and for a week. Bankruptcy king Trump, dismissing COVID-19 as a "hoax": "Our Big Pharma, Big Med, and disinfectant companies are prospering!" That was the previous week. Monday, 03/08/20, market recorded it's new single biggest point loss day EVER--over 2,000 drop in the Dow, with nearly 8% loss in S&P and other benchmarks. Wednesday, 3/11/20, the market lost another 1,600 points, double the brief correction bounce it wiped out from the previous day.
On 03/12/20, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 2,352 points, or 10%. The index had its worst drop since the 1987 Black Monday market crash, when it collapsed by more than 22%.The S&P 500 plummeted 9.5%, joining the Dow in a bear market. The S&P 500 also hat its worst day since 1987. The Nasdaq closed 9.4% lower. Both the Dow and the S&P are now officially in a bear market (-20%), down more than 26% from its record high set just last month.
Thursday’s plunge came after yet another wild session on Wall Street and the demise of the Dow’s record-setting bull market run that began in March 2009. The blue-chip index tumbled 1,464.94 points, or 5.9%, to close at 23,553.22. The 30-stock average closed in a bear market, putting to end an expansion that started in 2009 amid the financial crisis. The Dow also plummeted more than 2,000 points on Monday.
“These markets have been impossible to predict,” said David Lafferty, chief market strategist at Natixis Investment Managers. “I think of them as kind of wind-sock markets. They’re just changing with whatever way sentiment is. There’s no fundamentals under these markets right now.”
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Worst-Case Estimates for U.S. Coronavirus Deaths
Sheri Fink - The New York Times - Saturday, March 14, 2020
Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and epidemic experts from universities around the world conferred last month about what might happen if the new coronavirus gained a foothold in the United States. How many people might die? How many would be infected and need hospitalization?
One of the agency’s top disease modelers, Matthew Biggerstaff, presented the group on the phone call with four possible scenarios — A, B, C and D — based on characteristics of the virus, including estimates of how transmissible it is and the severity of the illness it can cause. The assumptions, reviewed by The New York Times, were shared with about 50 expert teams to model how the virus could tear through the population — and what might stop it.
The C.D.C.’s scenarios were depicted in terms of percentages of the population. Translated into absolute numbers by independent experts using simple models of how viruses spread, the worst-case figures would be staggering if no actions were taken to slow transmission.
Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to one projection. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.
And, the calculations based on the C.D.C.’s scenarios suggested, 2.4 million to 21 million people in the United States could require hospitalization, potentially crushing the nation’s medical system, which has only about 925,000 staffed hospital beds. Fewer than a tenth of those are for people who are critically ill.
The assumptions fueling those scenarios are mitigated by the fact that cities, states, businesses and individuals are beginning to take steps to slow transmission, even if some are acting less aggressively than others. The C.D.C.-led effort is developing more sophisticated models showing how interventions might decrease the worst-case numbers, though their projections have not been made public.
“When people change their behavior," said Lauren Gardner, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering who models epidemics, “those model parameters are no longer applicable,” so short-term forecasts are likely to be more accurate. “There is a lot of room for improvement if we act appropriately.”
Those actions include testing for the virus, tracing contacts, and reducing human interactions by stopping mass gatherings, working from home and curbing travel. In just the last two days, multiple schools and colleges closed, sports events were halted or delayed, Broadway theaters went dark, companies barred employees from going to the office and more people said they were following hygiene recommendations.
(more...)
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Federal government not protecting its workers exposed to public from coronavirus
These federal workers were exposed to the coronavirus while serving the public. Now they’re quarantined.
By Kimberly Kindy
March 14, 2020 at 5:00 a.m. CDT
When Alexander Spain, a supervisor with the Transportation Security Administration, was told Tuesday to self-quarantine and not report to work at San Jose International Airport, he was not surprised.
A screener he supervises, who checks IDs and boarding passes, had been sick for weeks and then tested positive for the coronavirus. Spain, 58, was told to remain at home but said he was given no instructions for how to self-quarantine. So Spain said he “went out to grab food twice. I stopped at a Chinese food restaurant and got some quick bites from 7-Eleven.”
On Thursday, the day he was scheduled to return to work, Spain called his supervisors in the morning, asking how to get tested for the virus. “They acted like I was speaking French,” he said in an interview.
Spain’s experience mirrors what federal workers across the country who deal with the public are sayingabout the lack of direction, protocols and protective gear they need from their agencies. They fear these failures may cause them to become ill and spread the virus not only in the United States but across the globe.
The federal government has hundreds of thousands of workers who come in daily contact with the public — workplace inspectors, mail carriers, hospital workers, park rangers, passport processors, Social Security representatives, museum workers.
Workers and union representatives from six different agencies — including the Social Security Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — said in interviews, emails and text messages with The Washington Post that Spain’s experience is not unique. They or their co-workers also have been exposed to the virus and say their supervisors are not giving proper guidance or support.
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 700,000 federal employees, has criticized the Trump administration.
“Agencies are not communicating with their workforces with enough information or to a degree that will allow them to protect themselves or the public in a timely manner to contain the spread of this virus,” union president Everett Kelley said recently during testimony before Congress.
