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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
If the USA did have no plan for pandemics, then that fault can be laid at the feet of congress and each POTUS for decades. |
Well, no, and I'm very glad you brought this up because it gets worse for the criminally-negligent mismanager.
First let's recall this this admin gutted government agencies (well-reported), installed unqualified hacks (well-reported) or purposely left vacancies while looking for lackeys (well-reported) and destroyed relationships with everyone (a fundamental Trump personality trait). So, it was ill-equipped to manage any disaster properly as an organisation generally.
But did you also know an entire early warning system called Predict had earlier been created and — wait for it — Captain Coronavirus shut it down and failed to replace it in October 2019.
| The LATimes wrote: | | The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19. |
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-trump-pandemic-program-viruses-detection%3f_amp=true
Think about that for a moment in light of your comments about early administrations. Here's the reporting when it actually happened:
| On 25 Oct 2019 the NYT reported the Moron was quietly shutting down the early warning pandemic program wrote: | In a move that worries many public health experts, the federal government is quietly shutting down a surveillance program for dangerous animal viruses that someday may infect humans.
The United Nations Environment Program estimates that a new animal disease that can also infect humans is discovered every four months. Ending the program, experts fear, will leave the world more vulnerable to lethal pathogens like Ebola and MERS that emerge from unexpected places, such as bat-filled trees, gorilla carcasses and camel barns.
The program, known as Predict and run by the United States Agency for International Development, was inspired by the 2005 H5N1 bird flu scare. Launched 10 years ago, the project has cost about $207 million.
The initiative has collected over 140,000 biological samples from animals and found over 1,000 new viruses, including a new strain of Ebola. Predict also trained about 5,000 people in 30 African and Asian countries, and has built or strengthened 60 medical research laboratories, mostly in poor countries.
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Congress, along with the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, were “enormously supportive,” said Dr. Carroll, who is now a fellow at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service.
“But things got complicated in the last two years, and by January, Predict was essentially collapsed into hibernation.”
The end of the program “is definitely a loss,” said Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit global health organization that received funding from the program. “Predict was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge and then mobilizing. That’s expensive." |
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/health/predict-usaid-viruses.html
The more you look, the worse it gets.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm
Last edited by pietillidie on Fri Apr 24, 2020 6:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Pi 
Joined: 13 Feb 2006
Location: SA
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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That Reuters fact check is pretty damning, if you read between the lines. We all know what happens when departments get "streamlined": you get fewer people doing the same amount of work, and less specialisation. The case for the defence doesn’t dispute that, and only offers a flimsy attempt at justification:
| Quote: | | Three days later, Tim Morrison, former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the NSC, wrote in another Washington Post Op-Ed, “It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. … One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled” |
So you had a single department looking at pandemics, WMDs and biological weapons, with a direct focus on the military angle (an inevitable consequence of putting arch-militarist Bolton, someone who never should have been hired, in charge) – something that is, of course, wholly irrelevant to this crisis. So long story short, it was a defunding and declawing as a cost-saving measure. There’s no way around that.
I have no idea what Clinton would have done, and no particular interest in speculating (though it seems hard to believe that she would have been anywhere near as inept). Trump doesn’t get to play parallel universe here: he won the election, he had responsibility and he screwed up.
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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What'sinaname
Joined: 29 May 2010
Location: Living rent free
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Sadly, it's not just what he says, it's how he says it.
Surely he's mentally reta.r.ded. And if so, then kudos to him for become the first President with mental retardation. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | | I'm sure this has been mentioned several times in here, but Obama actually did institute a pandemic response department that got defunded by the Trump administration in 2018 as part of a cost-cutting endeavour. You can only play devil's advocate on this so far, I think, before you have to acknowledge that there have been serious blunders along the way, and that he needs to take responsibility for that. |
To be fair, he's said some fkn strange things at his press conferences and there's been a few blunders no argument that there's zero chance in hell he'll take responsibility for. However, his personal level of culpability in my view, while certainly not zero, is very overstated by people who don't like him. Call it confirmation bias, halo effect, whatever. He is a legitimately polarising figure and while I still think he is going to get re-elected I don't necessarily think that's the best thing.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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The problem is that people aren't going hard enough as with George W. Bush before that fateful second election. What the US needs is someone useless for a while. Just plain useless, rather than mentally unstable and dangerous.
People knew George W. was a dim front for far more menacing forces, but couldn't bring themselves to face the reality of the extent of the failures and the monumental mistake of electing him, and so repeated the latter error a second time.
Now the rest of us have to watch the stages of grieving unfold, with another election win followed by more of the same mismanagement, as wreckage piles upon wreckage. Eventually it will go from an admission of mistakes and personality flaws, and in time he will be disowned as the national disgrace he is.
The risks I think are even bigger this time because if relationships with China, Europe, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other parts of the world are not reset with haste, it could easily spell sustained depression and war.
Someone moderate will do for now to hold the fort and avoid chaos and destruction. Let's be frank; our assets and futures are at grave risk if he's not removed.
