Coronavirus Update 6

In a vindictive mood

Blame shifting on parade

Over the last month, the political defensive blame game by the president and his enablers heated up. A month ago, the president nonchalantly commented “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the federal government's failure to shepard the production and mass distribution of test kits for the virus. In his defense of his failure, he cited a “set of circumstances” and “rules, regulations and specifications from a different time.” What on Earth has the president been doing all this time on office? Playing golf? Hm. He was playing golf all the time.

Anyway, that cunning “I don’t take responsibility at all” stratagem is a brilliant way to try to avoid responsibility for any level of presidential incompetence in office. The president went on to blame president Obama for the failure, but cited no evidence. All of this is the typical irrational drivel we routinely get from our grossly incompetent president and his grossly incompetent administration.[1] Thank goodness, America is in SNAFU mode as usual for this chronically lying president and his chronically lying administration.

Bad instincts on the loose

The New York Times reported yesterday that the president was warned about a possible pandemic but his faith in his own instincts coupled with internal divisions and a lack of planning led to the failed federal response. The NYT wrote:

WASHINGTON — “Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad,” a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Carter Mecher, wrote on the night of Jan. 28, in an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities. “The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”

A week after the first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before President Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Mecher was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action. 

“You guys made fun of me screaming to close the schools,” he wrote to the group, which called itself “Red Dawn,” an inside joke based on the 1984 movie about a band of Americans trying to save the country after a foreign invasion. “Now I’m screaming, close the colleges and universities.” 

His was hardly a lone voice. Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action.

The NYT mentions a litany of incompetence-driven failures by the president. For example, the National Security Council office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence predicted in early January that the virus would arrive in the United States. Within a couple of weeks that office was citing options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Also, Alex M. Azar warned Mr. Trump about a possible pandemic on Jan. 30. The president blithely dismissed that as alarmism. The president ignored all the warnings as white noise, deep state conspiracy, or whatever goes on in his deranged mind. He did not act until March. 

A lot of people are going to die from the very high level of incompetence that our always mendacious president operates with. His core competencies seem to be mendacity, corruption, anti-democratic authoritarianism, and as discussed below, revenge for anything and anyone he dislikes.

The viper’s poison - kill the messenger

The New York Times reports today that the president retweeted a post calling for the firing of Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist. Fauci’s crime? He publicly stated that shutting down the country earlier could have saved lives. That infuriated the president, who tolerates nothing that might make him look incompetent, corrupt, mendacious or any of the other bad traits he clearly possess in abundance. That Emperor is butt naked to everyone except the Emperor and many or most of his supporters.

The vindictive way of life - I always hit back ... except 100x more.

Footnote:

1. To be fair, the president has failed or refused to fill dozens of vacancies that need to be filled for a competent federal response to occur. The fault for that is all on the president, which ratchets the level of his incompetence from super grossly incompetent to staggeringly, mind bogglingly, breathtakingly incompetent. That is just one step below the highest level of incompetence known to humanity. (That level is so awful, that it is best left unwritten until its use is absolutely necessary)

Social Distortion - Cold Feelings