Monday, March 30, 2020

Coronavirus Update 5

ABC News and several other sources are reporting that some congressional republicans are floating the idea that the democrats and impeachment are to blame for America's coronavirus situation. ABC News writes:

“WASHINGTON -- As global markets plunged amid growing fears about the coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump and his allies pulled from a familiar playbook Friday and blamed others for the slide. It's a challenging sell for a president who has lashed his fate to Wall Street like no other. 
The president's team responded to the biggest one-week Wall Street sell-off in more than a decade with a deflection strategy, playing down the threat and eagerly parceling out responsibility to Democrats, the media and the entrenched government bureaucracy. 
Trump tweeted that “The Do Nothing Democrats" had wasted time on impeachment and “anything else they could do to make the Republican Party look bad" while defending his own response, which many Democrats have deemed sluggish and scattershot.”
This may come as a surprise to some, but there are more than just democrats who criticize the president’s incompetent response. What is no surprise is the president and his Trump Party enablers and lickspittles blaming anyone and anything except themselves. The dems are a perfect place for blame to deflect from their own incompetence and culpability.


Maybe some good news
The New York Times reports that early evidence suggests that efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus are starting to pay off. The NYT writes: “Officials in Washington State worry that their gains are precarious, but they see evidence that containment strategies have lowered the rate of virus transmission. Deaths are not rising as fast as they are in other states. Dramatic declines in street traffic show that people are staying home. Hospitals have so far not been overwhelmed. And preliminary statistical models provided to public officials in Washington State suggest that the spread of the virus has slowed in the Seattle area in recent days.” These are still early days. The situation in Washington State should be much clearer in the next week or so.


Capitalism fails, again
The NYT writes on a failed private sector effort to build low cost ventilators for use in an epidemic. A project that was envisioned and started 13 years ago collapsed into total (100%) failure in terms of delivered product. Once again, the profit motive is seen to be fundamentally incompatible with health care. The NYT writes: “Money was budgeted. A federal contract was signed. Work got underway. And then things suddenly veered off course. A multibillion-dollar maker of medical devices bought the small California company that had been hired to design the new machines. The project ultimately produced zero ventilators. .... The stalled efforts to create a new class of cheap, easy-to-use ventilators highlight the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis.”

A follow-on project was started in 2014 and it’s product was approved in 2019, but no ventilators have been delivered yet. Anyone who claims that capitalism can do all things for everyone is wrong. For the most part, with few exceptions, the core and only moral value of capitalism is profit. Service to the public interest is not important. Profit is important.


Tyrants and demagogues cause failure
The NYT reports on the failures of coronavirus reporting in China. It turns out that the US and China have roughly the same problem, communications. Specifically, people are afraid of reporting bad news out of fear for their careers, maybe their lives. In China, people didn’t want to upset the powers in Beijing. In the US, the president didn't want to damage his chances for re-election by being honest with the American people about the situation. The NYT writes:
“Hospitals could input patients’ details into a computer and instantly notify government health authorities in Beijing, where officers are trained to spot and smother contagious outbreaks before they spread. 
It didn’t work. 
After doctors in Wuhan began treating clusters of patients stricken with a mysterious pneumonia in December, the reporting was supposed to have been automatic. Instead, hospitals deferred to local health officials who, over a political aversion to sharing bad news, withheld information about cases from the national reporting system — keeping Beijing in the dark and delaying the response. 
The central health authorities first learned about the outbreak not from the reporting system but after unknown whistle-blowers leaked two internal documents online.”

That speaks for itself.


Magic, miracles & lies
The Washington Post writes on why the US still cannot do large scale testing for coronavirus. Initial efforts relied on magic, miracles and lies. “We have it totally under control.” — President Trump, in an interview, on Jan. 22. “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” — Trump, in remarks, on Feb. 27. “Anybody that needs a test, gets a test. They’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful.” — Trump, in remarks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, March 6. WaPo writes
“When the first U.S. case of the novel coronavirus was confirmed, President Trump assured the American people that the situation was “totally under control.” Cabinet officials, the vice president and the president repeated that refrain throughout February. By the end of that month, as global financial markets and the American public started to quiver, Trump held firm: “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country.”

Still, China’s previous failures to be forthcoming about public health crises meant that public health officials elsewhere already were wary of its government’s official statements. As reports of the mysterious virus increased, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned Americans against traveling to China and activated an emergency management tool used to direct operations, deliver resources and share information. 
Despite the alarm bells and increased intelligence briefings, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar struggled to get Trump’s attention for weeks.” 

Clearly, the president did not care about this, Since he is a hopelessly self-centered narcissist, that makes sense.


Moving the goalposts - failure is not an option
In the last few minutes, NPR broadcast a statement from the president who is now saying that if there are 100,000 or 200,000 deaths the US response to coronavirus will have been well done. That sounds very different from the president’s “We have it totally under control” comment on Jan. 22. 200,000 deaths does not sound like something totally under control.

Given the president’s obvious lack of concern about facts, truth, logic or fact checkers, the day may come when 300,000 deaths will constitute a great job well done (by him and him alone). But, if it gets to a point where even our narcissist-in-chief can't move the goalposts enough, then it will be the democrat’s fault.

Being an alt-fact, alt-truth, bogus logic and lies-based president has got be easy, maybe even fun.


And finally, there is this narcissist insanity 
Reuters reports: “(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday bragged about the millions of people tuning in to view his daily press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, saying on Twitter that his average ratings matched a season finale of “The Bachelor.”

At least everyone knows what is truly important to the president. It is not the coronavirus.



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