https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/na...-agencies-find-out-whether-china-who-n1194451 Trump administration asks intelligence agencies to find out whether China, WHO hid info on coronavirus pandemic A specific "tasking" seeking information about the outbreak's early days was sent last week to the Defense Intelligence Agency. The CIA got similar instructions. WASHINGTON — The White House has ordered intelligence agencies to comb through communications intercepts, human source reporting, satellite imagery and other data to establish whether China and the World Health Organization initially hid what they knew about the emerging coronavirus pandemic, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter told NBC News. A specific "tasking" seeking information about the outbreak's early days was sent last week to the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which includes the National Center for Medical Intelligence, an official directly familiar with the matter said. The CIA has received similar instructions, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter. President Donald Trump appeared to refer to the request at his news conference Monday. "We're doing very serious investigations," Trump said. "We are not happy with that whole situation, because we believe it could have been stopped at the source, it could have been stopped quickly, and it wouldn't have spread all over the world." As part of the tasking, intelligence agencies were asked to determine what the WHO knew about two research labs studying coronaviruses in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first observed. NBC News has previously reported that the spy agencies have been investigating the possibility that the virus escaped accidentally from one of the labs, although many experts believe that is unlikely. The move coincides with a public effort by the White House, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump's political allies to focus attention on China's inability to contain the virus shortly after it emerged. As NBC News previously reported, U.S. intelligence officials have said China initially failed to disclose the seriousness of the outbreak, robbing the rest of the world of information that might have led to earlier containment efforts. "As the president has said, the United States is thoroughly investigating this matter," White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said. "Understanding the origins of the virus is important to help the world respond to this pandemic but also to inform rapid-response efforts to future infectious disease outbreaks." The CIA eclined to comment. An official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said, "We are not aware of any such tasking from the White House." Trump has shifted from initially praising China's handling of the outbreak to sharply criticizing it as the threat the pandemic poses to the U.S. economy and his re-election prospects has crystallized. Blaming China for America's economic struggles has proven effective for Trump with his political base, and his allies believe it's a message that could resonate in November with voters in the Midwest. "The president is now running against China as much as anyone," said a person close to the president. The Trump administration has also accused the WHO of erring in January when it reported no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Trump, alleging that China exercised undue influence over the agency, has suspended U.S. funding of the WHO. Initially, the WHO used conservative language. In a statement about the disease on Jan. 14 — regarding the first case outside China, in Thailand — the WHO said, "There is no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission." The agency soon stopped saying that, and by mid-January it was clear that the virus was spreading well beyond China. Critics see the White House focus on China and the WHO as an effort to distract attention from the open question of what warnings Trump got in January and February from his own health and intelligence advisers during a time when he was downplaying the severity of the virus. The Washington Post reported Monday that the intelligence reporting and analysis about the pandemic appeared in the president's daily intelligence brief more than a dozen times, although the newspaper did not specifically describe what information was passed along. An administration official confirmed to NBC News that the President's Daily Brief, or PDB, included more than a dozen mentions in January and February of U.S. intelligence about the coronavirus in China, as well as Beijing's attempts to cover it up and suppress information about it. The official played down the significance of the intelligence, saying there was not much more detail in the briefings than what was in the public domain. The official also said the briefings did not include any warning about how widespread and deadly the virus has now become around the globe. An ODNI official told NBC News that “details in the Washington Post story are not true,” but declined to say what specifically is disputed, citing the highly classified nature of the PDB. Asked Tuesday to clarify what intelligence officials were telling him in January and February, the president said, "I would have to check." "I want to look to the exact dates of warnings," he said. NBC News has reported that U.S. intelligence agencies saw early warning signs of a health crisis in Wuhan as far back as November and that the National Center for Medical Intelligence predicted that the coronavirus would cause a global pandemic in February, well before the WHO declared one. The House and Senate intelligence committees have requested access to all intelligence products produced about the pandemic and are closely examining what has already been turned over to them, officials from both committees have told NBC News. The committees typically are not granted access to the PDB, the officials said. The congressionally sponsored commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was allowed to review presidential briefs and determined that President George W. Bush was warned in the summer of 2001 that Osama bin Laden was "determined to strike" inside the United States.