More people need to go hard on this now for the good of the whole.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| pietillidie wrote: | | The problem is that people aren't going hard enough as with George W. Bush before that fateful second election. What the US needs is someone useless for a while. Just plain useless, rather than mentally unstable and dangerous. |
So they need Biden?
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^That's what I'm implying, yes. But it's like Abbott versus Moderate Malcolm. Take Malcolm anyday. Sometimes the only choice you have is to buy time and keep the crazies at bay. Useless is far better than chaos and depression. Biden has a stable party infrastructure and he's not twisted, and will make more sound appointments around himself even if ailing. That gives you a functioning government, which is better than having what is essentially a twisted demagogue whom no one can stand working with.
I just can't see them finding an alternative given the time, so go smart, go useless. That should be Biden's slogan. The one term 'stabiliser' sell would have the most merit in the circumstances.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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You are effing kidding me. More tax cuts for billionaires, this time smuggled inside the coffins of the dead:
| The NYT wrote: | As part of the economic rescue package that became law last month, the federal government is giving away $174 billion in temporary tax breaks overwhelmingly to rich individuals and large companies, according to interviews and government estimates.
Some of the breaks apply to taxes have long been in the cross hairs of corporate lobbyists. They undo limitations that were imposed to rein in the giveaways embedded in a $1.5 trillion tax-cut package enacted in 2017. None specifically target businesses or individuals harmed by the coronavirus.
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The bottom line is that, barely two years after congressional Republicans and President Trump lavished America’s wealthiest families and companies with a series of lucrative tax cuts, those same beneficiaries are now receiving a second helping. |
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/business/tax-breaks-wealthy-virus.html
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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| pietillidie wrote: | ^That's what I'm implying, yes. But it's like Abbott versus Moderate Malcolm. Take Malcolm anyday. Sometimes the only choice you have is to buy time and keep the crazies at bay. Useless is far better than chaos and depression. Biden has a stable party infrastructure and he's not twisted, and will make more sound appointments around himself even if ailing. That gives you a functioning government, which is better than having what is essentially a twisted demagogue whom no one can stand working with.
I just can't see them finding an alternative given the time, so go smart, go useless. That should be Biden's slogan. The one term 'stabiliser' sell would have the most merit in the circumstances. |
The only trouble is that it’s a terrible electoral policy. You can convince those who see the Trump administration as catastrophic to vote for a dummy with a "not Trump" sign stapled to it, but we already know from 2016 that that’s not enough to win an election.
Anyway, it’s kind of academic now as the Democrats have made their choice: they wanted useless and they got it. But Biden is going to have to find a way to promote himself on his own merits (and find a lot of people who can do it for him), because right now he’s lacking any compelling message other than being better than the other guy – and we should all know well by now that that’s a losing approach.
_________________
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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^ That might be some kind of a record. We seldom see as many obvious mistruths and errors in a single short post.
First, the policy is not, repeat not "do nothing". The Democrats have policies, and we will hear a lot more about them when the time comes - we are many months away from the election, remember.
Second, you are pretending that Biden is a "dummy", which is demonstrably untrue. He is a canny operator with vast experience, and with the ability to pick a quality team. He is also an effective, well-proven communicator.
Third, those who recognise that the Trump administration is catastrophic don't need any persuasion at all.
Fourth, the ridiculous claim that "we already know from 2016 that [simply being nobody and not being Trump] is not enough to win an election. We know nothing of the kind. In 2016, the Democrats went with a candidate who was actively hated by many, and thoroughly disliked by vast numbers of others, including a great many Democrats. Clinton's massive unpopularity resulted in the worst Democrat turnout in a very long time.
Trump polled very poorly indeed - worse even than the failed Romney - but Clinton was so disliked by Democrats that many who wouldn't dream of voting for Trump couldn't face the thought of voting for Clinton either and simply stayed at home. This isn't speculation or being wise after the event, it's the numbers. They are there for anyone to read, and only permit one conclusion: Clinton was a terrible choice and it ended in the disaster we call Trump.
Fifth, Trump has completely failed to increase his supporter base. Time and time again his poll numbers have remained stubbornly below those any president can expect. His highest ever poll result is still well below the average result of all other presidents since 1945.
The Democrats, in contrast, could have increased their vote to a comfortable winning vote by simply running with an empty chair - i.e., anyone except the hated Clinton. But instead, they have gone with an experienced, sensible, middle-of-the-road candidate, who is everything Trump is not.
Personally, I wouldn't have chosen Biden from among the dozen-odd contenders, but Joe will do just fine.
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Wonka
Joined: 06 Jan 2019
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They need to stop showing his daily crap. It's risking public safety. |
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Dark Beanie
Joined: 06 Feb 2004
Location: A galaxy far, far away.
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Trump is not drinking the Kool-Aid, he prefers Dettol.
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If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but just grumble with the rest. - Jerome K Jerome |
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