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Truth is yet another victim of this epidemic

Secretary Azar on testing availability: “We had the tests right away, as soon as we got the genetic sequence from China,” he said. “There has not been an instance where a public health official needed to test somebody for the novel coronavirus where they couldn’t get tested.”

Meanwhile in the real world: “Even now, after weeks of mounting frustration toward federal agencies over flawed test kits and burdensome rules, states with growing cases such as New York and California are struggling to test widely for the coronavirus. The continued delays have made it impossible for officials to get a true picture of the scale of the growing outbreak, which has now spread to at least 36 states and Washington, D.C.

Medicynical note: maybe it’s just careful parsing of facts as he sees them but it seems to me to be an obvious lie. In fact, many patients now testing positive were denied testing because the initial CDC test was flawed and/or because of the lack of availability of tests. The political appointee Trump kowtowers in this administration have no credibility. They need to turn over the management of the epidemic to CDC and NIH careerists……..and I do mean Pence, Azar, and Redfield among others. They can’t seem to tell the truth.

“The paradox of this moment is that we’ve trained ourselves to be maximally selfish and catastrophically distrustful in the very eye of a health crisis that will be exponentially worse for all of us unless we can reinstate norms, reflexive selflessness, trust in science, and facts. This will be a strange kind of natural experiment in whether altruism and compassion are in fact irretrievably dead in America, and thus far, neither the federal government nor the right-wing media that exists to support it appears fully aware of the downsides.”

Medicynical note: Can a “leader” (sic) who never admits he’s made an error backtrack and allow those more expert to manage this growing disaster. And guess what, the primary concern at this time should be protecting citizens not bailing out the shale oil industry.

The sudden realization that the President of the United States is either a ignorant fool or and elderly gentleman on the edge of dementia.

Medicynical note: The emperor has no clothes.

This actually happened…….today.

“The president touted the accuracy of the test to detect the coronavirus, which members of his administration have acknowledged is not available to all who wants it, declaring it was “perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.””
And
“But his messaging was more haphazard at the Atlanta-based CDC. Despite calling this week for bipartisanship during the crisis, he said he told Vice President Mike Pence not to be complimentary during his Thursday meeting with Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, where more than a dozen people have died, because “he is a snake.””
And
“Trump also said he talked on the phone with California Gov. Gavin Newsom about the 3,500 people stuck on a cruise ship anchored off the coast of California. Trump, at the CDC, advocated for the passengers to remain on the ship — in part so they would not count against the total number of victims in the United States. He did say he would defer to the medical experts.”
And
“The president, while touring the CDC, also boasted about his ability to understand the virus, even though he has repeatedly misstated how long it would take for a vaccine to be developed and available.

“You know my Uncle was a great — he was at MIT. He taught at MIT for a record number of years. He was a great super genius, Dr. John Trump,” the president said. “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. … Maybe I have a natural ability.”

Medicynical note: His look is that of a person on a day-pass from an institution.  His rants are those of a sick unbalanced intellectually limited individual. He is a national embarrassment.

“Fighting has resumed in Afghanistan after the Taliban ended a partial truce with government troops, casting doubt on peace talks scheduled for next week.”

“Dozens of incidents in more than 16 provinces left eight militants and six civilians dead, officials said. Eight security personnel were also killed.”

“Meanwhile Donald Trump says he had a “very good talk” with a Taliban leader.” (Emphasis medicynic)

Medicynical note: like everything that Trump chooses to involve himself with, he is at best poorly informed and at worst intellectually unable to understand.

Medicynical note: Trump’s fatal delay. After decapitating the government’s epidemic response team Trump’s appointees reacted too slowly to the risk that the epidemic would spread to here. No test kits were distributed for use by the states. No early diagnoses of the infection were made and now people are dying.

Trump’s hoax is Trump.

There have been two deaths in Washington State in the past two days from a hoax according to our out of touch president. The case count is increasing daily and sadly, despite the first occurrence of this disease in China in December and the fact that countries all over the world have experienced outbreaks, the United States has very limited testing capability.