The Trump administration has not publicly addressed the unions’ concerns. The White House’s coronavirus task force did not respond to requests for comment.
The federal government is not keeping a tally of the number of workers who have tested positive for the virus, nor does it have an estimate of how many federal workers have been exposed to the coronavirus, like Spain, the TSA supervisor. At least three other TSA screeners in the San Jose airport have AD tested positive for the virus.
Spain’s quarantine was short because the infected security screener’s last day at work — when Spain would have been last exposed — was two weeks ago. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a self-quarantine of 14 days in such circumstances. Spain, who did not have symptoms as of Friday, said he will not return to work until he gets tested, something the Navy veteran is now seeking through the Department of Veterans Affairs. TSA representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Wash hands, wear mask
Other workers are complaining about being exposed to the virus at work and finding out about it from colleagues, not their managers.
Jason Phillips, a technician who performs X-rays and CT scans at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Portland, Ore., filed a whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel on Thursday after he worked with a patient who later tested positive for the coronavirus.
Phillips said he helped the patient on and off a gurney and also helped him on and off of a CT scanner table. Phillips was wearing gloves, but no mask, and was with the patient for about 15 minutes, the sort of exposure that health officials say places people at heightened risk of infection.
“I learned he had coronavirus through a text message from a worker, not a supervisor, so I was panicking,” Phillips said in an interview, adding that he alerted his supervisors the next day. “They told me to come to work like normal. Wash my hands, wear a mask.”
Instead, Phillips, 47, contacted the Washington State Department of Health and the CDC, which told him to self-quarantine.
By then, Phillips had exposed his wife, their four children and his father-in-law. They are all now secluded in their home in Washougal, Wash. Phillips said he filed the whistleblower complaint because he was not notified by supervisors of the sick patient, but also because he said his supervisor tried to coach him to change his story about not wearing a mask and about the length of time he was exposed to the patient.
Daniel Herrigstad, a spokesman for the VA Portland Health Care System, said in a statement: “These are serious allegations and the department will look into them right away.”
Social Security Administration workers in Casa Grande, Ariz., wonder if they have been infected with the coronavirus.
On Monday, a colleague who returned from a cruise over the weekend reported to work “hacking and coughing” but remained on the job throughout the workday, said Ralph Dejuliis, national president for the union that represents SSA workers.'
On Tuesday, the worker called in sick. Coronavirus was suspected. Panic spread.
Information about the worker’s health, and what the rest of the office staff should do in response, has not been shared with the sick workers’ colleagues, Dejuliis said.
On any given workday, about 200 people come through that field office — one of about 160 across the country — with most of them particularly vulnerable to the virus. They are often seeking benefits because they are either elderly, disabled or both.
Nicole Tiggemann, a spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration, declined to comment on the ill employee but said in a statement: “We are implementing additional steps to protect our employees who may be most vulnerable to COVID-19” through expanded telework, social distancing and other measures.
Dejuliis said guidance has been vague. Workers are told to not report to work if they are sick, but the SSA did not outline which symptoms should be of concern until Friday. “We’ve been asking the administration for information about what is going on in that office — it’s been nothing but crickets,” Dejuliis said.
Short on hand sanitizer
TSA workers have similar complaints. A notice to TSA employees, obtained by The Washington Post, directs workers to stay home if they are ill.
However, the memo does not say what symptoms should prompt a worker to stay home. The notice also directed workers to wash their hands with warm soap and water if hand sanitizer and alcohol wipes are not available — something screeners can’t do without leaving their work station.
“They are running out of hand sanitizer and alcohol wipes at some of the larger airports,” said Hydrick Thomas, president of the union representing TSA workers. “They don’t have the right sized gloves at others. They are too big for some people and they are rolling off of their hands. It’s unacceptable.” The TSA did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.
Some federal workers said that in the absence of clear safety protocols, they are proposing their own to their supervisors, but those requests are often ignored or have been rejected, they said.
In addition to the 160 Social Security field offices, the Social Security Administration has another 163 offices with hearing rooms, where sick and disabled people appeared before administrative law judges who rule on their requests for federal benefits.
Judge Melissa McIntosh, who works in Tampa and is also union president for the judges, said people are showing up in hearing offices and courtrooms across the country with respiratory problems and fevers. In a Feb. 27 email, McIntosh asked SSA officials to give judges the authority to ask those who show up with these symptoms to consider doing the hearing over the telephone. A week later, an associate commissioner rejected her request, saying only SSA management can make such a suggestion, according to an email obtained by The Post. SSA officials did not provide further comment.
“They show up sick because it can take months to get a hearing. Sometimes [they are] in the waiting room with other people for hours,” McIntosh said in an interview. “We would simply like the ability to give them the option so they don’t get other people sick, including us. It is stunning SSA refuses to respond to its judges and simply implement our common-sense suggestions.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/these-federal-workers-deal-with-the-public-theyve-been-exposed-to-the-coronavirus/2020/03/14/096a4400-647f-11ea-845d-e35b0234b136_story.html
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I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it.
Beth Cameron -- 03/13/20 -- Washington Post
Beth Cameron is vice president for global biological policy and programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. She previously served as the senior director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council.
