Signs missed and steps slowed in U.S. response

[homersapien 11,354]

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/signs-missed-and-steps-slowed-in-trumps-pandemic-response

[Grumps 3,693]

It seems CLEAR that Trump should have closed the borders to ANYONE in December and at the same time spent $6 trillion to bolster the economy. A good leader would have known to do that. Look at Obama, he dealt with a similar outbreak with Ebola in 2013 and the U.S. only had FOUR cases. THAT'S what great leadership does!!! Right homer???

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

2 hours ago, Grumps said:

It seems CLEAR that Trump should have closed the borders to ANYONE in December and at the same time spent $6 trillion to bolster the economy. A good leader would have known to do that. Look at Obama, he dealt with a similar outbreak with Ebola in 2013 and the U.S. only had FOUR cases. THAT'S what great leadership does!!! Right homer???

This is dumb.  Great leadership doesn't publicly deny that there's a problem for long periods of time.  Great leadership listens to experts early and often.  That's the problem with the response we had early in the process.

[homersapien 11,354]

Who didn't see this coming?

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/13/trump-fire-fauci-coronavirus/

Trump retweets call to fire Anthony Fauci after the coronavirus expert says earlier measures ‘could have saved lives’

President Trump retweeted a call to fire his top infectious disease specialist Anthony S. Fauci on Sunday evening, amid mounting criticism of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The call, with the hashtag “FireFauci” came from a former Republican congressional candidate, DeAnna Lorraine, who amassed 1.8 percent of the vote in an open primary challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) this year.

It followed an interview with the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief on CNN’s “State of the Union,” in which Fauci said a stronger early response by the administration to the outbreak “could have saved lives,” but also characterized the decision to implement social distancing guidelines as “complicated.”

“Obviously, it would have been nice if we had a better head start, but I don’t think you could say that we are where we are right now because of one factor,” Fauci said on CNN Sunday. “It’s very complicated.”

Fauci also confirmed a New York Times story saying he and other experts had wanted to begin social and physical distancing measures as early as February.

Trump has often in the past shown his anger with critics within his own administration by retweeting the negative or taunting comments of others, sometimes marginal others like Lorraine, rather than saying anything himself. It allows him to cry “fake news” when the media interprets the retweeted material as reflecting his views.

While he may or may not actually want to fire Fauci, he has used Twitter just to discredit the views of officials with whom he disagrees, retweeting stories and commentary from his favorite news outlets, like Fox News and more recently OANN, the One America News Network.

Fauci, known for his candor but also his diplomacy, has implicitly and explicitly taken issue with Trump on several occasions. Trump demonstrated his apparently increasing irritation last week when he stepped in to stop Fauci from answering a question about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, an unproven drug the president has been touting for treatment of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Fauci has also been skeptical of Trump’s rush to set a date for lightening up on mitigation efforts to get the economy moving as the 2020 election approaches.

Fauci has become a major figure in America because of his prominent role in the White House’s coronavirus task force. He has appeared on television almost daily, standing beside Trump during coronavirus briefings and landing interviews on news programs and even late-night comedy shows. He has become so well-known, people have designed doughnuts, T-shirts and “fan clubs” to celebrate him.

Recent polls have shown Americans trust Fauci much more than they trust Trump, which could rankle the president. Ruh Rho

But any effort to hound out Fauci could also further erode public confidence in the president’s handling of the deadly pandemic.

Fauci is a career government scientist who has never been a partisan figure. First appointed to his position in 1984, Fauci has led the agency, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, under six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush said he has “absolute confidence” in Fauci and the other experts leading the way on the coronavirus outbreak. Bush awarded him the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And Fauci developed a reputation as a skilled public health expert while combating the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

DeAnna Lorraine, the Pelosi challenger who got Trump going, opined in another tweet that she has “seriously heard enough of the experts’ for now” on how to stem the novel coronavirus.

Sunday’s measured comments by Fauci, which did not mention Trump or explicitly criticize the administration and were elicited by questioning by CNN’s Jake Tapper, led a flurry of right-wing commentators to rebuke him. Some reports have indicated the president has been calling advisers seeking their opinions on Fauci’s performance in recent days.

