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ant wrote: . . . It's bizarre you seem to be cheering on China's forthrightness after all the suppression China has been doing and the way its made certain Chinese journalists vanish for trying to get the international community's attention about all this.

It's not realistic for anyone in their right mind to have expected this administration to have sounded pandemic alarms before the WHO declared a pandemic and while China was covering up its malfeasance. Nor was that the time to start replenishing the mask and ventilator national stock while the situation was fast and fluid. That was the responsibility of past administrations, most notably Obama's team who also had been warned by the Bush Admin. How on earth can you sit in office for 8 years, use up the supply on both Katrina and H1NI and NOT replenish anything. That's remarkably irresponsible and dumb.

I'd like to clarify a couple of points. First, by "heads up" from China, I only meant that we were all well aware of a growing epidemic that started in China. As the coronavirus spread across the world, Trump was saying things that were at odds with events as they were unfolding. I don't need to look at the timeline because I was there, reading articles about what was happening in the world, and then hearing what our president was saying. These comments are well documented. Every step of the way what Trump was saying illustrated loud and clear that he was out of touch with reality.

When WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic is really not very relevant. To anyone paying attention, clearly it was going to become a pandemic. But regardless, the coronavirus officially became a pandemic on March 11 and Trump made his famous statement about getting the economy up and running and "churches filled" by Easter on March 24. Easter is in six days and we're not even come close to the apex yet.

When we started seeing fatalities in Italy and elsewhere, it was pretty clear that China's data on the coronavirus didn't make a lot of sense. This in itself is not a great surprise. China is a communist country and its leaders do not tolerate openness and freedom of speech. Yet, we had much better data from Italy, Spain and South Korea and still the leadership in Washington failed spectacularly. See this article:

. . . the U.S. pandemic response remains a work in progress—fragmented, chaotic, and plagued by con­tradictory messaging from political lead­ers. “We don’t have a national plan,” says epidemiologist Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. “We are going from press conference to press conference and crisis to crisis … trying to understand our response.”

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04 ... c-response#

Michael Osterholm is a brilliant epidemiologst but I also believe it's a lot more complicated to coordinate a response to a pandemic in a free society such as ours than he thinks.

Welcome Koegler. Here's a link with more about what Dr. Osterholm is saying.

Dr. Osterholm: “I think that the Surgeon General's comments were absolutely irresponsible"
One of the leading experts in the COVID-19 pandemic thinks that this could be this generation’s Pearl Harbor and 9-11. He is also challenging the words of the United States Surgeon General.

...“This is not for the next couple of weeks,” said Osterholm. “I think that the Surgeon General's comments were absolutely irresponsible. We’re just in the beginning of the long haul." Osterholm also said talk of using available drugs in the immediate future to treat sick patients is also premature.

...What Osterholm said he knows for a fact that wearing cloth masks makes little difference.

4/6/20
https://wccoradio.radio.com/articles/dr ... on-general

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 49816.html


Testing kits from China did not perform well and not fit for roll out


Thanks again, China

ant wrote:

But in this case we had a huge heads up from China

No we didn't have a "huge heads up" from China.. Several investigations have cast serious doubt about China's lack of honestly here.

Well, yes, we did. The countries who had experience with H1N1 really taxing the system had figured out they needed to bolster their response potential. The US was instead busy following the reality TV show in the White House. Congress can't pass a real budget, just continuing resolutions and emergency supplements. Why? Well, it may have to do with one party being unwilling to actually put their name on a compromise. You know that dirty word, compromise? As in, how things get done in most democracies?

Despite strong evidence that increased spending by the rich does not follow on increased income to the rich (they count it, they don't circulate it) the Republican party made sure that the Coronavirus relief did not overlook their priority of providing more tax relief to the 1 percent. A four day old article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... ax-change/

Apologies for being slow.

Fact check:

Did Obama Admin deplete n95 mask stock

True

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/fac ... 114319002/

please note the unbiased source..

It is mostly bandwagoners that have been blaming Trump for everything under the sun the past 3 years.

Most accusations can be fact checked easily.
OPEDS are NOT fact checks.
Please be careful not to confuse them with fact checking

ant wrote:Fact check:

Did Obama Admin deplete n95 mask stock

True

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/fac ... 114319002/

please note the unbiased source..

It is mostly bandwagoners that have been blaming Trump for everything under the sun the past 3 years.

Most accusations can be fact checked easily.
OPEDS are NOT fact checks.

Please be careful not to confuse them with fact checking

I don't think you're talking now to people who think Obama was perfect (or who have been blaming Trump for "everything under the sun," whoever those people are). So, fine, let's identify what's gone wrong with our pandemic preparation, why Obama's team didn't resupply the masks and why Trump's didn't, either. Why did hospitals run out of supplies so quickly? Many questions to be answered.

I just think you focus on outliers a lot, ant. Sure, Trump has political enemies who think he is the biggest thing wrong with our country. That's politics, and Obama faced the same thing. But thoughtful, responsible critics of Trump don't blame him indiscriminately. They don't, for example, blame him for the economy tanking during the virus crisis. They do point to specific lapses of his since the threat of the virus became known.

In this particular case, as it relates to the pandemic, my pronouncement is very simply - how one absolute failure should not surprisingly lead to another.

As it relates to detention cages and immigration it's also very simple - if you build a cage it's going to eventually be used.
Generally speaking, all the tools were put in place and left by Obama for any of his predecessors to use.
The phony championing of immigrant rights the last 3 plus years has been deplorable to say the least.

"Nobody is perfect" and water is wet.

ant wrote:In this particular case, as it relates to the pandemic, my pronouncement is very simply - how one absolute failure should not surprisingly lead to another.

As it relates to detention cages and immigration it's also very simple - if you build a cage it's going to eventually be used.
Generally speaking, all the tools were put in place and left by Obama for any of his predecessors to use.
The phony championing of immigrant rights the last 3 plus years has been deplorable to say the least.

"Nobody is perfect" and water is wet.

I get it that it rankles when you think someone got away with actions that another person wouldn't be able to, or didn't. I'm the same way with Trump getting away with showing fealty to Putin rather than U.S. intelligence agencies, his abandoning of norms of civility and fiscal discipline, and his estrangement from truth. Obama went on the so-called apology tour as the nominee in 2010 and was denounced. He didn't try to make an adversary who attacked U.S. democracy his best bud.

That is only to say that presidents enjoy certain areas of indemnity. Obama was big on deportations and also drone strikes. He didn't seem to suffer politically. Why not? People were favorably disposed to him in the first place, and also, importantly, he didn't go around spewing statements that either were, or could easily be interpreted as, racist or xenophobic. Rhetoric isn't just a frill of the office but among its most important aspects.

On immigration, Trump has been most widely attacked for the family separation policy. It existed in O's admin, but was handled much differently. Trump has also been broadly anti-immigration, including legal immigration, where O wasn't.