When President Trump took office in 2017, the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense survived the transition intact. Its mission was the same as when I was asked to lead the office, established after the Ebola epidemic of 2014: to do everything possible within the vast powers and resources of the U.S. government to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic.
One year later, I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like covid-19.
The U.S. government’s slow and inadequate response to the new coronavirus underscores the need for organized, accountable leadership to prepare for and respond to pandemic threats.
In a health security crisis, speed is essential. When this new coronavirus emerged, there was no clear White House-led structure to oversee our response, and we lost valuable time. Yes, we have capable and committed global and national disease-prevention and management organizations, as well as state and local health departments, all working overtime now. But even in prepared cities like Seattle, health systems are struggling to test patients and keep pace with growing caseloads. The specter of rapid community transmission and exponential growth is real and daunting. The job of a White House pandemics office would have been to get ahead: to accelerate the response, empower experts, anticipate failures, and act quickly and transparently to solve problems.
It’s impossible to assess the full impact of the 2018 decision to disband the White House office responsible for this work. Biological experts do remain in the White House and in our government. But it is clear that eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government’s sluggish domestic response. What’s especially concerning about the absence of this office today is that it was originally set up because a previous epidemic made the need for it quite clear.
The U.S. government worked hard to fight the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Unlike Central Africa, Ebola was not a usual occurrence in West Africa; the necessary elements of community trust and public health decision-making weren’t in place to detect and stop it. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were blind spots for disease surveillance. The cost was thousands of lives, billions of dollars and years of economic recovery for countries already torn by decades of war.
So in 2016, after the formidable U.S.-led Ebola response, the Obama White House established the global health security office at the National Security Council and asked me to lead the team. We were to prepare for and, if possible, prevent the next outbreak from becoming an epidemic or pandemic.
Our team reported to a senior-level response coordinator on the National Security staff who could rally the government at the highest levels, as well as to the national security adviser and the homeland security adviser. This high-level domestic and global reporting structure wasn’t an accident. It was a recognition that epidemics know no borders and that a serious, fast response is crucial. Our job was to be the smoke alarm — keeping watch to get ahead of emergencies, sounding a warning at the earliest sign of fire — all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm blaze.
We partnered with federal departments and agencies as they monitored evolving outbreaks, triggering alarms for decision-makers when those outbreaks began to take on unusual or worrisome characteristics. Shortly before Trump took office, we were watching many health security threats, including a rising number of cases in China of H7N9 influenza, a deadly strain with high mortality but low transmissibility between people. Earlier, we had been tracking a large outbreak of yellow fever in Angola that threatened to sap the limited global supply of that vaccine, affecting the local population, international travelers, deployed citizens and troops. We were focused on naturally occurring diseases and potential bioterrorism — any and every biological threat that could cause a major global health and security emergency.
My office was also tasked with preparing — at home and around the world — for the next health emergency, no matter its origin. In 2014, even before the first cases of Ebola came to light in Guinea, the Obama administration launched the Global Health Security Agenda, which now includes more than 60 countries, to accelerate epidemic preparedness. That effort, bolstered by $1 billion from the U.S. government in an emergency spending bill to fight Ebola, led to major gains in global capability to combat the Ebola outbreak and prepare for the next pandemic, which turned out to be covid-19. We began building, measuring and tracking capacities each country had, such as the strength of their national laboratory systems and their abilities to detect and report disease, stand up emergency operation centers, build an epidemiology workforce and maintain safe and secure practices. We spurred the use of transparent, measurable assessments of progress, and we leveraged our diplomacy with other countries to finance and fill gaps. At the same time, we strengthened international biosurveillance networks to help alert us to future potential pandemics.
Another critical task came in early 2017, when we began transitioning pandemic preparedness to the incoming Trump administration. As a civil servant and the head of the directorate, I remained at the White House for several months after the transition. I attended senior-level meetings and directly briefed the homeland security adviser and the national security adviser. After I left the White House that March, pandemic preparedness remained on the agenda; my office remained intact under the leadership of my well-respected successor, Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer; and the national security adviser was tracking H7N9 and other emerging threats.
It’s unclear whether the decision to disband the directorate, which was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser, was a tactical move to downgrade the issue or whether it was part of the White House’s interest in simplifying and shrinking the National Security Council staff. Either way, it left an unclear structure and strategy for coordinating pandemic preparedness and response. Experts outside government and on Capitol Hill called for the office’s reinstatement at the time.
Its absence now is all too evident. In his remarks Wednesday night, the president talked about travel bans and the resilience of the U.S. economy but made little specific mention of the public health crisis unfolding across America — exactly the kind of detail a dedicated NSC pandemics infrastructure would have pushed to address. A directorate within the White House would have been responsible for coordinating the efforts of multiple federal agencies to make sure the government was backstopping testing capacity, devising approaches to manufacture and avoid shortages of personal protective equipment, strengthening U.S. lab capacity to process covid-19 tests, and expanding the health-care workforce.
