This Incompetent Administration's Response to Coronavirus

[donquixote99]

Originally Posted by JJIII

The powers that be in the State of Tennessee have decided that stockpiling the first shipments is a better idea than getting it out in the field.

???

Strange policy. Stockpiling easy, distributing hard? Hoarding is power?

[JJIII]

Originally Posted by donquixote99

Strange policy. Stockpiling easy, distributing hard? Hoarding is power?

I don't know.

I expect it will take some time to find out too.

[nailer]

SNAFU works for me.

[icenine]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gretc...b60d41634279b3

[RickeyM]

Time for the states to cut out the middle man. At least until January 21, 2021.

[Pio1980]

Originally Posted by icenine

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gretc...b60d41634279b3

Operation "warped speed" indeed!

[bobabode]

'Families are turning obituaries into final pleas to avoid COVID-19'

"When Pamela Caddell died of COVID-19 last month, there was no funeral — her family knew that, as a former nurse, she wouldn’t want anyone else to be exposed to the disease.

But there was still something her husband, Richard, wanted to say — needed to say — so he sat down in his empty house to write her obituary.

After honoring her decades in medicine and listing her surviving relatives, he included a plea to anyone who picked up the Courier & Press in Evansville, Ind.

“Pam died of Covid-19,” Richard wrote. “It was her fervent wish that everyone take this horrible disease seriously. This was her last wish to all people.”

Richard may not have known it, but the obituary for his wife belongs to a growing genre that dates to the summer. At the time, President Trump and his Republican allies were pushing to keep businesses open and downplaying the possibility of a deadly second wave of infections.

Now with a third wave overwhelming hospitals across the country, Americans are increasingly turning their private grief into public calls for action as the COVID-19 death toll grows by thousands each day.

Unlike Trump, the mourners do not have tens of millions of Twitter followers, nor do television cameras hang on their every word. Instead they’re buying obituaries in local newspapers, sometimes for several hundred dollars. There have been some efforts to turn the obituaries into a more coordinated activist campaign, but for many it’s a decision they reach on their own, a reflection of their own frustration, anger and pain.

“A lot of people knew my wife,” Richard said. “Her message was to take it seriously. Everybody. Take it seriously. And there’s a lot of people that I’m afraid that they don’t. They listen to the wrong person.”

Richard and Pamela met when they were teenagers, and she was a carhop at a root beer stand. They got married when he was 21, she 18, and had a son and a daughter." LA Times

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation...gs-of-covid-19

"They listen to the wrong person". Wise words from a new widower.

It didn't have to be this way. Rest in peace, Pamela Caddell.

[bobabode]

A good chronology of how and where it all went to hell -

'The U.S. was supposed to be equipped to handle a pandemic. So what went wrong?' WP

"WHEN A group of experts examined 195 countries last year on how well prepared they were for an outbreak of infectious disease, the United States ranked best in the world. Today, after being engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic, the United States is among the hardest-hit nations in the world, with more than 327,000 deaths, 18 million infected, the fourth-highest per capita mortality among nations and more suffering to come.

What went wrong?

The answer is, almost everything. President Trump is not responsible for how the outbreak began but bears a large burden for the catastrophic pandemic response. From the start, he squandered valuable time, silenced public health experts and scientists, politicized the regulatory agencies, abandoned a concerted federal response, botched diagnostic testing, lifted restrictions too early, and engaged in deception, illusion and confusion that left the American people fatigued and divided.

Before the coronavirus infected anyone, the world was not prepared. As the 2019 Global Health Security Index showed, most nations were unready for a pandemic. Public health systems have been chronically starved for resources here and abroad. Mr. Trump closed the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. Warnings in several studies during 2019 were ignored. And when the outbreak began, China’s authoritarian party-state covered up the early signs of human transmission, delaying vital information — with devastating consequences.

But once the virus began spreading, Mr. Trump failed to adequately warn people, to take the threat seriously or to mount a pandemic response equivalent to the danger. Instead, he retreated to the realm of his own interests: his reelection campaign, his personal grievances, his misguided instincts and magical thinking.

The result was a presidency of delusion and deception. Mr. Trump deliberately lied to the public about the grave dangers they faced. In an interview with The Post’s Bob Woodward on Feb. 7, the president said he knew the virus could be more lethal than the flu and that it spread through the air. “This is deadly stuff,” he said. But he told the nation Feb. 25, “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.” On Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” On March 9, he said the “common flu” was worse than covid. On March 19, he told Mr. Woodward he did not want to be honest with the American people about the severity. “I wanted to always play it down,” he said. “I still like playing it down.” On June 20, he said, “Many call it a virus, which it is. Many call it a flu, what difference?”

cont. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...66d_story.html

[nailer]

The article above is an opinion that begins with a half truth thus putting what follows in question. The half truth:

'The U.S. was supposed to be equipped to handle a pandemic. So what went wrong?' WP

"WHEN A group of experts examined 195 countries last year on how well prepared they were for an outbreak of infectious disease, the United States ranked best in the world.

Just sayin'.

[Human]

A pendemic is by definition an worldwide outbreak of a disease. Where is the contradiction between the two bolded items above?