New York Times: “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 president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials.” “Even after Mr. Trump took his first concrete action at the end of January — limiting travel from China — public health often had to compete with economic and political considerations in internal debates, slowing the path toward belated decisions to seek more money from Congress, obtain necessary supplies, address shortfalls in testing and ultimately move to keep much of the nation at home.”
What is a hard wired characteristic of psychopath and you can be certain many malignant narcissists. The ability to feel fear but not really sense danger. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160830113745.htm
1. In the early months of the crisis, both Trump and his economics advisers repeatedly pushed back against national security officials who wanted to publicly blame China for outbreak, for fear of angering the political leadership in Beijing and jeopardizing the administration’s recently-signed trade deal. “They ran into opposition from Mr. Trump’s economic advisers, who worried a tough approach toward China could scuttle a trade deal that was a pillar of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign. …Mr. Trump and other senior officials were wary of further upsetting Beijing. Besides the concerns about the impact on the trade deal, they knew that an escalating confrontation was risky because the United States relies heavily on China for pharmaceuticals and the kinds of protective equipment most needed to combat the coronavirus.” 2. Despite his public claims to the contrary, Trump was, in fact, contemporaneously briefed about adviser Peter Navarro’s January 29 memo, which ominously warned of a potential coronavirus outbreak that could ravage public health and shatter the economy. “Despite Mr. Trump’s denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a Jan. 29 memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.” 3. One of the Trump’s deputy national security advisers, Matthew Pottinger, a well-known China hawk, increasingly pursued a conspiratorial storyline that the coronavirus had been created in a Chinese lab and accidentally leaked to the outside world. “Mr. Pottinger initially suspected that President Xi Jinping’s government was keeping a dark secret: that the virus may have originated in one of the laboratories in Wuhan studying deadly pathogens. In his view, it might have even been a deadly accident unleashed on an unsuspecting Chinese population. During meetings and telephone calls, Mr. Pottinger asked intelligence agencies — including officers at the C.I.A. working on Asia and on weapons of mass destruction — to search for evidence that might bolster his theory.” 4. Trump repeatedly leaned on the advice of a small group of Wall Street and corporate confidantes, who continued counseling against shutting down schools and businesses for weeks after public health officials had pushed for those moves. “Mr. Trump had agreed to give an Oval Office address on the evening of March 11 announcing restrictions on travel from Europe, where the virus was ravaging Italy. But responding to the views of his business friends and others, he continued to resist calls for social distancing, school closures and other steps that would imperil the economy.…Always attuned to anything that could trigger a stock market decline or an economic slowdown that could hamper his re-election effort, Mr. Trump also reached out to prominent investors like Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone Group, a private equity firm.”
I think running a campaign saying bad debt Donnie is a fucking albatross and how much better you would feel with him as a fading memory might get younger supporters. Bad debt Donnie in a rear view mirror.
Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that calls to implement life-saving social distancing measures faced “a lot of pushback” early in the US coronavirus outbreak. Said Fauci: “I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives.” He added: “Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated.”
Associated Press: “Interviewed at Davos, a gathering of global elites in the Swiss Alps, the president on Jan. 22 played down the threat posed by the respiratory virus from China, which had just reached American shores in the form of a solitary patient in Washington state.” Said Trump: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” “When Trump spoke in Switzerland, weeks’ worth of warning signs already had been raised. In the ensuing month, before the president first addressed the crisis from the White House, key steps to prepare the nation for the coming pandemic were not taken.” “Life-saving medical equipment was not stockpiled. Travel largely continued unabated. Vital public health data from China was not provided or was deemed untrustworthy. A White House riven by rivalries and turnover was slow to act. Urgent warnings were ignored by a president consumed by his impeachment trial and intent on protecting a robust economy that he viewed as central to his reelection chances.”
What was Pelosi’s excuse? https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2...-nancy-pelosi-tours-san-franciscos-chinatown/ Pelosi Tours San Francisco’s Chinatown To Quell Coronavirus Fears “You should come to Chinatown. Precautions have been taken by our city. We know that there is concern about tourism all throughout the world, but we think it’s very safe to be in Chinatown. I hope that others will come,” said Pelosi at a dim sum restaurant Monday afternoon.
David Remick: “The pandemic is an event in the natural history of our species, but it is also a political episode. Its trajectory is shaped by policy measures specific to particular governments. The fact that the United States is experiencing tremendous losses—that it has far more COVID-19 cases than any other country in the world—relates to a number of collective risk factors and preëxisting conditions. The most notable one is to be found in the Oval Office.” “The coronavirus has inflicted a level of pain that is deep and global. And yet many nations, from South Korea to Germany, have done far better at responding to it than the United States has. The reasons for the American failing include a lack of preparation, delayed mobilization, insufficient testing, and a reluctance to halt travel. The Administration, from its start, has waged war on science and expertise and on what Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon called ‘the administrative state.’ The results are all around us. Trump has made sure that a great nation is peculiarly vulnerable to a foreseeable public-health calamity.”
Reporting over the weekend has revealed that President Trump and his administration were repeatedly warned about the threat that the coronavirus could pose to American lives and the economy and that earlier action could have curbed the spread. Axios lists 10 times Trump and his administration were warned about coronavirus.