Medical staff in protective gear work at a 'drive-thru' testing center for the novel coronavirus disease of COVID-19 in Yeungnam University Medical Center in Daegu, South Korea, March 3, 2020. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Chad Terhune, Dan Levine, Hyunjoo Jin, Jane Lanhee Lee, Reuters: Special Report: How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus
SEOUL - In late January, South Korean health officials summoned representatives from more than 20 medical companies from their lunar New Year celebrations to a conference room tucked inside Seoul’s busy train station.
One of the country’s top infectious disease officials delivered an urgent message: South Korea needed an effective test immediately to detect the novel coronavirus, then running rampant in China. He promised the companies swift regulatory approval.
Though there were only four known cases in South Korea at that point, “we were very nervous. We believed that it could develop into a pandemic,” one attendee, Lee Sang-won, an infectious diseases expert at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters.
“We acted like an army,” he said.
Read more ....
Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- March 19, 2020
Answering Questions About COVID-19 -- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Italy's coronavirus disaster: At first, officials urged people to go out for an aperitif. Now, doctors must choose who dies -- Linton Besser, ABC News Online
As world cowers, China glimpses coronavirus aftermath -- AFP
Coronavirus rocks already strained ties between US and China -- Matthew Lee, AP
The Coronavirus Is Expediting Middle East Outcomes -- Jay Mens, National Interest
Ravaged by war, Middle Eastern countries face a new scourge -- Isabel Debre, AP
What Australia could learn from China's response to coronavirus COVID-19 -- Christina Zhou and Bang Xiao
Coronavirus has reached India, but I feel safer here than I might back home in Australia -- James Oaten in New Delhi, ABC News Online
Hello from Italy. Your future is grimmer than you think -- Ida Garibaldi, The Washington Post
I’m a Doctor in Britain. We’re Heading Into the Abyss. -- DNYUZ
How long will Americans be fighting the coronavirus? -- Christina Larsopn and Michelle R. Smith, AP
COVID-19 Affects National Security in Novel Ways -- John McLaughlin, OZY
We Are About to Find Out How Robust Civilization Is -- Matt Ridley, Spectator
In Mexico, a cartel is taking over: Jalisco New Generation -- Mark Stevenson, AP
Who will cave first in Saudi-Russia oil price war? -- Tim Daiss, Asia Times
23 comments:
December 31: China reports the discovery of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization.
January 6: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a travel notice for Wuhan, China due to the spreading coronavirus.
January 7: The CDC established a coronavirus incident management system to better share and respond to information about the virus.
January 11: The CDC issued a Level I travel health notice for Wuhan, China.
January 17: The CDC began implementing public health entry screening at the 3 U.S. airports that received the most travelers from Wuhan – San Francisco, New York JFK, and Los Angeles.
January 20: Dr. Fauci announces the National Institutes of Health is already working on the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus.
January 21: The CDC activated its emergency operations center to provide ongoing support to the coronavirus response.
Trump's Decisive Actions Helped Save Lives During Coronavirus Epidemic, Experts Admit
January 23: The CDC sought a “special emergency authorization” from the FDA to allow states to use its newly developed coronavirus test.
January 27: The CDC issued a level III travel health notice urging Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China due to the coronavirus.
January 29: The White House announced the formation of the Coronavirus Task Force to help monitor and contain the spread of the virus and provide updates to the president.
January 31: The Trump Administration:
Declared the coronavirus a public health emergency.
Announced Chinese travel restrictions.
Suspended entry into the United States for foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the coronavirus.
January 31: The Department of Homeland Security took critical steps to funnel all flights from China into just 7 domestic U.S. airports.
February 3: The CDC had a team ready to travel to China to obtain critical information on the novel coronavirus, but were in the U.S. awaiting permission to enter by the Chinese government.
February 4: President Trump vowed in his State of the Union Address to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the coronavirus.
February 6: The CDC began shipping CDC-Developed test kits for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus to U.S. and international labs.