Sorry Fake News, it’s all on tape. I banned China long before people spoke up. Thank you @OANN https://t.co/d40JQkUZg5

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020

Some right-leaning commentators and Trump’s online base have rallied behind the president, taking shots at Fauci as their relationship has grown increasingly strained. Even as the president repeatedly slammed the mainstream media Sunday, he praised OANN.

Stuck inside the White House because of social distancing limitations, Trump spent his Easter Sunday railing against the “Fake News,” slamming publications ranging from the New York Times and even Fox News, after criticism of the federal government’s slow response to the coronavirus pandemic ramped up over the weekend.

The president attacked the journalists after a New York Times report that the Trump administration had information that could have led to social distancing precautions much earlier and blamed the president’s slow response for the scale of the virus’s spread and rising death toll.

Similar criticisms were echoed in many news reports Sunday, sparking heated retorts from Trump even for Fox News.

In an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, also said the U.S. would “be in a much better position” if the Trump administration had acted more quickly. That interview inspired Trump to blast the right-leaning news network and Wallace personally, calling him a “Mike Wallace wannabe,” a reference to Chris Wallace’s father, the legendary investigative broadcaster who died in 2012.

“What the hell is happening to @FoxNews,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “It’s a whole new ballgame over there!”

Just watched Mike Wallace wannabe, Chris Wallace, on @FoxNews. I am now convinced that he is even worse than Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Meet the Press(please!), or the people over at Deface the Nation. What the hell is happening to @FoxNews. It’s a whole new ballgame over there!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2020

The personal attack on Wallace drew a rebuke from Jedediah Bila, a weekend co-host of one of the president’s favorite shows, “Fox & Friends.”

“Enough with the 3rd grade name-calling,” she said. “Chris is doing his job.”

Enough with the 3rd grade name-calling. Chris is doing his job. The news should not be any president’s friend, ally, or buddy. If it bothered you when Obama complained about Fox News, but you’re silent on this complete nonsense, then just stop. Seriously. Enough. https://t.co/uW1Dw275Or

— Jedediah Bila (@JedediahBila) April 12, 2020

Here are relevant excerpts from Sunday’s Fauci interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: The New York Times reported yesterday that you and other top officials wanted to recommend social and physical distancing guidelines to President Trump as far back as the third week of February, but the administration didn’t announce such guidelines to the American public until March 16, almost a month later. Why?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it’s not. But we — it is what it is. We are where we are right now.

TAPPER: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay-at-home measures had started third week of February, instead of mid-March?

FAUCI: You know, Jake, again, it’s the what would have, what could have. It’s — it’s very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously, you could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.

But what goes into those kinds of decisions is — is complicated. But you’re right. I mean, obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different.

[homersapien 11,354]

Power Up: #FireFauci signals coronavirus blame game is in full throttle

At The White House

THE BLAME GAME IS ON: Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, confirmed yesterday that lives could have been saved had President Trump made the call to shut the country down sooner as the novel coronavirus began to spread throughout the United States.

• “I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives,” he said on CNN's “State of the Union” on CNN. “Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. But you’re right. Obviously, if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down.”

#FireFauci? Fauci's comments were not lost on the president, who retweeted and responded to a post with a #FireFauci hashtag, claiming he had acted early to contain the disease by banning travel from China — a move Fauci was initially against. It was one of several tweets issued by the president on Easter Sunday in defense of his handling of the crisis. 

• “If the Fake News Opposition Party is pushing, with all their might, the fact that President Trump ‘ignored early warnings about the threat,’ then why did Media & Dems viciously criticize me when I instituted a Travel Ban on China? They said ‘early & not necessary.’ Corrupt Media!” he tweeted yesterday afternoon.

Fauci's admission comes on the heels of several damning media reports detailing Trump's repeated dismissal of warnings from top White House advisers and his own public health officials as the U.S. deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, topped 21,000 over the weekend.

• “It did not have to happen this way,” our colleagues wrote earlier this month, outlining multiple opportunities — starting as far back as Jan. 3 — for Trump to address the global pandemic also devastating the U.S. economy. 
• And over the weekend, the New York Times published a deep dive laying out a series of missed opportunities and pivot points inside the administration that could have potentially changed the course of the disease's wrath.

Those news stories show that Jan. 3 until March 16, the president could have chose a different, more aggressive course to tackle what would become the biggest crisis of his presidency.

