Matthew Rozsa, - Raw Story/Salon
Stephan: This story is so incredible I checked three sources to assure myself that it was real. This is an administration of such incompetence it belongs in a comic book.
Russ Vought
Acting Director Office of Management and Budget
President Donald Trump’s budget director stood by proposed budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) despite the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19, better known as the coronavirus. (emphasis added)
This article originally appeared at Salon.
Russ Vought, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., during a congressional hearing on Tuesday that the administration does not plan on amending its 2021 budget. That budget proposes reducing Health and Human Services funding by $9.5 billion, in the process cutting $1.2 billion from the CDC’s budget (a reduction of 15%) and eliminating $35 million from the Infection Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund.
Vought initially responded to Cartwright’s question by pointing to the $8.3 billion emergency supplemental package passed by Congress last week. That money would be spread out over many years, however, and had to be increased by Congress from the $2.5 billion initially required by the White House. It […]
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JEREMY B. WHITE and VICTORIA COLLIVER , - Politico
Stephan: With the complete failure of the President, his minions and the Trumplican Senate, absent the notable exception of the House, and representatives like Democrat Katie Porter, we are beginning to see local leaders step into the gap. Although there are a few Red State leaders like Ohio's Republican Governor Mike DeWine most of this state level response is coming from Blue state governors, like Jay Inslee of Washington and Gavin Newsom of California as well as Blue state mayors. It is one of the most revealing aspects of this crisis, as this report describes.
California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom
SACRAMENTO — On Monday morning, Donald Trump tweeted: “Nothing is shut down.” On Monday evening, local officials in California’s Silicon Valley did just that.
In the heart of America’s technology industry and the epicenter of coronavirus’ rapid spread in California, the decision by Santa Clara County to ban large public gatherings under threat of legal penalties was the most dramatic instance yet of state or local authorities moving decisively to curb the burgeoning public health crisis.
And it put on display a growing truth of the escalating public health emergency: From Northern California to New Rochelle, N.Y., state and local officials in mostly blue states have been largely taking matters in their own hands, with outcomes that have varied widely. They’re acting, some say, amid an absence of federal leadership.
Republican-led states are acting as well. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called a state of emergency, urged universities to teach remotely and told fans to stay away from outdoor sporting events, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged an influx of […]
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Thursday, March 12th, 2020
DAVID LIM and BRIANNA EHLEY, - Politico
Stephan: The failure to ramp up and make tests publicly available at no cost is going to prove to be devastating to America. Criminal Trump has been blocking testing so the numbers stay small; he admits it. And what testing is done he wants done privately by the two leading corporations, trying to turn it into a profit windfall. Compare what is being done in the U.S. to what is being done in Europe and Asia, and you can clearly see the incompetence of the Trump administration.
“I’m confident of the actual test that we have, but as people begin to operationalize the test, they realize there’s other things they need to do the test,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said. |
Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP
A looming shortage in lab materials is threatening to delay coronavirus test results and cause officials to undercount the number of Americans with the virus.
The slow pace of coronavirus testing has created a major gap in the U.S. public health response. The latest problem involves an inability to prepare samples for testing, creating uncertainties in how long it will take to get results.
CDC Director Robert Redfield told POLITICO on Tuesday that he is not confident that U.S. labs have an adequate stock of the supplies used to extract genetic material from any virus in a patient’s sample — a critical step in coronavirus testing.
“The availability of […]
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Thursday, March 12th, 2020
PETER WADE, - RollingStone
Stephan: When I said in the previously report that Trump was acting as he has in order to keep the number of cases small I thought some might take that as a partisan canard. Nope, straight out of criminal Trump's mouth. He does not see this as worldwide pandemic but instead as something affecting his re-election prospects. Note also the reference to his Ukrainian letter, it is the tell showing you what he is really thinking.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Alex Brandon/AP/Shutterstock (10576163e)
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting about the coronavirus at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta
Trump Virus Outbreak, Atlanta, USA – 06 Mar 2020
President Trump is the master of saying the quiet part out loud, and on Friday he showed no signs of relinquishing that title.
While speaking at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Trump said he would prefer not to allow the more than 3,500 people aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship onto American soil “because I like the [coronavirus] numbers being where they are.”
Trump blatantly admitted that his initial inclination was to leave the people on the ship, some of whom have tested positive for the coronavirus, solely because of how it would appear, but said he would yield to the wants of the federal health officials who are in charge of the crisis.
“They would like to have the people come off,” Trump said of the health officials. […]
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Thursday, March 12th, 2020
Joel Segal & Harvey Wasserman,, - truthout
Stephan: For me, the big takeaway of the coronavirus pandemic so far is the irrefutable comparison it presents us with comparing the healthcare systems of other developed nations with the failure of the illness profit system in America to really cope with pandemics. And from everything I hear and read it is going to get worse, much worse. So these stressors are going to make this inadequacy all the more obvious. So perhaps the silver lining is that in the upcoming election voters will finally get the point of birthright universal single payer healthcare.
Medical personnel stand next to tents on the dock next to the Princess Cruises’ Grand Princess in the Port of Oakland on March 9, 2020, in Oakland, California.
Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty
A critical factor accelerating the spread of coronavirus in the United States is our lack of universal health care.
As we debate the costs of providing medical treatment for all, and as the virus tears through the fabric of our society, it’s become clear that many of the factors accelerating the spread of illness and death associated with this new plague are associated with the for-profit nature of our health care system.
Because we have a patchwork medical system whose primary motivating engine is corporate profit, rather than a unified public medical system whose motivating engine is the health of the public, communicable diseases are treated in a mindset of individual outcome. Our system focuses on the immediate needs of insured patients rather than treating the overall disease as a public emergency, thus hampering the containment and treatment of epidemics like these.
Because they […]
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