February 9: The White House Coronavirus Task Force briefed governors from across the nation at the National Governors’ Association Meeting in Washington.
February 11: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) expanded a partnership with Janssen Research & Development to “expedite the development” of a coronavirus vaccine.
Trump Will Unleash the Power of the Private Sector to Counter the Coronavirus Threat
February 12: The U.S. shipped test kits for the 2019 novel coronavirus to approximately 30 countries who lacked the necessary reagents and other materials.
February 12: The CDC was prepared to travel to China but had yet to receive permission from the Chinese government.
February 14: The CDC began working with five labs to conduct “community-based influenza surveillance” to study and detect the spread of coronavirus.
February 18: HHS announced it would engage with Sanofi Pasteur in an effort to quickly develop a coronavirus vaccine and to develop treatment for coronavirus infections.
February 24: The Trump Administration sent a letter to Congress requesting at least $2.5 billion to help combat the spread of the coronavirus.
February 26: President Trump discussed coronavirus containment efforts with Indian PM Modi and updated the press on his administration’s containment efforts in the U.S. during his state visit to India.
February 29: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed certified labs to develop and begin testing coronavirus testing kits while reviewing pending applications.
February 29: The Trump administration:
Announced a level 4 travel advisory to areas of Italy and South Korea.
Barred all travel to Iran.
Barred the entry of foreign citizens who visited Iran in the last 14 days.
March 3: The CDC lifted federal restrictions on coronavirus testing to allow any American to be tested for coronavirus, “subject to doctor’s orders.”
Joe Biden Spreads Misinformation About Trump and the WHO Amid Coronavirus
March 3: The White House announced President Trump donated his fourth-quarter salary to fight the coronavirus.
March 4: The Trump Administration announced the purchase of $500 million N95 respirators over the next 18 months to respond to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
March 4: Secretary Azar announced that HHS was transferring $35 million to the CDC to help state and local communities that have been impacted most by the coronavirus.
March 6: President Trump signed an $8.3 billion bill to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
The bill provides $7.76 billion to federal, state, & local agencies to combat the coronavirus and authorizes an additional $500 million in waivers for Medicare telehealth restrictions.
March 9: President Trump called on Congress to pass a payroll tax cut over coronavirus.
March 10: President Trump and VP Pence met with top health insurance companies and secured a commitment to waive co-pays for coronavirus testing.
March 11: President Trump:
Announced travel restrictions on foreigners who had visited Europe in the last 14 days.
Directed the Small Business Administration to issue low-interest loans to affected small businesses and called on Congress to increase this fund by $50 billion.
Directed the Treasury Department to defer tax payments for affected individuals & businesses, & provide $200 billion in “additional liquidity.”
Met with American bankers at the White House to discuss coronavirus.
March 13: President Trump declared a national emergency in order to access $42 billion in existing funds to combat the coronavirus.
March 13: President Trump announced:
Public-private partnerships to open up drive-through testing collection sites.
A pause on interest payments on federal student loans.
An order to the Department of Energy to purchase oil for the strategic petroleum reserve.
March 13: The Food & Drug Administration:
Granted Roche AG an emergency approval for automated coronavirus testing kits.
Issued an emergency approval to Thermo Fisher for a coronavirus test within 24 hours of receiving the request.
March 13: HHS announced funding for the development of two new rapid diagnostic tests, which would be able to detect coronavirus in approximately 1 hour.
Biden's Coronavirus Advisor Told the Elderly to Avoid Flu Shots, Vaccines
March 14: The Coronavirus Relief Bill passed the House of Representatives.
March 14: The Trump Administration announced the European travel ban will extend to the UK and Ireland.
March 15: President Trump held a phone call with over two dozen grocery store executives to discuss the on-going demand for food and other supplies.
March 15: HHS announced it is projected to have 1.9 million COVID-19 tests available in 2,000 labs this week.
March 15: Google announced a partnership with the Trump Administration to develop a website dedicated to coronavirus education, prevention, & local resources.
March 15: All 50 states were contacted through FEMA to coordinate “federally-supported, state-led efforts” to end coronavirus.