Bringing new meaning to the word "discharged" 86 ‘discharged’ RI coronavirus patients died at the hospital https://www.wpri.com/health/coronavirus/86-discharged-ri-coronavirus-patients-died-at-the-hospital/ Nearly one in five COVID-19 patients classified by the state of Rhode Island as getting “discharged” from the hospital actually died there, Target 12 has learned. In response to questions from Target 12, the R.I. Health Department revealed Tuesday night that out of a total of 466 coronavirus patients currently listed as discharged, 86 died at the hospital — an outcome that would seem to conflict with a layman’s understanding of a hospital discharge. Earlier in the day, Health Department Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott had been unable to explain why the agency’s data showed every Rhode Island coronavirus patient who had been hospitalized at some point was currently either still in the hospital or discharged, suggesting none had died. “There have been a few deaths that have occurred in hospitals, unfortunately, but the number is small,” Alexander-Scott said during the governor’s daily briefing. Asked on a follow-up conference call with reporters whether the department was classifying deaths as discharges, Alexander-Scott said, “We’ll nail that down. I have it in front of me but I want to make sure I’m saying the right numbers to you.” The data released Tuesday night indicates hospital deaths currently make up 36% of Rhode Island’s 239 COVID-19 fatalities. A majority of the 239 fatalities were nursing home residents, while other individuals have died at home, according to Alexander-Scott. (More at above url)
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...et-to-president-trump-this-man-got-69-million After One Tweet To President Trump, This Man Got $69 Million From New York For Ventilators The Silicon Valley engineer, who had no background in medical supplies but was recommended by the White House, never delivered the ventilators. On March 27, as emergency rooms in New York and across the country began filling with coronavirus patients struggling to breathe, President Donald Trump posted on Twitter to urge Ford and General Motors to “START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!” One of the thousands of replies that the tweet attracted struck an equally urgent tone: “We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and noninvasive. Have someone call me URGENT.” Its author was Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley. A specialist in mobile phone technology, he currently has just 75 followers on Twitter and no apparent experience in government contracting or medical devices. But three days later, New York state paid Oren-Pines $69.1 million. The payment was for 1,450 ventilators — at an astonishing $47,656 per ventilator, at least triple the standard retail price of high-end models. Not a single ventilator ever arrived. A state official, speaking on background because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the terms of the deal, said New York entered into the contract with Oren-Pines at the direct recommendation of the White House coronavirus task force. Nearly a month later, New York has terminated the contract, and the state is now trying to recover all of the money it paid the Silicon Valley electrical engineer. Officials refused to say how much the state had been able to claw back. “We are in discussions on a few remaining issues,” said Heather Groll, a spokesperson for the New York Office of General Services, part of the interagency effort to help New York get supplies. Reached by telephone, Oren-Pines said “neither me nor my company is providing any comment on this,” and then hung up. He did not respond to subsequent text messages. The money he received on March 30 was the largest single payment made by the New York Department of Health under an executive order issued by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month that aimed to streamline the procurement process so that critical medical equipment could reach hospitals as quickly as possible. The episode underscores the extent to which the fear of overrun hospitals prompted politicians around the country — and particularly in New York — to turn to untested and at times unqualified vendors. “We had no choice but to overturn every rock to find ventilators and other needed equipment,” said Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, referring to the state’s scramble to find critical medical equipment as the pandemic overtook New York. “States were forced to fend for themselves to purchase lifesaving supplies to combat a global pandemic and with all modeling showing a more severe spread of this virus with more hospitalizations and more fatalities,” Azzopardi said. He added that the state has since been able to meet most of its needs and is now reevaluating some contracts and canceling others, while going through with other contracts as it tries to build up stockpiles to help prepare New York for any future emergencies. Like most states, New York’s procurement rules typically prohibit payments for goods or services until after an order has been fulfilled. But Cuomo suspended those rules last month to meet the urgent need for ventilators, N95 masks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment. A 25-member team now works overtime to vet potential vendors. In some cases, it has begun paying for orders before they are fulfilled. Between March 19 and April 27, the Health Department cut 77 checks for $1 million or more for medical supplies, for a total of nearly $735 million, state records show. Some of the recipients are established health care suppliers, such as Henry Schein, a huge, publicly traded distributor with $10 billion in annual revenue and a long history of contracting for New York state. But the overwhelming majority of the payments were made to an eclectic mix of firms, many with little or no apparent experience in medicine: upscale fashion and other apparel brands; Chinese iron ore and tool importers; a company that sells hair and wrinkle removal products; a number of private equity and investment firms; and even the Qatar Fund for Development, the state-run foreign aid arm of the petroleum-rich Persian Gulf nation. Other states and government agencies also scrambled to strike deals for needed supplies. The California Department of Transportation agreed to pay $12.74 apiece for N95 masks that typically retail for as little as $1.25, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency signed a purchase order for 2 million respirator masks at $7.25 apiece — more than 10 times the price it's paying to buy them directly from 3M — only to cancel after the vendor said it couldn’t deliver. New York City, meanwhile, rushed over the past month to order 214.7 million pieces of personal protective equipment, including N95 masks, gloves, and face shields. S. So far only 8% — or just 17 