“WASHINGTON — Early on, the dozen federal officials charged with defending America against the coronavirus gathered day after day in the White House Situation Room, consumed by crises. They grappled with how to evacuate the United States consulate in Wuhan, China, ban Chinese travelers and extract Americans from the Diamond Princess and other cruise ships.
The members of the coronavirus task force typically devoted only five or 10 minutes, often at the end of contentious meetings, to talk about testing, several participants recalled. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, its leaders assured the others, had developed a diagnostic model that would be rolled out quickly as a first step.
But as the deadly virus spread from China with ferocity across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership at multiple levels, according to interviews with more than 50 current and former public health officials, administration officials, senior scientists and company executives.
The result was a lost month, when the world’s richest country — armed with some of the most highly trained scientists and infectious disease specialists — squandered its best chance of containing the virus’s spread. Instead, Americans were left largely blind to the scale of a looming public health catastrophe.”
The president’s claim that anyone who wanted a test could get it was yet another of the president’s thousands false public statements. His incompetence will probably lead to thousands of deaths that could possibly have been avoided if he was competent at the beginning. It is too late for that now.
The NYT also reports on far right crackpots who are attacking the government scientist Antony Fauci for contradicting the president. This is true dark free speech-driven authoritarianism-fascism raising its ugly head. The NYT writes:
“At a White House briefing on the coronavirus on March 20, President Trump called the State Department the “Deep State Department.” Behind him, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, dropped his head and rubbed his forehead.
Some thought Dr. Fauci was slighting the president, leading to a vitriolic online reaction. On Twitter and Facebook, a post that falsely claimed he was part of a secret cabal who opposed Mr. Trump was soon shared thousands of times, reaching roughly 1.5 million people.
A week later, Dr. Fauci — the administration’s most outspoken advocate of emergency measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak — has become the target of an online conspiracy theory that he is mobilizing to undermine the president.
That fanciful claim has spread across social media, fanned by a right-wing chorus of Mr. Trump’s supporters, even as Dr. Fauci has won a public following for his willingness to contradict the president and correct falsehoods and overly rosy pronouncements about containing the virus.”The NYT also comments that their analysis found more than 70 Twitter accounts promoting the hashtag #FauciFraud. Some tweet up to 795 times a day. This crackpot sentiment is coming from posts by Tom Fitton, the president of radical right Judicial Watch group and outspoken Trump supporters including Shiva Ayyadurai, who falsely claimed to have invented email. Crackpots and purveyors of dark free speech are coming out of the woodwork with a vengeance.
In another article, the NYT describes the overwhelming of the health care system in New York city. Emergency workers there are starting to have to make life-or-death decisions in deciding who goes to a hospital, and who isn't because they appear to be well enough to be left at home. The hospitals can take only the most sick. The NYT wrote: “‘It’s all a war zone,’ one of the paramedics said. .... ‘I honestly don’t know if I’m going to survive. I’m terrified of what I’ve already possibly brought home.’”
Finally, an article in The Intercept reveals the incredible self-centered narcissism our president and by extension, the rest of us have to suffer with. TI’s article, In Exchange for Aid, Trump Wants Praise From Governors He Can Use in Campaign Ads, comments: “AS HE INCREASINGLY tries to shovel blame for the shortage of medical supplies onto the governors of states with densely populated areas that are suffering the most from the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump was asked on Friday what more he wants them to do. It was, he said, ‘very simple: I want them to be appreciative.’”
This 4-minute video on C-Span shows the president telling governors to be nice to him, even while he attacks them. The president’s pathological self-centeredness could not be much clearer.
It is fair to say that things are not going well on the coronavirus front. America still cannot do large-scale testing. Our president remains clueless about what is happening or how to respond to it. He cannot even deal responsibly with legitimate criticism from state leaders that his incompetence has more or less abandoned to their fates.
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