March 16: President Trump:
Held a teleconference with governors to discuss coronavirus preparedness and response.
Participated in a call with G7 leaders who committed to increasing coordination in response to the coronavirus and restoring global economic confidence.
Announced that the first potential vaccine for coronavirus has entered a phase one trial in a record amount of time.
Announced “15 days to slow the spread” coronavirus guidance.
March 16: The FDA announced it was empowering states to authorize tests developed and used by labs in their states.
March 16: Asst. Secretary for Health confirmed the availability of 1 million coronavirus tests and projected 2 million tests available the next week and 5 million the following.
March 17: President Trump announced:
CMS will expand telehealth benefits for Medicare beneficiaries.
Relevant Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act penalties will not be enforced.
The Army Corps of Engineers is on ”standby” to assist federal & state governments.
March 17: President Trump spoke to fast food executives from Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Burger King to discuss drive-thru services recommended by CDC.
March 17: President Trump met with tourism industry representatives along with industrial supply, retail, and wholesale representatives.
March 17: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin met with lawmakers to discuss stimulus measures to relieve the economic burden of coronavirus on certain industries, businesses, and American workers.
March 17: Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced a partnership between USDA, Baylor University, McLane Global, and Pepsi Co. to provide one million meals per weak to rural children in response to widespread school closures.
March 17: The Treasury Department:
Contributed $10 billion through the economic stabilization fund to the Federal Reserve’s commercial paper funding facility.
Deferred $300 billion in tax payments for 90 days without penalty, up to $1 million for individuals & $10 million for business.
March 17: The Department of Defense announced it will make available to HHS up to five million respirator masks and 2,000 ventilators.
March 18: President Trump announced:
Temporary closure of the U.S.-Canada border to non-essential traffic.
Plans to invoke the Defense Production Act in order to increase the number of necessary supplies needed to combat coronavirus.
FEMA has been activated in every region at its highest level of response.
The U.S. Navy will deploy USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy hospital ships.
All foreclosures and evictions will be suspended for a period of time.
March 18: Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed:
1 million masks are now immediately available.
The Army Corps of Engineers is in NY consulting on how to best assist state officials.
March 18: HHS temporarily suspended a regulation that prevents doctors from practicing across state lines.
March 18: President Trump spoke to:
Doctors, physicians, and nurses on the front lines containing the spread of coronavirus.
130 CEOs of the Business Roundtable to discuss on-going public-private partnerships in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite all that the Trump administration has done, there are people who are so consumed with hatred for him that they are either convinced he's done "nothing" or has "botched" the response to the pandemic. It's time for his critics to put politics aside.
Nitrogen Dioxide Ramping Up Again Over China
www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-5P/COVID-19_nitrogen_dioxide_over_China
"In 2013, Elizabeth Rosenthal told New York Times readers that air travel is the “most serious environmental sin”"
Elizabeth Rosenthal does not go to CHURCH or a SYNAGOGUE, but shes is RELIGIOUS.
She is a RELIGIOUS LIBERAL and as a DEVOUT LIBERAL she believes in the APOCALYPSE!
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Trump told governors to buy own pandemic supplies, then outbid them | Fortune
Trump Says Federal Government Is "Not a Shipping Clerk," Governors Should Do It All | GQ
Officials Fight Criticism Over Cutting Global Health Staff | Time
How Real Leaders Step Up to the Plate During a Crisis
Why isn't Tony Fauci at coronavirus press conferences?
Whiplash: Here are 4 blatant contradictions Trump just spewed out during his coronavirus briefing
‘No president has screwed up as badly’: Trump ripped to shreds after latest attempt to deal with COVID-19 crisis
TRUMP LIED
PEOPLE DIED
"Mexican cartel, whose leader is the DEA's no. 1 target, 'forces pharmacies to purchase bootleg medicine' - with six out of every ten pharmaceutical drugs sold in the country now COUNTERFEIT"
You know that stuff is making its way across the border.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8131247/Deadly-Mexican-cartel-forces-pharmacies-purchase-bootleg-medicine.html
(fill in the blank) LIED
PEOPLE DIED
That has been a good communist chant since the 1960s.
