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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump's Coronavirus Plan Was Never Going to Work
Trumps Coronavirus Plan Was Never Going to Work
March 5, 2020 at 10:09 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 295 Comments
https://politicalwire.com/2020/03/05/trumps-coronavirus-plan-was-never-going-to-work/
"SNIP.....
Time: Since January, epidemiologists, former U.S. public health officials and experts have been warning, publicly and privately, that the administrations insistence that containment wasand should remainthe primary way to confront an emerging infectious disease was a grave mistake.
The administration was using all its resources to blockade the doors, they warned, but the enemy was likely already in the house.
When it finally became indisputable that an outbreak was underway in Washington state, the administration were slow to catch up. There were not enough COVID-19 testing kits, hotlines were overwhelmed, and hospitals and public health departments were hobbled by a lack of reliable statistics on the spread of the disease. Experts say the U.S. response is now likely weeksif not monthsbehind schedule.
.......SNIP"
soryang
(3,299 posts)world wide wally
(21,719 posts)dchill
(38,320 posts)That is all. The whole Trump administration knows nothing else about planning. Deny & Lie.
bamagal62
(3,218 posts)herding cats
(19,549 posts)He saw it as an opportunity to advance his isolationist agenda. Problem there is, viruses don't understand borders, ethnicity or politics. They spread where they find hosts without a care one where that host lives or traveled to. They just need viable hosts.
They had an extensive advance warning and they wasted it because they wanted to advance their message. Oddly, I think Trump might have been stupid enough to think the advice he was being given was valid. It wasn't. He closed the barn doors after the infected horses were out and never bothered to see where they'd escaped to.
The problem, they say, is partly that the administration misallocated limited resources. By being told to focus on monitoring a small number of quarantined travelers returning to the U.S., public health departments were not fully engaged in preparing mitigation efforts in communities, where we now know the virus was already infecting more people. Healthcare workers could have used that time to coordinate with hospitals, track suspected cases, funnel resources to diagnostics, prepare vulnerable populations, like nursing homes, and promote mitigation measures, such as isolating known cases outside of a hospital.
Instead, the administration telegraphed that such mitigation work would only be necessary if containment failed. Community mitigation work is not a failure, and part of the problem is not recognizing that, Nuzzo tells TIME. Sending the message that we are stopping this at our border, keeping this from coming in from China, has a psychological impact not on just on the American people but on practitioners as well. The Presidents repeated assertions that the containment strategy was working also diminished the sense of urgency, causing delays in community preparedness, public health experts and doctors told TIME.
Thus, here we are. People are dying, more will die and while it wasn't fully avoidable we could have done more to be prepared at this point. We need to do better to protect our most vulnerable among us.
pat_k
(9,313 posts)Last edited Sat Mar 7, 2020, 05:05 AM - Edit history (1)
Containment is impossible without testing, and they dropped the ball on that big time.
It's not just about barring the doors. In our global, interrelated world, you have to assume it is ALREADY in the house.
Tracing and quarantine are essential, but detection seems to me to be the number one priority. And that means widespread surveillance testing.
The whole CDC testing debacle needs a closer look.
Seemingly inexplicably, the CDC decided to disregard protocols being used elsewhere and develop "their own" test.
duforsure
(11,882 posts)And promote putins propaganda on it, while now claiming they are doing a great job, which is another trump fabrication he creates knowing its all lies. When trump puts out propaganda and misinformation (like putin is going) on the corona virus , it shows his contempt for the truth, again, and his ties with putin.
Luz
(769 posts)He has/has no care for the Americans affected by a virus.
Quit being a weakling, walk it off, go to work and spend money. That's his plan.