Presidents don’t get a free pass if they fail to notice impending threats.
Trump has said several times that nobody knew a coronavirus could reach our shores. “It’s an unforeseen problem [that] came out of nowhere,” he said.
Except it wasn’t.
Every year, the director of national intelligence delivers a briefing on threats to national security. A warning about pandemics, including coronaviruses, has been part of that every year Trump has been in office.
If you want the federal government to be effective in a crisis, you need to give it the tools to act.
You’d think a Republican president from the business world would know that bureaucracies can be inefficient and slow-moving.
That’s why the Obama administration set up a White House office on health security in 2016 — to eliminate red tape and force feuding agencies to cooperate.
But in 2018, Trump’s then-national security advisor, John Bolton, abolished the office. When the coronavirus appeared in China last year, there was no White House health czar to coordinate a response.
“It would be nice if the office was still there,” Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said last week.
On Friday, Trump said he didn’t know anything about the office’s elimination. Asked whether he bore any responsibility, his answer was: “It’s a nasty question.”
Is this the worst outbreak you’ve ever seen?
It's the most dangerous pandemic in our lifetime.
We are being asked to do things, certainly, that never happened in my lifetime—stay in the house, stay 6 feet away from other people, don’t go to group gatherings. Are we getting the right advice?
Well, as you reach me, I'm pretending that I'm in a meditation retreat, but I'm actually being semi-quarantined in Marin County. Yes, this is very good advice. But did we get good advice from the president of the United States for the first 12 weeks? No. All we got were lies. Saying it’s fake, by saying this is a Democratic hoax. There are still people today who believe that, to their detriment. Speaking as a public health person, this is the most irresponsible act of an elected official that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. But what you're hearing now [to self-isolate, close schools, cancel events] is right. Is it going to protect us completely? Is it going to make the world safe forever? No. It's a great thing because we want to spread out the disease over time.
Flatten the curve.
By slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine—which we will, because there's nothing in the virology that makes me frightened that we won’t get a vaccine in 12 to 18 months. Eventually, we will get to the epidemiologist gold ring.
Is there in any way a brighter side to this?
Well, I'm a scientist, but I'm also a person of faith. And I can't ever look at something without asking the question of isn't there a higher power that in some way will help us to be the best version of ourselves that we could be? I thought we would see the equivalent of empty streets in the civic arena, but the amount of civic engagement is greater than I've ever seen. But I'm seeing young kids, millennials, who are volunteering to go take groceries to people who are homebound, elderly. I'm seeing an incredible influx of nurses, heroic nurses, who are coming and working many more hours than they worked before, doctors who fearlessly go into the hospital to work. I've never seen the kind of volunteerism I'm seeing.
I don't want to pretend that this is an exercise worth going through in order to get to that state. This is a really unprecedented and difficult time that will test us. When we do get through it, maybe like the Second World War, it will cause us to reexamine what has caused the fractional division we have in this country. The virus is an equal opportunity infector. And it’s probably the way we would be better if we saw ourselves that way, which is much more alike than different.
SamKellner wrote:Thanks Bob !
Take care. Wish all Well !
Craig Muhonen wrote:Thank you Bob for your "effort" since day one
The information you found and share with us, about the Virus , is important, and these videos that you found are the best. TY.
brianscharp (sniping at President Trump) wrote:Looks like we're ramping up quickly. Must be part of the "winning" strategy. It'll take a couple of weeks to see if our disjointed efforts are successful at flattening out this nightmarish climb enough to avoid a total health system melt down. Buckle up.
SamKellner wrote:No wonder why. What could have been such a distraction.
brianscharp (from earlier video) wrote:
Times of San Diego (1 day ago) wrote:Councilman Steve Padilla was admitted to UC San Diego Thornton Hospital and placed in its intensive care unit after experiencing worsening symptoms, his daughter Ashleigh Padilla said in a statement.
I hope he is able to muster the discipline and compassion and selflessness to do better, to be better...our lives depend on it.
brianscharp wrote:Anybody else notice even though there are fewer folks on stage, they're still at this date, not keeping 6' distance between them.
CNN wrote:"It's not political to point that out."
brianscharp wrote:
Michael Grisham wrote:For My Hang Gliding Friends and Family,
I hope you, your family, and loved ones are doing fine.
Here is a good article written in 2007 on Coronavirus:
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus as an Agent of Emerging and Reemerging Infection (PDF)
CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY REVIEWS, Oct. 2007, p. 660–694 Vol. 20, No. 4
“The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.”
While a global world economy provides a network to spread the pathogens, the only saviors will be the microbiology alchemists who can neutralize the virus through knowledge and DNA/RNA manipulation.
I think you can appreciate the article.
Michael
SHOULD WE BE READY FOR THE REEMERGENCE OF SARS?
The medical and scientific community demonstrated marvelous efforts in the understanding and control of SARS within a short time, as evident by over 4,000 publications available online. Despite these achievements, gaps still exist in terms of the molecular basis of the physical stability and transmissibility of this virus, the molecular and immunological basis of disease pathogenesis in humans, screening tests for early or cryptic SARS cases, foolproof infection control procedures for patient care, effective antivirals or antiviral combinations, the usefulness of immunomodulatory agents for late presenters, an effective vaccine with no immune enhancement, and the immediate animal host that transmitted the virus to caged civets in the market at the beginning of the epidemic. Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination (375), which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored.
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