The office would galvanize resources to coordinate a robust and seamless domestic and global response. It would identify needs among state and local officials, and advise and facilitate regular, focused communication from federal health and scientific experts to provide states and the public with fact-based tools to minimize the virus’s spread. The White House is uniquely positioned to take into account broader U.S. and global security considerations associated with health emergencies, including their impact on deployed citizens, troops and regional economies, as well as peace and stability. A White House office would have been able to elevate urgent issues fast, so they didn’t linger or devolve to inaction, as with covid-19 testing in the United States. It would be in charge of sharing information and coordinating our public health and humanitarian response with partners and allies. And it would work now to prepare the United States and the world for the next pandemic, including by developing incentives for global leaders and governments to rapidly finance and fill identified gaps.
Pandemics, like weapons of mass destruction and climate change, are transnational threats with potentially existential consequences. No single department or agency can be responsible for handling them. Pandemic threats may not arise every year, but the White House should constantly prepare for them. We can’t afford for federal decision-makers to waste time relearning old lessons when they should be innovating and acting.
Covid-19 wasn’t preventable, but it was predictable. Hopefully, its impact can still be limited. But it is well past time for the U.S. government to show the leadership required for an effective domestic and global response. We need to start sprinting. Come April and May, no one will wish the United States had done less.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/i-ran-the-white-house-pandemic-office-trump-closed-it/ar-BB1192Xy
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Trump’s Dangerously Effective Coronavirus Propaganda
The president’s effort to play down the pandemic is being amplified by a coalition of partisan media, digital propagandists, and White House officials.
McKay Coppins
March 11, 2020
From the moment the coronavirus reached the United States, President Donald Trump has seemed determined to construct an alternate reality around the outbreak. In the information universe he has formed, COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is no worse than the seasonal flu; criticism of his response to it is a “hoax”; and media coverage of the virus is part of a political conspiracy to destroy his presidency.
As with so much of the president’s messaging, this narrative began with tossed-off tweets and impromptu public statements. But in recent days, as U.S. health officials have raised growing concerns about the outbreak, Trump’s efforts to play down the pandemic have been amplified by the same multi-platform propaganda apparatus he’s relying on for reelection in November. From the White House communications office to the MAGA meme warriors of Instagram, from the prime-time partisans on Fox News to the Trump campaign’s Facebook feed, the overarching message has been the same: Pay no attention to the fake-news fearmongering about the coronavirus. It’s all political hype. Things are going great.
Fact-checkers and scientists have scrambled to correct the misinformation coming out of the White House. (No, the virus has not been “contained” in America; no, testing is not available to anybody who wants it; no, people shouldn’t go to work if they’re sick.) But Trump’s message seems to have resonated with his base: A Quinnipiac University poll released this week found that just 35 percent of Republicans are concerned about the virus, compared with 68 percent of Democrats.
The administration’s response to the outbreak has drawn some comparisons to that of the autocratic regimes in China and Iran, where information about the virus was tightly controlled to the detriment of the local populations. But what Trump has actually shown is that he doesn’t need to silence the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or censor the press to undermine politically inconvenient information about a public-health crisis—he can simply use his presidential bullhorn to drown it out.
Scholars who study modern disinformation tactics have identified this approach as “censorship through noise.” (Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist, has described the strategy in blunter terms: “Flood the zone with shit.”) As I reported in my recent feature on the Trump campaign, the purpose of this sort of propaganda blizzard is not to inspire conviction in a certain set of facts; it’s to bombard people with so many contradictory claims, conspiracy theories, what-abouts, and distortions that they simply throw up their hands in confusion and exhaustion.
Spend some time wading through the coronavirus content that’s spreading through the MAGA ecosystem, and it’s easy to see the strategy at work.
Trump supporters have been warned incessantly not to trust mainstream journalistic coverage of the issue. When the market tanked earlier this week, the president blamed it on “fake news.” When White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham appeared on Fox & Friends, she condemned the media for using the virus “as a tool to politicize things and to scare people.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s right-wing media allies are working to minimize the perceived dangers of the coronavirus. “Put it in perspective,” Sean Hannity told his Fox News audience this week. “Twenty-six people were shot in Chicago alone over the weekend. I doubt you heard about it. You notice there’s no widespread hysteria about violence in Chicago. And this has now gone on for years and years and years. By the way, Democratic-run cities, we see a lot of that.” The sentiment was echoed by Tomi Lahren, a Fox Nation host, who invoked California’s homelessness problem to deflect attention from the outbreak: “Call me crazy, but I am far more concerned with stepping on a used heroin needle than I am getting the coronavirus, but maybe that’s just me.”
A key strain of the president’s narrative is that concerns about the coronavirus are being weaponized by bad-faith actors—a notion that has spawned a broad range of conspiracy theories. On Fox Business, Trish Regan accused Trump’s enemies of trying to “create mass hysteria to encourage a market sell-off” that would harm his reelection prospects: “This is impeachment all over again,” she declared. Rush Limbaugh has mused that the president is the target of “virus terrorism.” And on Facebook and Twitter, a meme has begun circulating among Trump fans that darkly suggests a new disease is introduced every election year to influence politics.
Pro-Trump social-media stars have ridiculed people who are afraid of the coronavirus, casting them as ridiculous, or perhaps unmasculine. (“Stop being a baby and go to the gym,” one well-known troll recently wrote beneath a selfie emphasizing his biceps. “Obesity is the real pandemic.”) At the same time, many Republicans are seizing on the outbreak to build support for restrictionist immigration policies and a trade war with China. “We need the Wall more than ever!” Trump tweeted this week.