Вы уверены, что ваша вечеринка регистрация актуальна?
Of course said comrade emphatically denied, she was a communist several years ago. She is as much a Democrat as Bernie.
WASHINGTON — The outbreak of the respiratory virus began in China and was quickly spread around the world by air travelers, who ran high fevers. In the United States, it was first detected in Chicago, and 47 days later, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. By then it was too late: 110 million Americans were expected to become ill, leading to 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.
That scenario, code-named “Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.
The simulation’s sobering results — contained in a draft report dated October 2019 that has not previously been reported — drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.
The draft report, marked “not to be disclosed,” laid out in stark detail repeated cases of “confusion” in the exercise. Federal agencies jockeyed over who was in charge. State officials and hospitals struggled to figure out what kind of equipment was stockpiled or available. Cities and states went their own ways on school closings.
Many of the potentially deadly consequences of a failure to address the shortcomings are now playing out in all-too-real fashion across the country.
Addressing the media alongside the coronavirus task force on Thursday, Donald Trump said he would “slash red tape like nobody has even done it before” to get approval for coronavirus treatments.
That would be a welcome development indeed. What’s unfortunate is that there was no similar push at the beginning of the crisis to expedite coronavirus testing. The U.S. response to the pandemic has been hampered at every level due to insufficient testing capacity.
The first coronavirus case in the U.S. and South Korea was detected on January 21. Since then, South Korea has effectively contained the coronavirus without shutting down its economy or quarantining tens of millions of people. Instead, the Korean government has pursued a “trace, test, and treat” strategy that identifies and isolates those infected with the coronavirus while allowing healthy people to go about their normal lives. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have also managed to contain the virus via a combination of travel restrictions, social distancing, and heightened hygiene.
Unfortunately, the United States has not made testing widely available and now various regions are being forced to impose severe economic and social lockdowns. As of March 17, the U.S. had tested only about 125 people per million. South Korea had tested more than 5,000 people per million. Between early February and mid-March, the U.S. lost six crucial weeks because regulators stuck to rigid regulations instead of adapting as new information came in. While these rules might have made sense in normal times, they proved disastrous in a pandemic.
The Senate’s newest member sold off seven figures’ worth of stock holdings in the days and weeks after a private, all-senators meeting on the novel coronavirus that subsequently hammered U.S. equities.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the very day that her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private, all-senators briefing from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the coronavirus.
“Appreciate today’s briefing from the President’s top health officials on the novel coronavirus outbreak,” she tweeted about the briefing at the time.
That first transaction was a sale of stock in the company Resideo Technologies valued at between $50,001 and $100,000. The company’s stock price has fallen by more than half since then, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average overall has shed approximately 10,000 points, dropping about a third of its value.
It was the first of 29 stock transactions that Loeffler and her husband made through mid-February, all but two of which were sales. One of Loeffler’s two purchases was stock worth between $100,000 and $250,000 in Citrix, a technology company that offers teleworking software and which has seen a small bump in its stock price since Loeffler bought in as a result of coronavirus-induced market turmoil.
So Donald Trump is now calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus.” Of course he is: Racism and blaming other people for his own failures are the defining features of his presidency. But if we’re going to give it a nickname, much better to refer to it as the “Trump pandemic.”
True, the virus didn’t originate here. But the U.S. response to the threat has been catastrophically slow and inadequate, and the buck stops with Trump, who minimized the threat and discouraged action until just a few days ago.
Compare, for example, America’s handling of the coronavirus with that of South Korea. Both countries reported their first case on Jan. 20. But Korea moved quickly to implement widespread testing; it has used the data from that testing to guide social distancing and other containment measures; and the disease appears to be on the wane there.
In the U.S., by contrast, testing has barely begun — we’ve tested only 60,000 people compared with South Korea’s 290,000, even though we have six times its population, and the number of cases here appears to be skyrocketing.
