Medicynic

This sums up Trump’s remarkable mishandling of the Coronavirus epidemic, and it’s just beginning. And it is not all inclusive.

“His first misstep came two years ago when he disbanded the global health security team on the National Security Council (NSC) that was responsible for preparing for a pandemic. The NSC’s global health security chief, Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, was fired the day after an Ebola outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Last year intelligence agencies warned that the US remained vulnerable to the next flu pandemic but Trump, it seems, hoped that his long streak of political luck would hold.Advertisement”

“Distracted by impeachment in January, the president showed little urgency when the coronavirus exploded in China, apparently unwilling to sour his relationship with authoritarian leader Xi Jinping, whom he praised for having the outbreak “totally under control” even as it raced across that country and beyond.”

“The White House did impose a limited travel ban on China but that alone was not enough. Former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler told the Politico website: “They needed and still need to be searching for where the cases are, instead of trusting that limited travel bans were keeping out a virus that was probably already on the march.””

“Perhaps Trump’s greatest blunder was turning down the offer of a German-made diagnostic test approved by the World Health Organization and taken up by many countries. The US government’s own painfully slow progress led to a nationwide shortage of test kits at the most critical moment. It was reported that just 11,000 tests have been conducted in America so far, whereas South Korea is carrying out 10,000 tests per day.”

Trumps response to a question from PBS’s correspondent Yamiche Alcindor today was classic

ALCINDOR: You did disband the White House pandemic office, and the officials that were working in that office left this administration abruptly. So what responsibility do you take to that, and—the officials that worked in that office said the White House lost valuable time because that office was disbanded. What do you make of that?

TRUMP: Well, I just thank it’s a nasty question, because what we’ve done, and Tony had said numerous times that we saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing. [Ed.: The closing of borders to some travelers.] And when you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people, I could ask perhaps, in my administration, but I could perhaps ask Tony about that, because I don’t know anything about it. I mean, you say we did that, I don’t know anything about it. Disbanding, no, I don’t know anything about it …

ALCINDOR: You don’t know about the reorganization that happened at the National Security Council.

TRUMP: … It’s the administration, perhaps they do that, let people go, you used to be with a different newspaper than you are now, you know, things like that happen.

And:

“In any case, this was amazingly not the moment in Friday’s press conference that best demonstrated the president’s refusal to take responsibility for the United States’ response to the coronavirus. That’s because he answered another question, about the nationwide shortage of viral testing kits, by saying, “I don’t take responsibility at all.””

Medicynical note: Who is in charge? The answer, a resounding no one. In Trumpworld there is neither a buck nor a place where it could stop.

Wonder why, in addition to poor leadership, the CDC seems to be such ineffective player in the COVID-19 epidemic? Perhaps the following is a partial explanation. (Emphasis Medicynic)

Inside the USA, meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has seen its overall budget plummet from about $11·5 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2018 to $7·7 billion in FY 2020. For FY 2021, Robert Redfield, the CDC’s Director appointed by US President Donald Trump, is seeking a further cut to $7 billion, and the White House proposes reducing CDC funding to levels below $6·7 billion. The Redfield FY 2021 budget reduction would be partly achieved by reductions in spending on programmes for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases, global health, and public health preparedness and response—the three areas most closely tied to the COVID-19 epidemic.”

Anyone expect Trump to admit his errors?

Trump and his administration blocks using Medicaid against the Coronavirus epidemic.

Still asleep at the wheel and continuing to posture for the FOX news “oh it’s nothing” folks: “Despite mounting pleas from California and other states, the Trump administration isn’t allowing states to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the coronavirus crisis by expanding medical services.”

“In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs. “

“But months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.”

Medicynical note: Testing still hard to find; No emergency Medicaid coverage; Epidemic spreading and deaths increasing and our guy can’t even read from a teleprompter. Amazing incompetence.

The stock market gives Trump a vote of no confidence. Stock futures for the morning after the Trump speech are down something like 1200 on the DOW.

Two weeks ago Trump called the Coronavirus epidemic a hoax perpetrated by the media and Democrats. At the time he thought he was handling it perfectly and he thought there would be a miracle that would make it go away……..like magic. Now Trump lurches to the other extreme and panics. He decided the best action he can take is to essentially stop all air travel between the US and Europe. That is except from those places that host a Trump business. (I.e. the UK and Ireland). There is no mention of Turkey either, another Trump business host.

He took this action against the advice of the WHO and other reputable medical authorities. It’s a sad reality that the epidemic is already well established here and the likelihood of travelers from Europe making it worse is slim to none. His actions are political (for some reason he detests our ally the E.U.) and as meaningful as “closing the barn door after the horse is gone.”

Medicynical note: He never admits an error: whatever he does is perfect: he is a master at the nuances of ………………bankruptcy.

How do you respond to an epidemic? Thanks to our leader, the U.S. responded with delay and denial.

“As soon as the genetic sequence of the coronavirus was published in January, the CDC’s first job was to develop a diagnostic test. “That’s our prime mission,” Redfield said, “to get eyes on this thing.””

“The agency also released criteria for deciding which individuals should be tested for the virus — at first only those who had a fever and respiratory issues and had traveled from the outbreak’s origin in Wuhan, China.”

“The criteria were so strict that the sick man in the Seattle area who had visited Wuhan did not meet it. Still, worried state health officials pushed to get him checked, and the CDC agreed. Local officials sent a sample to Atlanta and the results came back positive.”

Medicynical note: Our country’s denial began two years ago when the Trump administration decapitated the NSC’s and CDC’s mechanism to recognize, track and respond to a medical threat.

“Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior.

“It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.”

And

“Legum stated in a follow-up tweet that “Trump also cut funding for the CDC, forcing the CDC to cancel its efforts to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics in 39 of 49 countries in 2018. Among the countries abandoned? China.” That was partly true, according to 2018 news reports stating that funding for the CDC’s global disease outbreak prevention efforts had been reduced by 80%, including funding for the agency’s efforts in China. But that was the result of the anticipated depletion of previously allotted funding, not a direct cut by the Trump administration.”

But the cuts to the CDC proceded without notice or replacement.

And now with the exquisite timing for which he is becoming known Trump has proposed a 16% cut in the CDC budget. This, just as the Coronavirus epidemic is reving up. Currently he believes everything is under control and there is nothing to worry about……..as the cases mount.

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.