To the president and his allies, it doesn’t really matter that all these narrative threads don’t perfectly cohere. Muddying the waters is the name of the game, and it’s a strategy that’s carried Trump through numerous political battles over the years.
But sowing strategic doubt about the facts of a global pandemic is fundamentally different from doing it with, say, an impeachment hearing. The dangers are more tangible and immediate to voters, regardless of whether they support Trump. The stakes are higher. And in a crass, political sense, the long-term effectiveness of the effort is limited. Hundreds of new coronavirus cases are being confirmed every day in the U.S. Public events are being canceled, schools are shutting down, containment zones are being implemented by governors. As daily life is disrupted for more and more Americans, Trump’s alternate reality is bound to implode.
Some on the right seem to understand this. Prominent conservative writers such as Ross Douthat and Michael Brendan Dougherty have been covering the outbreak with a sense of urgency. This week, National Review published an editorial criticizing the president’s lackluster response to the virus. Perhaps most notably, Tucker Carlson broke with his prime-time Fox News colleagues this week with a withering monologue that seemed to address Trump without ever saying his name.
“In a crisis, it’s more important than ever to be calm,” Carlson said. “But staying calm is not the same as remaining complacent. It does not mean assuring people that everything will be fine. We don’t know that. Instead, it’s better to tell the truth. That is always the surest sign of strength.”
Will Trump, who has taken cues from Carlson’s show in the past, get the message—or will it be drowned out by the din of the noise machine he helped create?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/trump-coronavirus-threat/607825/
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The American workplace isn't ready for an epidemic. Many Americans have no insurance, many others can ill-afford deductibles, still more can't afford to take off work when not feeling well; more than a third of jobs don't offer sick days, and even where available, they may have been already used, or employees try saving them for more serious illness--all making us extremely vulnerable to epidemics such as COVID-19. Many jobs in America involve low-paying work in the service industry, where employees are in constant contact with, and exposed to, a huge swath of the public on a daily basis. These folks typically don't get sick days or insurance benefits, and can ill-afford to miss any work because of loss of money and the threat of losing their job. Many are ill-educated, and may not pay sufficient heed to health warnings, further exacerbating the spread of the epidemic facing us all.
In plausible worst-case-scenarios given the pattern of the outbreak thus far, the country could experience acute shortages not just in ventilators but also health workers to operate them and care for patients; hospital beds; and masks and other protective equipment. Trump administration facing increasing criticism for not using these many weeks after learning of COVID-19 to prepare increased hospital capacity, stockpile medications, obtain adequate amounts of respirators and other equipment that will be vitally needed in the U.S.
“Even during mild flu pandemics, most of our I.C.U.s are filled to the brim with severely ill patients on mechanical ventilation,” said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an expert on health care preparedness. “I hope and pray Covid-19 turns out to be a moderate pandemic, but if not, we’re in serious trouble,” he said.
With his administration under fire for its handling of the outbreak, President Trump shamelessly sought to falsely transfer blame to his predecessor, President Obama, confusing a policy proposal for better oversight over diagnostic tests--which was never adopted. Public Health Laboratories Association, and even Senate Republicans, refute Trump's lie.
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Why America is so vulnerable to coronavirus
Ryan Cooper
All over the world, governments are scrambling to defend their citizenry from COVID-19, the disease caused by the outbreak of novel coronavirus. So far it seems levels of success have varied; countries like Italy and Iran have struggled so far, while Vietnam and Taiwan have seemingly put forth an efficient and effective response.
The United States, where a major outbreak is clearly developing, however, is in a class by itself. America's atrociously inadequate welfare state makes it by far the most vulnerable rich country to a viral pandemic, and the vicious, right-wing ideology of the Republican Party has wrecked the government's ability to manage crises of any kind.
The national health care system is of course the most important tool for any country trying to fight off an epidemic — all citizens need to be able to get tested, receive treatment, or be quarantined if necessary. If and when a vaccine is developed, the system needs to distribute it to everyone as fast as possible. That means handing it out for free in locations across the country, and perhaps making
The American health care system fails at every one of these tasks. Nearly 30 million Americans are uninsured, and a further 44 million are underinsured — meaning they will likely hesitate to go to the doctor if they start developing COVID-19 symptoms. This problem is seriously exacerbated by the rampant predatory profiteering that infects every corner of the health care system. Indeed, responsible citizens who have gone in for tests have already started getting slammed with multi-thousand dollar bills. A father and daughter who were evacuated from China and then forcibly quarantined for several days (luckily they were not infected) went home to find $3,918 in bills.
If you are working-class person with a $10,000 deductible (not at all uncommon), going to the doctor simply because you have flu-like symptoms (which is how most cases of COVID-19 are experienced) could very easily send you into bankruptcy. If infected, millions of Americans are likely going to take their chances — and keep spreading the virus.