A timeline: 

Jan. 3: The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak in China, according to our colleagues Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller. “Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief,” they write. Advisers in the White House, however, struggled to get Trump to take the threat seriously.

Jan. 18: The secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, was finally able to speak with Trump, who was at Mar-a-Lago, and provide him with his first briefing about the virus. But the conversation was quickly derailed: “When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said,” according to our colleagues Shane Harris, Greg, Josh and Ellen.

Jan. 21: The first confirmed U.S. case is announced in Washington state.

Jan. 22: During an interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump told CNBC he was “not at all” worried about a potential pandemic: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China … It’s going to be just fine.”

Jan. 29: The top White House adviser on trade and China hawk, Peter Navarro, issued a memo starkly warning “that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death,” the New York Times's Maggie Haberman reported. Trump did create the coronavirus task force that same day, but he was still publicly downplaying the virus.

Jan 30: Despite recommendations from his top health advisers against doing so, “Mr. Trump would approve the limits on travel from China the next day, though it would be weeks before he began taking more aggressive steps to head off spread of the virus,” per Haberman. 

Feb. 5: Azar submitted an emergency request for over $4 billion to the White House budget officials after HHS leaders sent over two letters asking the office “to use its transfer authority to shift $136 million of department funds into pools that could be tapped for combating the coronavirus,” Yasmeen, Josh, Ellen and Greg report. “Azar and his aides also began raising the need for a multibillion-dollar supplemental budget request to send to Congress.” 

A shouting match ensued in the Situation Room that day in response to Azar's ask, our colleagues report: “A deputy in the budget office accused Azar of preemptively lobbying Congress for a gigantic sum that White House officials had no interest in granting.”

Feb. 6: After the World Health Organization shipped 250,000 test kits to labs around the world, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “began distributing 90 kits to a smattering of state-run health labs,” per Yasmeen, Josh, Ellen and Grerg. “Almost immediately, the state facilities encountered problems.”

Feb. 29: The testing problems continued and it wasn't until Feb. 29 that the Food and Drug Administration issued a new policy allowing private labs to proceed with their own tests.

Feb. 21: Dr. Robert Kadlec, the top disaster response official at HHS, convened the coronavirus task force to recalibrate the administration's virus response, according to the New York Times's Eric Lipton, David Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Michael Shear, Mark Mazzetti, and Julian Barnes. “The group — including [Fauci]; Dr. Robert R. Redfield of the [CDC], and Mr. Azar, who at that stage was leading the White House task force — concluded they would soon need to move toward aggressive social distancing, even at the risk of severe disruption to the nation’s economy and the daily lives of millions of Americans.” 

Feb. 23: Navarro penned a second memo that was circulated in the West Wing, laying “the groundwork for supplemental requests from Congress, with the warning: ‘This is NOT a time for penny-pinching or horse trading on the Hill,’” per Axios's Jonathan Swan. In that memo, Navarro predicted a “full-blown” pandemic “could infect as many as 100 million Americans, with a loss of life of as many as 1-2 million souls.”

Feb. 24: “ … Dr. Kadlec and the others decided to present Mr. Trump with a plan titled 'Four Steps to Mitigation,' telling the president that they needed to begin preparing Americans for a step rarely taken in United States history,” per Lipton, Sanger, Haberman, Shear, Mazzetti, and Barnes. “But over the next several days, a presidential blowup and internal turf fights would sidetrack such a move. The focus would shift to messaging and confident predictions of success rather than publicly calling for a shift to mitigation.” 

Feb. 29: A Washington state man with an underlying health condition became the first person to die of coronavirus in the United States.

March 11: Trump delivered an Oval Office address on the virus in which he announced the ban of all travel from Europe for 30 days and called to buoy the economy. But the president still did not recommend social distancing.   

March 16: Trump agreed to implement new and stronger guidelines issued by the CDC for Americans to practice social distancing and avoid gatherings of groups of 10 or more people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/powerup/2020/04/13/powerup-firefauci-signals-coronavirus-blame-game-is-in-full-throttle/5e937fc988e0fa101a760f45/?itid=hp_hp-top-table-high-8-12_firefauci-835am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

 

[IronMan70 3,277]

In their attempt to write (or rewrite) a timeline they left out many key events, most especially prior to late Feb.  

5 hours ago, homersapien said:

Jan. 21: The first confirmed U.S. case is announced in Washington state.

