Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Chris Cuomo reacts to Trump comment 'nobody likes me'" video.
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TJ
I would have started by not calling the virus a hoax, and pretending it didn't exist for 2 months. I would have listened to the medical experts,
And would not have dismantled the National Security Council directorate that President Obama set up to deal with pandemic outbreaks.
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, that was created by President Obama, and was charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation..
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
But experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
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