Indeed, U.S. health care is not only by far the worst system among rich countries, it is much worse than that of many middle-income or poorer countries when it comes to confronting a fast-moving epidemic. Distributing a vaccine is not that difficult of a task — World Health Organization workers managed it with smallpox even in desperately poor African countries in the 1970s. You just round up everyone, and give out the shot. But that will be a heavy lift indeed with a health care system geared above all to price-gouge sick people out of as much money as possible. While in theory the government could stand up a one-time free (or cheap) vaccination program, the administration has already ruled that out. "We can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest," said HHS Secretary Alex Azar. That very likely means an eyewateringly-expensive vaccine that tens of millions can't get — we've seen what rapacious pharma companies do with insulin. (Speaking of vaccines, as Ryan Grim points out at The Intercept, Joe Biden voted against a Bernie Sanders amendment to force drug companies to provide drugs funded by public research at a reasonable price.)
It's worth pointing out again that if we had Medicare-for-all, these concerns would vanish at a stroke. People experiencing symptoms would feel free to seek medical care without worrying about breaking the bank, and a vaccine could be distributed by the government through hospitals and clinics at no cost to patients.
But there are still further problems. The United States is one of only a handful of countries (almost all of them desperately poor) with no national sick leave program, which means many workers who come down with COVID-19 will be forced to choose between starving or spreading the disease. Food service workers are especially unlikely to have sick leave from their employers, and are generally not paid well either. So-called "gig economy" companies naturally provide no sick leave either. In China, food delivery services have been critical for feeding cities under lockdown, but in America they are likely to become just another vector of infection.
Finally, there is conservative ideology. As I have written, the Trump administration — under the influence of conservative fanatics like Mick "The Knife" Mulvaney — has deliberately devastated the government's pandemic response capacity. He's cut key personnel, slashed funding, and made sure thousands more Americans have been thrown off their insurance. And while Trump is certainly the most incompetent president in American history, his style of government is not at all out of keeping with typical Republican rule. As Thomas Frank writes in his book The Wrecking Crew, for decades GOP rule has meant rampant corruption and disastrous incompetence. When a Republican is in the White House, unqualified cronies end up in charge of federal emergency management, and American cities and towns end up ruined. Even today, the Trump regime is doing its level best to kick as many people off their health insurance as possible — the Supreme Court just announced it would hear the latest Republican attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act through judicial rule-by-decree.
The conservative movement has served like a bath of hydrofluoric acid on the quality, competence, and basic decency of American institutions. Republicans have all but posted up signs everywhere saying "epidemics welcome here." So now they are resorting to the only thing they know how to do really well — lying, concocting conspiracy theories and blaming Democrats and the media for any bad news. It does not bode well.
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U.S. hospitals brace for ‘tremendous strain’ from new virus
Mar 13, 2020
U.S. hospitals are setting up circus-like triage tents, calling doctors out of retirement, guarding their supplies of face masks and making plans to cancel elective surgery as they brace for an expected onslaught of coronavirus patients.
Depending on how bad the crisis gets, the sick could find themselves waiting on stretchers in emergency room hallways for hospital beds to open up, or could be required to share rooms with others infected. Some doctors fear hospitals could become so overwhelmed that they could be forced to ration medical care.
“This is going to be a fairly tremendous strain on our health system,” warned Dr. William Jaquis, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
The United States is still facing an active flu season, and many hospitals are already running at capacity caring for those patients. The new virus will only add to that burden, said Dr. Bruce Ribner an infectious-disease specialist at Emory University’s medical school.
Government health authorities are taking emergency steps to waive certain laws and regulations to help hospitals deal with the crisis. Hospitals, too, are getting ready.
To keep suspected coronavirus patients from mingling with others in the ER, the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine, set up a tent in the parking lot where people with respiratory symptoms are diverted for testing. Lexington Medical Center in West Columbia, South Carolina, did the same outside its emergency room.
In Seattle, hit by the nation’s biggest cluster of coronavirus deaths, most of them at a suburban nursing home, UW Medicine set up drive-thru testing in a hospital parking garage and has screened hundreds of staff members, faculty and trainees, with nurses reaching through car windows and using swabs to collect specimens from people’s nostrils . Drive-thru testing is expected to be offered to patients as soon as Monday.
This week, the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association and American Nurses Association asked for a presidential emergency declaration that would allow doctors and nurses to work across state lines and would waive certain rules to free up hospital beds. Similar declarations were issued during Hurricane Katrina and the swine flu outbreak.
On Friday, President Donald Trump responded by issuing an emergency declaration and said he was giving the U.S. health secretary authority to waive federal regulations and laws to give doctors and hospitals “flexibility” in treating patients.
Trump also announced a government partnership with major businesses to set up drive-thru testing centers and a website to help people who think they might have the virus. Those testing locations could include parking lots at Walmart, Target, Walgreens and other major chains.
The American Medical Association praised the action. In a statement, Dr. Patrice Harris, AMA’s president, said the emergency declaration is needed to help ensure that the U.S. health care system “has sufficient resources to properly respond to the ongoing outbreak, prevent further spread of illness and keep our communities safe.”
How bad U.S. hospitals will be hit is unclear, in part because mistakes on the part of the government in ramping up widespread testing for the virus have left public health officials uncertain as to how many people are infected.
