Now that the number of new people infected with the coronavirus in China is slowing down, the country's Communist Party is ratcheting up threats against the West, with a particularly nasty warning about access to life-saving drugs aimed at the United States.
In an article in Xinhua, the state-run media agency that's largely considered the mouthpiece of the party, Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19, a virus that originated in the city of Wuhan and has spread quickly around the world, killing nearly 5,000 people and infecting thousands more. The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge America into "the mighty sea of coronavirus."
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WNU Editor: How the U.S., and the rest of the world, got themselves in this situation is beyond me.
26 comments:
Biden has a 10 point plan to deal with China, I hear his son Hunter is leading the team...
Yeah you're right WUN, I hope this wake's the world up when it comes to China.
"How the U.S. got themselves into this situation?"
Its called corporate greed.
I think they call it globalisation. Still when push comes to shove never underestimate a nation putting their interests above others. China is putting their needs first.
I'm sure at CNN the decision was made long ago. .if China criticises or threatens the US, Don lemon will of course stab Trump in the back, even if it means weakening his own country. With media like this who needs enemies
This is perhaps the one thing you do NOT want to even think about threatening. But by doing so, China is accomplishing two remarkably wonderful things. First, it is cutting it's own throat, demonstrating it has yet joined the community of nations (other than that which might have existed in medieval times) that it prides itself as being part of. Second, it is almost single handedly destroying the doctrine of globalism. You go, China.
Of course Don Lemon would stab Trump in the back. He is a top. It is what they do.
Not entirely apropos, but “Corporations provide lots of useful goofs and services, but never count on them to take a stand for freedom” James Taranto, Best of the Web, September 29, 2009
Anon @752 got a point
The world got in this situation due to MONEY. It is cheap to produce product there because they don't care anything about worker safety or even a living wage. The dangerous wet markets would not exist in a normal economy.
Screw China, the world needs to wean themselves off their cheap labor.
I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it.
The federal government is moving too slowly, due to a lack of leadership.
President Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday. His White House eliminated a National Security Council office that focused on pandemics. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
President Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday. His White House eliminated a National Security Council office that focused on pandemics. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
When President Trump took office in 2017, the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense survived the transition intact. Its mission was the same as when I was asked to lead the office, established after the Ebola epidemic of 2014: to do everything possible within the vast powers and resources of the U.S. government to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic.
One year later, I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like covid-19.
The U.S. government’s slow and inadequate response to the new coronavirus underscores the need for organized, accountable leadership to prepare for and respond to pandemic threats.
"I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it."
- Ziemer, CRY Baby & naval pilot.
Should not the DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASES, Jay C. Butler, MD (CAPT, USPHS, RET), head up the response to the disease and not TOP GUN Naval Aviator Ziemer?
When will You lost that lovin' feelin' floozies and illiterate among us get a clue?
Imagine a person having the capacity to scour the web for free picture of naked women, but unable to find the CDC org chart.
www.cdc.gov/about/pdf/organization/cdc-org-chart.pdf
A person of high intellect, no doubt.
Mismanagement, missed opportunities: How the White House bungled the coronavirus response
Supercut of Trump contradicting his administration on coronavirus: "We could be at just 1 or 2 people over the next short period of time." Wrong. "View this the same as the flu." Wrong. "Anybody that needs a test gets a test." Wrong. "We're very close to a vaccine." Wrong. // Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Scientist explains how Trump ‘obliterated’ Obama’s pandemic response infrastructure out of spite
Better coronavirus testing means more people testing positive. The US may have failed to test people because Trump thought more positives could hurt his reelection chances. // Here's something we don't know: WHO already had a test. The US refused to use it. Who made that decision and why?
politico.com/news/2...
But neither the CDC nor the coronavirus task force chaired by Vice President Mike Pence would say who made the decision to forgo the WHO test.
Well, since this is Pence's baby, and he was the one who, when asked about the WHO tests, said "That's not how we do things."
So they dont have to actually say who made the decision. It was the Trump/Pence administration, lead by Pence.
level 1
The Trump administration recently requested $2.5 billion in emergency funds to prepare the U.S. for a possible widespread outbreak of coronavirus. Critics, though, are pointing out that money might not be necessary if the administration hadn’t spent the past two years largely dismantling government units that were designed to protect against pandemics.
The cuts started in 2018, as the White House focused on eliminating funding to Obama-era disease security programs. In March of that year, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, whose job it was to lead the U.S. response in the event of a pandemic, abruptly left the administration and his global health security team was disbanded.
That same year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was forced to slash its efforts to prevent global disease outbreak by 80% as its funding for the program began to run out. The agency, at the time, opted to focus on 10 priority countries and scale back in others, including China.
Subscribe to Fortune’s Outbreak newsletter for a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus outbreak and its impact on global business.
Also cut was the Complex Crises Fund, a $30 million emergency response pool that was at the secretary of state’s disposal to deploy disease experts and others in the event of a crisis. (The fund was created by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.)