Medicynical note: Asleep at the wheel, Trump cut the NSC division set up to respond to worldwide epidemic situations by the Obama administration. They also cut many millions of dollars (and proposed more this year) from the CDC budget dedicated to following and responding to epidemics worldwide………including experienced staff.

Complicating the lack of a competent response is our leader’s (sic) belief that it couldn’t happen here. Now he and his media minions including the recently beknighted Rush Limbaugh, are calling the concerns about the potentially serious epidemic a hoax…….just as they have deemed the problem of global warming from human activities a hoax.

And imagine, the US was once a world leader.

There is little doubt that Bernie is Trump’s choice for Democratic nominee.

“According to Eichenwald, the book includes damning material such as the fact that Sanders was on unemployment until his mid-30s, that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to Texas where it would be dumped in a poor Hispanic community, that he honeymooned in the Soviet Union, and that he appeared at a 1985 rally in Nicaragua at which Sandinista supporters chanted “Here, there / the Yankee will die.” And then there’s Sanders’ fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men.”

“After the Trump campaign and Fox News got through weaponizing this research, the usual conservative charges against Sanders – that his domestic program would cost nearly $100tn over the next decade, that he would ban individual health insurance, send taxes into the stratosphere, and sympathize with terrorists and leftwing regimes – would seem almost benign. “

Medicynical note: He’s really much too old and way too controversial–read that as left. In addition he’s never been a Democrat and has been an ineffective Senator. It takes great imagination to believe that at age 80 he’d be able to effectively implement his uber aggressive and extremely costly agenda. There must be better a better candidate.

Happening now. Unpredictable changes some of which will be catastrophic.

“In an event that is unprecedented in 40 years of record-keeping, temperatures over Antarctica rose rapidly, causing the polar vortex over the Southern Hemisphere to break down and even reverse direction. This had cascading effects on weather patterns: The westerly winds that blow across the Southern Ocean shifted northward. Cold fronts moved across Australia, bringing intense wind but little rain.”

And

“By turning forests that once absorbed carbon into flaming carbon sources, the wildfires are contributing to the very problem that makes them more likely. Satellite observations suggest that emissions from the fires may be on par with what Australia produces annually by burning fossil fuels.”

Medicynical note: Meanwhile the President of the largest economy in the world is unable to see past the short term. He thinks global warming from man’s activities is a hoax–he and his cabinet are under the financial influence of the oil and coal industry.

Whatever the long term consequences of his environmental heresy, his financial foolishness, his destruction of health care, his undermining of racial and social equality and his promotion of religious fundamentalism, at age 72 he seems to figure either that either through his supporters buying into his destructive policies and his limited lifespan he won’t be around to accept and to be held responsible. Our ruin will be his legacy.

“The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP.ORG) has done an analysis of 379 corporations and their tax burdens since the Republican Party and Donald Trump gave them the enormous tax cuts that most Americans were dead-set against. “Corporate Tax Avoidance In The First Year of The Trump Tax Law” is available here for viewing or downloading. The findings are what we have come to expect: Big companies got big returns from the tax cuts, and on top of that, most corporations still couldn’t resist exploiting loopholes allowing them to pay even less than the meager amount set out by the Republican Party.”

• The 379 profitable corporations identified in this study paid an effective federal income tax rate of 11.3 percent on their 2018 income, slightly more than half the statutory 21 percent tax
• 91 corporations did not pay federal income taxes on their 2018 U.S. income. These corporations include Amazon, Chevron, Halliburton and IBM. An ITEP study released in April 2019 examined 2018 Fortune 500 filings released to date and found 60 companies paid zero in federal income taxes. Now, all companies have released their 2018 financial filings, and this report reflects that.
• Another 56 companies paid effective tax rates between 0 percent and 5 percent on their 2018 income. Their average effective tax rate was 2 percent.

Medicynical Note:  And these companies who pay no or little taxes as our military and government to expend resources, defend their financial interests and us our government’s power on their behalf……..while they get a free ride.  Guess who gets to pay.