Officially, the number of cases in the U.S. was put at around 1,300 Friday, with at least 41 deaths. But by some estimates, at least 14,000 people might be infected.
Experts fear that when the problems with testing are resolved, a flood of patients will hit the nation’s emergency rooms. But large-scale testing will also give health authorities a clearer picture of the outbreak, enabling them to allocate resources where they are needed.
“What’s most important now is that we get the testing done,” said Richard Pollack, president of the American Hospital Association.
In hard-hit Italy, doctors have been forced to make agonizing decisions about which critically ill patients receive care. Doctors fear that could happen in the United States, too.
“Studies predict that a moderate outbreak could result in 200,000 patients needing intensive care,” said Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency medicine specialist at George Washington University. “The U.S. only has 100,000 intensive care beds, and most are already occupied. If tens of thousands become sick at once, people will simply not receive the care that they need.”
That would affect not only coronavirus patients but also trauma victims and people suffering heart attacks or strokes, Wen said.
In Wuhan, China, where the outbreak originated in late December, patients died because they couldn’t access care. “We are at risk of that happening in the U.S., too,” Wen said.
Seattle-area scientists are working to estimate how soon infections will overwhelm hospital beds there. Under the worst-case scenario, the number of active infections will exceed the number of beds by a large margin in the next two weeks, the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Washington, said in a report this week.
For most people, the virus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. Most people recover from the virus in a matter of weeks, as has happened in mainland China.
Reacting to reports of dwindling supplies of respirator masks, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted relaxed recommendations this week for protective gear and said looser-fitting surgical masks are OK for doctors and nurses to wear when treating patients who may be sick from the coronavirus.
In another change, the CDC said coronavirus patients can be cared for in single-patient rooms with the door closed and do not need to be placed in specialized airborne-infection isolation rooms.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/u-s-hospitals-brace-for-tremendous-strain-from-new-virus
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Trump immigration policies endanger public health with coronavirus spread
Raul Reyes
As the Trump administration struggles to contain the spread of Coronavirus, its immigration policies may well exacerbate this crisis. The "public charge" rule discourages immigrants from accessing health care. The "Remain in Mexico" policy has created conditions ripe for a viral outbreak along the border. Immigration enforcement actions have sown distrust and fear in Latino communities. Taken together, these measures endanger the well-being of countless Americans.
Consider the administration's controversial "public charge" rule, which was implemented in February. It makes it harder for legal immigrants to obtain a green card if they access federal benefits for which they qualify, like Medicaid, food stamps, and housing vouchers.
In the ongoing litigation over this regulation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conceded that the rule could lead to "increased prevalence of communicable diseases, disenrollment from public programs, and increased use of emergency rooms as a primary care method."
Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy is also potentially harmful to public health. Under this process, asylum-seekers are forced to wait on the Mexican side of the border while their cases are processed here. Nearly 60,000 migrants are currently waiting in Mexico, with thousands living in unsanitary, squalid conditions. As these vulnerable people await humanitarian relief, an outbreak of the virus in their shelters and camps could be devastating. Again, this would not only affect migrants: Due to its highly contagious nature, a coronavirus outbreak along the border would likely expose Border Patrol agents, U.S. troops, and aid workers to the virus too.
Within our borders, the Trump administration has created a less-than-ideal climate for battling a pandemic. The administration's aggressive immigration enforcement actions mean that millions of undocumented people are wary of any interaction with the government, which includes going to the hospital. Health advocates warn that there is a lack of information about coronavirus available in Spanish. And Trump has already demonstrated indifference to the suffering of Latinos; the administration basically ignored Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria, and the president's response to the El Paso massacre was to stage an insensitive photo-op with a baby orphaned by the mass shooting. It's no wonder that advocacy groups are bracing for the administration to resort to more fear mongering and xenophobia about immigrants.
While any administration would be challenged by the Coronavirus outbreak, there are steps that the president can take that would mitigate its spread.
Trump could suspend the implementation of the "public charge" rule or temporarily halt immigration enforcement actions in and around hospitals and medical facilities. The administration could fund coronavirus outreach programs for Latinos. This would be especially useful as Latinos have the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group in the U.S., and are significantly affected by conditions that compromise the immune system, like asthma, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. What the administration should not do is attempt to further politicize this crisis or use it as an excuse for closing our borders. The coronavirus does not discriminate based on immigration status and will not be stopped by a wall.
The coronavirus crisis demands a swift change in the administration's dangerous immigration policies. At stake is nothing less than the lives of immigrants, Latinos - and all Americans.
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Trump Surgeon General: "Four months since this pandemic began, and we've stopped telling people just how very, very few Americans we've tested, we're still not elucidating any real coherent strategy for dealing with COVID-19. Instead of testing the American public to get a handle on this pandemic, confine outbreaks, gain more time, and protect the American people, especially those Americans at high-risk--such as the young, the elderly, those sick or with conditions--we are using the American people as guinea pigs, tracking where they start dying after the epidemic has already taken firm root in their communities! Just remember...DON'T PANIC!!!"