Jan. 22: During an interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump told CNBC he was “not at all” worried about a potential pandemic: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China … It’s going to be just fine.”

Where do you think POTUS got this info about everything under control ? Take a guess. 

 

5 hours ago, homersapien said:

Jan 30: Despite recommendations from his top health advisers against doing so, “Mr. Trump would approve the limits on travel from China the next day, though it would be weeks before he began taking more aggressive steps to head off spread of the virus,” per Haberman. 

In spite of what Dr. Fauci may or may not have said (some of it out of context) on CNN over the weekend, the truth is that he was saying something totally different back then. 

Feb 17: A full 18 days after POTUS limits travel from China.

*Dr Fauci, task force advisor to the President, gives a lengthy interview to the USA Today Editorial Board, using these phrases about the coronavirus. Excerpts from the article.

*'Fauci doesn't want people to worry about coronavirus, the danger of which is "just minuscule." But he does want them to take precautions against the "influenza outbreak, which is having its second wave.'

*"We have more kids dying of flu this year at this time than in the last decade or more," he said. "At the same time people are worrying about going to a Chinese restaurant."

*"Fauci offered advice for people who want to protect against the "real and present danger" of seasonal flu, which also would protect against the hypothetical danger of coronavirus. 

*"Wash your hands as frequently as you can. Stay away from crowded places where people are coughing and sneezing. If in fact you are coughing and sneezing, cover your mouth," he says.

*"You know, all the things that we say each year."

*"People start saying, 'Should I start wearing a mask?' Now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask."

 *"I was getting calls from people in Sacramento saying, 'Can I get on an airplane to go to Seattle?'" Fauci said. "Like, what? What does that got to do with anything?"

 

 

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

 

Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY Published 5:26 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2020 | Updated 11:41 a.m. ET Feb. 19, 2020

 

 

 

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases discusses coronavirus. He says to skip the masks and take flu precautions. USA TODAY

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be testing for the coronavirus in people in five major cities who show up at clinics with flu-like symptoms but who test negative for the seasonal varieties.

If that testing shows the virus has slipped into the country in places federal officials don't know about, "we've got a problem," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told USA TODAY's Editorial Board Monday.

Short of that, Fauci says skip the masks unless you are contagious, don't worry about catching anything from Chinese products and certainly don't avoid Chinese people or restaurants.  

"Whenever you have the threat of a transmissible infection, there are varying degrees from understandable to outlandish extrapolations of fear," Fauci said. 

Government agencies, including Fauci's own at the National Institutes of Health, are being inundated with calls and emails from nervous people, just as they were during the Ebola and SARS scares. 

Why did US break Diamond Princess coronavirus quarantine? 'Something went awry'

 

Fauci recalled how a nurse who was infected with Ebola took a flight to Ohio because she was asymptomatic and not at risk of infecting anyone. People everywhere suddenly thought all planes were unsafe. 

"I was getting calls from people in Sacramento saying, 'Can I get on an airplane to go to Seattle?'" Fauci said. "Like, what? What does that got to do with anything?"

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks to the USA TODAY Editorial Board on Monday, Feb. 17, 2020. -- Photo by Hannah Gaber, USA TODAY Staff ORG XMIT: HG 138551 Anthony Fauci 02/17/2020 [Via MerlinFTP Drop] (Photo: Hannah Gaber, USAT)

 

Other advice from Fauci and Dr. Stephen Hahn, Food and Drug Administration commissioner,  includes: 

•Chinese products. Coronavirus is predominantly spread in the air from humans to humans. "Inanimate things" that are placed in a container in China and sent to the U.S. don't carry any risk of transmitting the virus, Fauci said. Neither do medications made in China.  

Imported shipments of FDA-regulated products, including from China, are reviewed by the FDA and have to meet the same standards as domestic products, Hahn said in a statement late Friday.

 

"We want to reassure the public that at this time there is no evidence that food or food packaging have been associated with transmission and no reason to be concerned," Hahn said. "Further, there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with imported goods, including food and drugs for humans and pets, and there have not been any cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. associated with imported goods."

Dr. Stephen Hahn is the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administation. (Photo: Jayne O'Donnell)

 

•Scam solutions. A real concern, though, could be the fake remedies for coronavirus that have surfaced from scam artists who capitalize on people's fears. Hahn said the FDA has set up a cross-agency task force to closely monitor for fraudulent products and false product claims about coronavirus.