Overall in 2018, Trump called for $15 billion in reduced health spending that had previously been approved, as he looked at increasing budget deficits, cutting the global disease-fighting budgets of the CDC, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) in the process.
Health
Trump is breaking every rule in the CDC’s 450-page playbook for health crisis
The communication chaos on coronavirus is eroding the most powerful weapon we have: Public trust
President Trump holds a news conference on coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
President Trump holds a news conference on coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
By
Carolyn Y. Johnson and
William Wan
March 14, 2020 at 9:50 a.m. EDT
Amid an outbreak where vaccines, drug treatments and even sufficient testing don’t yet exist, communication that is delivered early, accurately and credibly is the strongest medicine in the government’s arsenal.
But the Trump administration’s zigzagging, defensive, inconsistent messages about the novel coronavirus continued Friday, breaking almost every rule in the book and eroding the most powerful weapon officials possess: Public trust.
After disastrous communications during the 2001 anthrax attacks — when white powder in envelopes sparked widespread panic — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created a 450-page manual outlining how U.S. leaders should talk to the public during crises.
Protecting vulnerable people from a virus that, according to some projections, could infect millions and kill hundreds of thousands, depends on U.S. leaders issuing clear public health instructions and the public’s trust to follow directions that could save their lives.
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“Sometimes it seems like they have literally thrown out the book,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a former top FDA official and Johns Hopkins University professor who is using the CDC manual to teach a crisis communication class. “We’re studying what to do — and at times seeing what not to do — on the same day.”
Two weeks ago, Trump said the country would soon have zero cases. This week, there were more than 2,200 and 49 deaths. When asked at a news conference Friday why he disbanded the White House’s pandemic office, Trump denied doing so, saying, “I didn’t do it … I don’t know anything about it.” When asked if he bore any responsibility for disastrous delays in testing, Trump said no, blaming instead “circumstances” and “regulations” created by others. When asked if Americans should believe Trump or his top health official, Anthony S. Fauci — whom Trump has contradicted repeatedly — Trump sidestepped the question.
Note the all bold font. Fred Lapides or someone imitating him is screaming again.
The post is more true, if it is all in bold font.
When his every thought and action is for his own well being and in particular his own financial success, having a very small mind means that there is nothing left to give due consideration to the well being of the people he was elected to represent, protect. At this point in his tenure as President there should be no surprise that he is what he is, does what he does. When this threat is over, hopefully while patting himself on the back claiming responsibility for a job well done, he breaks his arm.
FLASHBACK 2009: Chuck Schumer Brags About Cutting Funding to Flu Epidemic (VIDEO)
The conference was held by phone. A CDC disease modeler named Matthew Biggerstaff presented four scenarios (labeled A,B,C,D), “based on characteristics of the virus, including estimates of how transmissible it is and the severity of the illness it can cause.” The scenarios were then shared with expert teams for purposes of planning out a nationwide response. Although stipulated as valid until February 28, the scenarios remain “roughly the same” as of today, according to one of the researchers attending the meetings.
The Times article reveals the worst-case scenario, but emphasizes that this is what would occur only if there were no mitigation measures taken.
Between 160 million and 214 million people in the U.S. could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to one projection. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.
And, the calculations based on the C.D.C.’s scenarios suggested, 2.4 million to 21 million people in the U.S. could require hospitalization, potentially crushing the nation’s medical system, which has only about 925,000 staffed hospital beds. Fewer than a tenth of those are for people who are critically ill.
To be clear, despite the paucity of guidance being provided at the national level, state and local communities are beginning to take action. And the CDC is revising its modelling accordingly, based on the degree and extent of those mitigation efforts. The “worst-case” scenario, described above, is therefore not what will occur.
The data have not been released publicly because, according to the CDC, there is still uncertainty about the rate of transmission by people who are asymptomatic, and the researchers realize that any public disclosure of such data to the public walks a fine line between creating complacency and panic. The Times was only able to obtain screenshots (apparently from a Power Point) which detail the data.
Strangely, when contacted by the Times, the CDC would not comment on this data and instead referred the Times to the White House, where a spokesman for the White House Coronavirus Task Force said that “senior health officials had not presented the findings to the group.” Assuming this statement is true, the question then becomes “why not?” As the article itself points out, “without an understanding of how the nation’s top experts believe the virus could ravage the country, and what measures could slow it, it remains unclear how far Americans will go in adopting—or accepting—socially disruptive steps that could also avert deaths.” At a bare minimum it seems highly implausible that the very task force designed to formulate our nation’s response to the pandemic was not in possession of these findings, which, according to the Times, were shared with “about 50 expert teams.”
Squirrel can only copy, paste and insult.
Xer has no words of its own.
I think a slug has 19,999 more neurons than squirrel.
FLASHBACK 2009: Chuck Schumer Brags About Cutting Funding to Flu Epidemic (VIDEO)
Seems like China is waging war without ever having declared it.
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