'Absolute Clusterf-k': Inside the Denial and Dysfunction of Trump's Coronavirus Task Force

[babylonsister]

April 13, 2020 6:00AM ET
‘Absolute Clusterf–k’: Inside the Denial and Dysfunction of Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force
Missed warnings, conflicting messages, and broken promises — how the White House fumbled its response to the worst pandemic in a century
By Andy Kroll
This story appears in the May 2020 issue of Rolling Stone, on newsstands May 5th.


On February 24th, Dr. Duane Caneva, the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, sent an urgent email with the subject line “Red Dawn Breaking Bad” to a small group of doctors, epidemiologists, public-health officials, and pandemic experts. For more than a month, the scientists on the email chain had been tracking a deadly new virus that was ripping its way through Southeast Asia.

The people on the Red Dawn email chain ranged from local health officials in Texas and California to senior-level doctors at the U.S. Army, the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the State Department. Some of them had worked together in the White House in the mid-2000s. They had helped write President Bush’s 2007 national strategic plan for a flu pandemic and had advised President Obama on his response to the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. (The Red Dawn title was an inside joke referring to the 1984 B movie in which the Soviet Union invades America.)

By late February, the sense of alarm in the emails was palpable, as new coronavirus cases were reported in Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and Italy. One of the White House veterans on the chain was a pandemic expert named Dr. Carter Mecher, who is now a senior adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Mecher got into the habit of waking up at 4:30 a.m. and combing the internet for data to help him understand this new virus and what might happen if it made it to America.

One day, he discovered a field report by Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases about the Diamond Princess cruise ship, docked in Yokohama, which had suffered one of the first major coronavirus outbreaks. Mecher used the field report’s numbers to make a rough projection about how a severe pandemic might play out in the U.S., and he immediately shared it with his colleagues on the Red Dawn chain: By his calculation, if 30 percent of the American population were to get the new coronavirus, more than 1.7 million could die from it.

If those projections were even in the ballpark, a crisis of unimaginable proportions was fast approaching. Dr. Eva Lee, a health care operations expert at Georgia Tech, warned that there would likely be a critical shortage of personal protective equipment for nurses and doctors. Lee wrote, “I do not know if we have enough resources to protect all front-line providers.”

The experts immediately took their warnings to policymakers and officials in Washington, D.C. One public-health specialist, who asked to remain anonymous, says that when he briefed government officials in February, they were stunned to learn how grim the situation was — that it was too late to contain the virus, that mitigation was the only option, and that as many as half of all Americans could become infected from COVID-19. “They looked at me like I was crazy,” the specialist says. “Because no one had told them before.”

more...

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-coronavirus-covid-white-house-testing-kushner-cdc-dysfunction-red-dawn-982308/?fbclid=IwAR2XfH2VajZYJ145Vje_KA1i8zh2Yz9fJLJ7hrd_6WxZsfzAExi7_Fpm_sc

[Girard442]

1. I think we have to proceed as if this were all intentional.

I suppose you can't completely rule out stupidity, but stupidity that pervasive is pretty much criminality, all by itself.

[Hortensis]

3. Yes. There are almost two dozen incompetent, corrupt

Trump appointees on that "task force." I didn't look up all the names I didn't recognize, but after striking out with four I'm prepared to believe Fauci and Birx are the only competent professionals, and they'd be gone if Trump didn't need to trot them out in front of the cameras for PR reasons.

In various nations ruthless far-right authoritarians are using the pandemic to grab and consolidate more control. And we see daily evidences in the media that our own RW powers, fronted by the Republican Party, are doing the same here in the U.S.

[dalton99a]

2. Also, China called the CDC director on Jan. 3 and gave him a stark warning.

This has been confirmed by the CDC to Reuters

[spanone]

4. K&R

[Paladin]

5. Thank God for the Red Dawn evidence.

There's nothing that trump and his goons can do to make it go away---it's there for history's judgment from now on.

[colsohlibgal]

6. Indirect Murder

No one knows just why he refused to act for at least a couple of months before he reluctantly did.

Why? Greed? Stupidity? Probably a combo. But there is no doubt he has copious blood on his hands. Recent polling seems to show his approval ratings in free fall.

It would seem his only hope is too keep the number of voters way down. He let that slip when he admitted that if voting by mail was allowed republicans would never win.

Whatever beating him, crushing him is necessary.....he will whine some regardless but he’ll have less luck trying that if he is beaten badly....he’ll still do it though.

Once he is dethroned he and his grifter clan need to be prosecuted till it’s done.

[hatrack]

7. Depraved Heart Murder . . .

Which I believe is the term under Maryland law.

[2naSalit]

8. More like Catastophuck...

Credit to Jon Stewart.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. Kakistocofuck?

[2naSalit]

11. I spelled it wrong...

Catastrophuck = cross between catastrophe and clusterfuck. A Jon Stewart creation.

[crickets]

9. "Because no one had told them before."

This is what happens when you make a point of firing all of the people who could have told you. Funny how that works.

Now everyone can see the results when experts volunteer the vital information unasked and still are ignored.

There is no way to claim that the response is bumbling and bungled. The 'no real response' response is the plan, and along with a side of 'skim or steal all the profit you can!' it's quite deliberate.

[2naSalit]

12. +1