The agency has asked major retailers to monitor their "online marketplaces" for such products, which are subject to FDA investigation and potential enforcement action. The task force has already worked with retailers to remove more than a dozen of these types of product listings online. 

 

•Masks. The only people who need masks are those who are already infected to keep from exposing others. The masks sold at drugstores aren't even good enough to truly protect anyone, Fauci said.

"If you look at the masks that you buy in a drug store, the leakage around that doesn't really do much to protect you," he said. "People start saying, 'Should I start wearing a mask?' Now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask."

Fauci also doesn't want people to worry, but many are. 

Nancy Lamascus-Smith of Portland, Oregon, got an Amazon package delivered from China this month.

"I jokingly asked my sister if I should be concerned," Lamascus-Smith said. "Her reply was to wash my hands and stay away from her!"

Ashley Nicole Pate, who lives near Huntsville, Alabama, also became worried when she received an Amazon package from China. Her concerns increased when she became sick a week later, so she went to the doctor to get tested for the flu. The test was negative and she was sent home with antibiotics for bronchitis.

Fauci doesn't want people to worry about coronavirus, the danger of which is "just minuscule." But he does want them to take precautions against the "influenza outbreak, which is having its second wave."

"We have more kids dying of flu this year at this time than in the last decade or more," he said. "At the same time people are worrying about going to a Chinese restaurant. The threat is (we have) a pretty bad influenza season, particularly dangerous for our children."

Fauci offered advice for people who want to protect against the "real and present danger" of seasonal flu, which also would protect against the hypothetical danger of coronavirus.

"Wash your hands as frequently as you can. Stay away from crowded places where people are coughing and sneezing. If in fact you are coughing and sneezing, cover your mouth," he says.

"You know, all the things that we say each year."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/02/17/nih-disease-official-anthony-fauci-risk-of-coronavirus-in-u-s-is-minuscule-skip-mask-and-wash-hands/4787209002/

 

 

[homersapien 11,354]

Trump’s deadly negligence is now demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt

By

Michael Gerson 

April 13, 2020 at 4:21 p.m. EDT

 

Those who complain about the media’s relentless focus on President Trump during a pandemic have yet to internalize the horrendous reality of his pandemic response: Trump’s failures of leadership and character have increased the death toll and continue to threaten lives.

For me, that is a difficult sentence to write. Having spent time in the executive branch, I realize how complicated presidential decisions can be. America’s chief executives are often forced to make momentous choices, based on scant information, under the pressure of a ticking clock. It is easier to attack such decisions than to make them.

But the fact of Trump’s deadly negligence is now demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. Detailed investigative articles in The Post and New York Times have established that there were six weeks of denial and dithering between a credible warning about the virus and decisive action by the president. It is now evident that Trump:

• ignored early intelligence reports of a possible pandemic;
• delayed the ramp up of practical preparations;
• was often more focused on political considerations, on the news cycle and on stock market performance than on epidemiological reality;
• deceptively played down what he knew to be a rising threat;
• coddled China when it should have been confronted;
• instinctively distrusted experts and seemed unable to absorb simple information and sound advice;
• lashed out at aides who took the crisis seriously;
• shifted reluctantly and belatedly from a strategy of containment to mitigation;
• is strangely obsessed with unproven treatments for the novel coronavirus; and
• has systemically lied about the promptness of his own response.

These accounts reveal a White House staffed by incompetent loyalists, distracted by turnover and riven by feuds. A White House carefully pruned and shaped to resemble the chaos in Trump’s mind.

I urge you to read the articles themselves. In this case, it is a duty of informed citizenship. Americans need to understand the epic smallness of our president in times that demanded something more.

All this is bad enough. But our interest, unfortunately, should not be merely forensic. Trump draws bitterness and resentment out of his experience of the world. He does not draw lessons or wisdom. And he remains just as dangerous to public health on the back side of the curve as he was on the front.

For evidence, look no further than the president’s retweeted attack on Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: an attempt to inject the hashtag “FireFauci” into the sick Internet culture of the Trump right. Such bullying is designed to intimidate. But for what? The tweet Trump passed along complained of a CNN interview in which Fauci said: “You could logically say, that if you had a process that was ongoing, and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.”