million — of those items have arrived. But it was the state government in Albany that proved most aggressive in its acquisitions as it struggled to deal with COVID-19. “I need 30,000 ventilators,” Cuomo said in a press briefing on March 24. “How can you have New Yorkers possibly dying because they can’t get a ventilator?” Three days later, the state issued the second of two payments totalling almost $116 million to a small Brooklyn company called Dome International that rents ventilators and other respiratory devices to hospitals and nursing homes. The company, which has no website, has no record of prior contracting with New York or with the federal government. The deal was for 5,700 ventilators, according to a report by the Albany Times-Union, but the devices were never delivered. A call to Dome International’s co-owner, David Chait, was not returned. Two payments totaling $32.3 million, meanwhile, went to a Tampa company, Premier Orthopedic Solutions, which specializes in selling devices used for rehabilitation from joint surgery. The owner, Carl Bax, played offensive line for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL, but in 1990 was arrested before his second season after receiving a shipment of steroids. He pleaded guilty and his football career ended after nine more games. Bax did not respond to a request for comment. But the contract with Oren-Pines stands out even among the motley array of vendors that struck deals with New York state over the past month. It’s unclear how he came to the attention of the White House coronavirus task force, which was established in late January and has featured daily press briefings led by President Trump. The task force also confers regularly on the state of the pandemic, including the availability of ventilators, N95 masks, gowns, and other much-needed medical supplies around the country. “The guy was recommended to us by the White House coronavirus task force because they were doing business with him as well,” said the New York state official. “I think everyone was genuinely trying to help each other out and get supplies.” The New York official added that he was unaware of whether Oren-Pines got a federal contract; federal databases show no record of any such deals. such deals. A spokesperson for the White House referred a request for comment to the office of Vice President Mike Pence, who chairs the task force. A spokesperson for Pence referred the query to FEMA. A spokesperson for FEMA said it could not speak on behalf of the White House and that it does not share information about potential suppliers. After this article was published, a spokesperson for Pence, Katie Miller, said in a statement that "The White House Coronavirus Task Force was never informed of this contract and was not involved in it at all." An Israeli immigrant who graduated from the University of Maryland, Oren-Pines has lived in Silicon Valley since the mid-1990s, public records show, and is named on at least 18 different patents. He has held a variety of jobs in the tech sector, including a recent stint with Google and several years at Crocus Technology, a venture-backed firm that specializes in magnetic computer memory, according to his LinkedIn profile and interviews with former colleagues. Mike Ritter, who supervised Oren-Pines at Google, said that before the pandemic, they had made plans to meet up in Napa this week, but those plans were canceled and the two haven’t spoken in weeks. Ritter said he wasn’t aware of the contract for ventilators but said he knew that Oren-Pines had supplier contacts in Asia. “He's always a go-getter. Anytime there's opportunity, he's always been out there trying to help and make a buck,” said Ritter. In 2013, Oren-Pines cofounded Legasus Networks, a networking solutions company, in the Bay Area. Doug Lee, who’s listed on registration documents as the company’s chief executive officer, said he had no knowledge of any transactions involving ventilators. According to Thao Tran, one of its other founders, Legasus “has nothing to do with medical or ventilators” and has not been active. “We don’t have any products right now.” Oren-Pines’ LinkedIn profile indicates he is the founder and owner of a company called InCommon, described as a consulting and contracting firm for the mobile phone industry. No listing for InCommon could be found in state registries. A review of Oren-Pines’ social media shows he has been tweeting at Trump since 2011 and been a vocal supporter since at least December 2015 when he offered, on the website, to put up a “Trump for President” lawn sign in front of his house. Since late January, Oren-Pines has posted a handful of tweets related to the coronavirus, including one on March 20 listing stock index performance in different countries, showing that only China had made a small gain, and describing the idea that China might benefit from the pandemic as an “interesting conspiracy theory.” A week later, he tweeted in response to the president’s call for ventilators. A tweet posted less than an hour after Oren-Pines’ callout about the ventilators provides one possible clue to his plans. The tweet was from an account belonging to Israeli entrepreneur Segev Binyamin, whose three Twitter followers include Oren-Pines. Offering to supply ventilators to Israel’s defense minister, Binyamin wrote, “I own a Chinese company and have the ability to ship 1,400 machines.” That happens to be almost the exact number of ventilators Oren-Pines contracted with New York state to sell. Reached by BuzzFeed News, Binyamin, whose account also follows Oren-Pines, repeatedly said “I’m not going to comment” before hanging up. According to Azzopardi, the senior adviser to Gov. Cuomo, the team vetting New York’s coronavirus-related contracts includes officials from the state’s inspector general’s office and the MTA inspector general’s office. Barraged with entreaties from potential vendors, the officials primarily consider whether potential vendors could make good on their promises. Only about 10% of potential vendors have been approved. Oren-Pines, with his bid of $47,600 per ventilator, was one of them. By comparison, the Department of Health and Human Services paid $15,000 apiece for top-of-the-line ventilators made by Philips —and Congress is currently investigating whether that price was too high. “We selected our contracts based on the best value under market conditions that were literally changing every day,” said Azzopardi. A separate deal for 750 ventilators in New York, since canceled, valued each at an even more remarkable $74,666. The state was eventually able to recover the $56 million it had paid Trinity Partners, a health consulting firm. Groll, the spokesperson for the New York Office of General Services, did not answer a series of detailed questions about the transaction with Oren-Pines other than to say it had been “terminated” and that “a bulk of the money was returned to the state.”