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Republican Rep. Gaetz wore a gas mask in Congress just five days ago, mocking COVID-19 as a hoax! This week, Republicans Sen. Cruz, Rep. Gosar, Rep. Doug Collins, AND Rep. Matt Gaetz all exposed to COVID-19 at CPAC and now are self-quarantining for two weeks. Also, Trump newly-appointed acting Chief of Staff, came into contact with the same individual and is now in isolation! Congressional Republicans and the CPAC organizer then interacted closely afterward with the President, including shaking hands! Rep. Gaetz was at a Mar-a-Lago party with Trump, then flew back to D.C. with Trump on Air Force One, finding out in-flight that he had been exposed, then quarantined on a separate part of the plane! And so, the wheel of karma grinds on, crushing GOP ignorance, to be ever born afresh. Trouble is, they may have infected a whole bunch of other people besides just the President along the way--innocent people. Moreover, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert was also exposed, but CHOSE to return to work in Congress and NOT self-quarantine!! Toxic Typhoid Trump claims not to have been tested! Claims he feels fine, doesn't need testing despite close exposure! WTF is WRONG with these people?!?
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White House told federal health agency to classify coronavirus deliberations
WASHINGTON, March 11 (Reuters) - The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials.
The officials said that dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January in a high-security meeting room at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), a key player in the fight against the coronavirus.
“We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go,” one official said. “These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary.”
The sources said the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification.“This came directly from the White House,” one official said.
The White House insistence on secrecy at the nation’s premier public health organization, which has not been previously disclosed, has put a lid on certain information - and potentially delayed the response to the crisis. COVID19, the disease caused by the virus, has killed about 30 people in the United States and infected more than 1,000 people.
HHS oversees a broad range of health agencies, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which among other things is responsible for tracking cases and providing guidance nationally on the outbreaks.
A high-level former official who helped address public health outbreaks in the George W. Bush administration said “it’s not normal to classify discussions about a response to a public health crisis.”
Attendees at the meetings included HHS Secretary Alex Azar and his chief of staff Brian Harrison, the officials said. Azar and Harrison resisted the classification of the meetings, the sources said.
China's ignorant, regressive reaction to the Wuhan coronavirus demonstrates exactly the kind of danger posed by authoritarian, corrupt governments--which is precisely what Traitor-'n-Thief Trump and Republicans are doing to American government. A very recent article published after this was written echoes the exact same warning: 'Tyranny is fueling the coronavirus pandemic'
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/tyranny-is-fueling-the-coronavirus-pandemic
Even after Beijing officially acknowledged the epidemic and sought to contain it by locking down millions of people, heavy censorship has persisted. In particular, on the popular messaging app WeChat, there have been widespread efforts to stifle discussion of the outbreak.
Lotus Ruan, a researcher with Citizen Lab, said such information controls can be particularly dangerous during a public health emergency, because they can prevent people from getting accurate information.
“The broad censorship of the coronavirus we found is significant because blocking general information during a health crisis can limit the public’s ability to be informed and protect themselves,” she said.
Trump’s coronavirus response puts his authoritarian instincts on full view
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinions-trumps-coronavirus-response-puts-his-authoritarian-instincts-on-full-view/ar-BB10KoIW
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Watched the hearing, saw this happen in real time. Was very gratifying to see Rep. Connelly striking back in righteous indignation! BTC breakdown here succinct, astute, and accurate, as expected. Republicans are simply projecting, and obfuscating, and deceiving, in typical fashion; it is Trump and the GOP whom are politicizing a national emergency health crisis. They care more about their political prospects than they do the lives of their fellow Americans--Republican, Democrat, or other. Will that change as Republicans--pols and voters--watch their loved ones die from this pandemic, when they are finally forced to confront their monumental ignorance and evil head-on? When they can't escape facing the destruction caused by such a pandemic? You really have to wonder.
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Despite knowing of the emergence of COVID-19 in December, and it threat to world health shortly thereafter, Trump did virtually nothing to prepare for the inevitable coming health crisis of a pandemic. Trump administration has had MONTHS to get its act together, yet public health system and hospital networks are NOT prepared for the kind of outbreaks seen in China, South Korea and Italy. We do NOT have the respirators and ventilators needed for the expected numbers. We do NOT have enough oxygen equipment and medications stockpiled. We do NOT have enough medical personnel to handle the expected numbers. We do NOT have enough medical facilities for those kinds of numbers. We do NOT yet even have the training programs in place to handle this epidemic for either health professionals or the public. There should have been a massive national mobilization by our Federal government started months ago to begin preparation of needed medical equipment, supplies, and drugs. Instead, Trump has peddled delusions and denials of the realities, wasting weeks, which will result in the senseless, unforgivable loss of more American lives due directly to his gross ignorance and incompetence.
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GOP and Trump administration: Where the hard reality of COVID-19 pierces the Republican cult bubble world of delusional fantasies, denialism, deceit, supreme ignorance, utter incompetence, and Orwellian governance, exposing them all as charlatans and frauds. Much as needed, we're hoping that doesn't happen; that America escapes the ravages of this disease, and we don't suffer thousands of American citizens dying, with many more becoming critically ill. Tragically, that doesn't seem very likely, and the Trump administration hardly inspires confidence, with all indications to date CONTRARY that they can capably handle such a catastrophe occurring here.
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