In fact, denying such obvious facts is Trump’s definition of political loyalty. If reality casts critical light on Trump, the president dictates that reality must give way. We must affirm that Trump’s inaugural crowd was larger than President Barack Obama’s, even though it was smaller. We must agree that the call to the president of Ukraine was “perfect,” even though it was corrupt.

Fauci goes out of his way to be deferential to the president — as he was in the CNN interview in question. But Fauci, who was honest about early testing failures at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will not dissemble about the late turn to mitigation. And so Trump has threatened his job. (The inevitable, but not particularly credible, White House denial of Trump’s intent followed.)

Consider the moral calculus for a moment. No reasonable person denies that Fauci’s engagement has made the U.S. response to the pandemic more effective. No one doubts that he is highly competent, informed by tremendous experience and motivated by the public interest. No one questions that his continued advice on the far side of the infection curve remains essential to public health.

This means that the president is perfectly willing to play political games by threatening an action that would risk U.S. lives. Trump conducted his tantrum by putting a gun to the head of the American people. This is vanity swollen into infamy.

The fulfillment of Trump’s threat against Fauci would, I assume, result in some kind of a national uprising. But the threat itself remains revealing. We look and look for some limit to the president’s irresponsibility and shamelessness. But there is no bottom.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/13/trumps-deadly-negligence-is-now-demonstrated-beyond-reasonable-doubt/

[homersapien 11,354]

20 minutes ago, IronMan70 said:

In their attempt to write (or rewrite) a timeline they left out many key events.  

Where do you think POTUS got this info about everything under control ? Take a guess. 

 

In spite of what Dr. Fauci may or may not said ( some out of context) on CNN over the weekend, the truth is that he was saying something totally different back then. 

Feb 17: A full 18 days after POTUS limits travel from China.

 

 

This has been covered. 

Dr. Fauci made those statements before the Chinese admitted the facts concerning coronavirus transmissibility and lethality.

But thanks for verifying you are pushing the "it's all Dr. Fauci's fault" line of propaganda. 

Dear Leader would be pleased with you.

[AUFAN78 3,890]

@homersapienHomey, Dr. Fauci just called you and your ilk fake news. Watching live. I agree with him. He was in the room at every point of contention. Your favorite fake news press wasn't. A very important distinction that these fake news puppets need to comprehend. I doubt they will given IQ deficiency.  Bless your heart.

[IronMan70 3,277]

25 minutes ago, homersapien said:

This has been covered. 

Dr. Fauci made those statements before the Chinese admitted the coronavirus was even transmissible among humans.

But thanks for verifying you are pushing the "it's all Dr. Fauci's fault" line of propaganda. 

Dear Leader would be pleased with you.

Did I say it was ALL Dr Fauci's fault ? Another strawman. Let me get this straight, according to your thought process Dr Fauci can use the excuse that China didn't admit the virus was transmissible among humans. Therefore, since Fauci was the one advising POTUS that would mean he gets to use the same excuse ? Thanks, that makes this a lot easier. But let me ask you this question. Why did you put out a timeline with anything prior to that if you felt people should get a pass prior to the China info event ? Unless....

BTW, live at the presser right now, Fauci just clarified the CNN interview and criticized CNN for their misinterpretation and taking things out of context. Now POTUS is laying out the timeline and using video clips. 

[AUFAN78 3,890]

13 minutes ago, IronMan70 said:

Did I say it was ALL Dr Fauci's fault ? Another strawman. Let me get this straight, according to your thought process Dr Fauci can use the excuse that China didn't admit the virus was transmissible among humans. Therefore, since Fauci was the one advising POTUS that would mean he gets to use the same excuse ? Thanks, that makes this a lot easier. But let me ask you this question. Why did you put out a timeline with anything prior to that if you felt people should get a pass prior to the China info event ? Unless....

BTW, live at the presser right now, Fauci just clarified the CNN interview and criticized CNN for their misinterpretation and taking things out of context. Now POTUS is laying out the timeline and using video clips. 

Don't think for a second these lies, misrepresentations and taking things out of context by these pathetic cowards will stop. These people have zero moral character. Zero. 

CNN has set such a low bar for reporting I'm not sure even Washington Post can get under it.

But hey, our little effeminate men here love them. Go figure.  

[SaltyTiger 7,764]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

Dear Leader would be pleased with you.

Dr. Fauci seemed to be pleased with all responses from "Dear Leader" per his presser this afternoon Brother Homer. Surprised you are not yelling for him to be fired. 

[AUFAN78 3,890]

Prime example of lies and misrepresentations.

http://hopelesslypartisan.com/the-paragraphs-of-the-day-387/

[AUFAN78 3,890]

Sleazy partisan politics to boot.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/13/bashing_of_fox_news_over_covid_coverage_is_hypocritical_142929.html

[homersapien 11,354]

1 hour ago, SaltyTiger said:

Dr. Fauci seemed to be pleased with all responses from "Dear Leader" per his presser this afternoon Brother Homer. Surprised you are not yelling for him to be fired. 

Trump?    I am most certainly pressing for Trump to be fired.

Fauci - like any other competent person remaining in Trump's orbit - knows how to handle (flatter) him. 

[homersapien 11,354]

2 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

@homersapienHomey, Dr. Fauci just called you and your ilk fake news. Watching live. I agree with him. He was in the room at every point of contention. Your favorite fake news press wasn't. A very important distinction that these fake news puppets need to comprehend. I doubt they will given IQ deficiency.  Bless your heart.

What it really means when Trump calls a story ‘fake news’

President Trump has rhapsodized in recent weeks about how special Easter is for him. He never quite specified why that is, but for a while it was the date he had in mind for ending the national shutdown — the day on which he envisioned Americans crowding the church pews once again.

And yet he spent much of the holiest weekend on the Christian calendar in an uproar over crushing news reports that make it clear his early response to coronavirus warnings was a failure — that cost thousands of human lives.

On April 4, The Washington Post reported that it took 70 days from the time Trump was first notified of the seriousness of the coronavirus threat for him to treat it “not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens.” The Post detailed how that 10-week period “now stands as critical time that was squandered.”

This landmark piece of reporting was followed a week later by a New York Times investigation based in part on a stunning chain of emails from dozens of experts in government agencies, health organizations and universities. The “Red Dawn” emails make it undeniable that the alarm was raised months ago, while Trump was assuring the nation that the virus was nothing more serious than the flu and would soon disappear.

These two pieces of journalism “are the real-time Pentagon Papers of this administration’s pandemic disaster,” wrote journalist James Fallows.

In other words, they are the historic documentation of devastating failure at the highest level.

At some level, the president knows just how bad they make him look. And so, he lashed out in all directions, relying on his tried-and-true technique of trying to shoot the messengers.

The Times reporting, he tweeted, was “fake, just like the ‘paper’ itself.” He took aim at Fox News’s well-respected Chris Wallace (who had cited the Times report on his Sunday show) in juvenile terms that compared him to other Sunday hosts and his journalist-father, Mike Wallace. He managed a shot at The Washington Post, and at Fox News overall.

In short, he was on a tear — badly rattled by what he knew of the reporting, whether he had read it himself or not.

As the weekend came to a close, CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired another tough piece of reporting. This one drove home the appalling spectacle of American health-care workers who lack the basic protective equipment that they need to do their front-line jobs — some of whom have been issued a single mask for the entire week or are forced to wear garbage bags instead of surgical gowns.

It featured an interview with Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, who gushed about how the government is moving on “Trump Time” — that is, swiftly and efficiently, at least in Navarro’s rosy view. He dismissed the reports of the administration’s lengthy delay on the coronavirus response as “fake news,” and demanded that interviewer Bill Whitaker “show me the money.”

CBS apparently didn’t have the smoking gun in time for Whitaker’s sit-down with Navarro, but there it was on Sunday’s broadcast — a late-January memo from Navarro himself warning that the coming pandemic could cause $5.7 trillion economic loss and the deaths of “half a million souls” in America.

Historians will turn to this documentation when they evaluate how the administration responded. The president doesn’t seem to care about that, or may consider it a lost cause. What he hopes is that Americans — voters — will believe him when he says the news is fake.

But the history of the Trump administration has shown that the loudest cries of “fake news” accompany the most damning journalism. Coming from him, the phrase now dependably has another meaning: “all-too-accurate reporting that damages my reputation.”

A sizable segment of the nation has been willing to believe the president who tells them to believe only him, even when the proof is right there before their eyes.

A memo, an email chain, dozens of sources inside government — for some, none of it matters.

In January 2016, at an Iowa rally, Trump famously quipped that his base of loyalists would stay with him even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. He wouldn’t lose one voter, he predicted.

His constant disparagement of the traditional news media has been a key element of that loyalty: Journalists are the enemy. They are to be hated, not believed.

Now that more than 22,000 Americans have died, with slow response and denial at least partly to blame, “fake news” has gotten all too real.

Americans who care about the truth would do well to remember what the president’s favorite phrase really means.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/what-it-really-means-when-trump-calls-a-story-fake-news/2020/04/13/56fbe2c0-7d8c-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html

[AUFAN78 3,890]

3 minutes ago, homersapien said:

What it really means when Trump calls a story ‘fake news’

 

Hey dumba$$, it was Fauci that called it fake news. Pay attention you old fool.

[homersapien 11,354]

2 hours ago, IronMan70 said:

Did I say it was ALL Dr Fauci's fault ? Another strawman. Let me get this straight, according to your thought process Dr Fauci can use the excuse that China didn't admit the virus was transmissible among humans. Therefore, since Fauci was the one advising POTUS that would mean he gets to use the same excuse ? Thanks, that makes this a lot easier. But let me ask you this question. Why did you put out a timeline with anything prior to that if you felt people should get a pass prior to the China info event ? Unless....

BTW, live at the presser right now, Fauci just clarified the CNN interview and criticized CNN for their misinterpretation and taking things out of context. Now POTUS is laying out the timeline and using video clips. 

Fauci quickly changed his position as he obtained more information. 

Trump did not.  He wasted 70 days which were critical.

And you most certainly blamed Fauci for providing incorrect advice to Trump and the country. 

Stop weaseling.

And Trump is spinning the facts in full campaign mode. He knows he's in trouble. 

 

[homersapien 11,354]

10 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

Hey dumba$$, it was Fauci that called it fake news. Pay attention you old fool.

I know you claimed he did. But unless you can produce the quote or a clip, I say you are lying.

Trump more or less invented the term "Fake News" and fools like you just lap it up. I presented the "Fake News" piece - which explains Trump's logic - to illustrate the vacuousness of the term, including your use of it in this particular case.

So don't jump to conclusions and quit projecting.  You don't possess the cognition for it.

[AUFAN78 3,890]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

I know you claimed he did. But unless you can come up with the quote or a clip, I say you are lying.

Trump more or less invented the term Fake News and fools like you just lap it up. I presented the "Fake News" piece which explains the logic of it to illustrate the vacuousness of the term, including your use of it in this particular case.

Don't jump to conclusions and quit projecting.  You don't possess the cognition for it.

 

8 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Fauci quickly changed his position as he obtained more information. 

Trump did not.  He wasted 70 days which were critical.

And you most certainly blamed Fauci for providing incorrect advice to Trump and the country. 

Stop weaseling.

And Trump is spinning the facts in full campaign mode. He knows he's in trouble. 

 

Another lie. We are going to start calling you pinocchio. Pathetic. You should be ashamed. 

[AUFAN78 3,890]

5 minutes ago, homersapien said:

I know you claimed he did. But unless you can come up with the quote or a clip, I say you are lying.

Trump more or less invented the term Fake News and fools like you just lap it up. I presented the "Fake News" piece which explains the logic of it to illustrate the vacuousness of the term, including your use of it in this particular case.

Don't jump to conclusions and quit projecting.  You don't possess the cognition for it.

I suggest you go back and watch the clip pinocchio.

Literally every piece you submit is fake. 

Your limited IQ is showing.

[homersapien 11,354]

5 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

 

Another lie. We are going to start calling you pinocchio. Pathetic. You should be ashamed. 

More projection. 

Got that Fauci quote or clip yet?  The one that shows Fauci saying "fake news"?

You are the one who is lying.

[AUFAN78 3,890]

Of course I have both the quote and clip. Question is DO YOU? SFB.

[homersapien 11,354]

Just now, AUFAN78 said:

Of course I have both the quote and clip. Question is DO YOU? SFB.

No you don't.  Otherwise you'd present it.

[AUFAN78 3,890]

4 minutes ago, homersapien said:

No you don't.  Otherwise you'd present it.

For you? No, probably not. Do you not have YouTube goofball? His name is Dr. Fauci. Do your homework.