The details of our failure are complex, but they all flow ultimately from Trump’s minimization of the threat: He was asserting that Covid-19 was no worse than the flu just last week (although true to form, he’s now claiming to have known all along that a pandemic was coming).
Why did Trump and his team deny and delay? All the evidence suggests that he didn’t want to do or say anything that might drive down stock prices, which he seems to regard as the key measure of his success. That’s presumably why as late as Feb. 25 Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared that the U.S. had “contained” the coronavirus, and that the economy was “holding up nicely.”
Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions.
As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.
A week after Burr’s sales, the stock market began a sharp decline and has lost about 30% since.
On Thursday, Burr came under fire after NPR obtained a secret recording from Feb. 27, in which the lawmaker gave a VIP group at an exclusive social club a much more dire preview of the economic impact of the coronavirus than what he had told the public.
“Senator Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak,” his spokesperson said. “As the situation continues to evolve daily, he has been deeply concerned by the steep and sudden toll this pandemic is taking on our economy.”
Burr is not a particularly wealthy member of the Senate: Roll Call estimated his net worth at $1.7 million in 2018, indicating that the February sales significantly shaped his financial fortunes and spared him from some of the pain that many Americans are now facing.
The ad from the Republicans for the Rule of Law, who backed the president’s impeachment, shows Trump speaking about the issue in January, when there was just one confirmed case. Trump said then he was not at all concerned about a pandemic striking the U.S.
'There’s no magic drug out there':What the people in charge are saying about coronavirus
From 'great' to 'blindsided': How Trump changed his coronavirus message amid fear, confusion in the White House
The video moves through a timeline of the morphing messaging from Trump and members of his administration on the coronavirus as cases in the U.S. dramatically increased.
The ad highlights the president, speaking to a gathering of African-American leaders in late February at the White House, claimed the virus was going "to disappear. One day – it's like a miracle." It also notes when he falsely underplayed the amount of time required to develop a vaccine.
Chris Truax, a spokesman for the Republicans for the Rule of Law, released a statement saying, "In a crisis, there are three rules that must be followed when communicating with the public: Be first. Be right. Be credible. President Trump has often been first but he has seldom been right and he has never been credible."
"President Trump bears responsibility for misleading his supporters," the statement said.
And Squirrel is screaming again.
The time taken out by his screams slows his posting of crotch shots.
So there is that.
But tell me this. How come all the posted women (some look very young) are all white?
Racist much?
A black woman could not be beautiful in your opinion?
You realize Republicans for the Rule of Law is a fake group?
How do I know Bill Kristol is a member. Bill Kristol is not a Republican. He is twice apostate.
Biden might be able to fill a phone booth if he had a rally. It Kristol had a talk, he would not even be able to do that.
Then you have Sarah Longwell. You have to wonder about her. As good as Trump has been to her, You have to consider she was rabid before he ever came onto the political scene.
The several ways in which President Donald Trump’s methods of operation—including his lies, refusal to accept responsibility, and downplaying problems to protect his personal image and political standing—have spelled a failure of leadership in the current coronavirus crisis have already become familiar. Columnists and commentators have had much to say about this, as have the financial markets. Another now-familiar pattern has been that a significant number of other countries have out-performed the United States in their response to the crisis, according to such measures as the speed of responding, the comprehensiveness of testing, and the appropriateness of protective steps taken. Those strong performers have included states hit hard by the virus as well as ones that—thanks in large part to their effective responses—have been spared the worst of the pandemic.
One of the strongest of these performers is Singapore. The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has praised Singapore’s handling of the crisis and has singled it out as a model for other countries to follow. Singapore faces significant vulnerabilities to the virus as a high-density city-state in East Asia with many personal and commercial connections to China. But at last count, it had not recorded any deaths from coronavirus, with just over two hundred of its people infected and about half of those already recovered.
The WHO and others highlight the specific steps Singapore has taken, including very aggressive contact tracing and complete transparency with the public regarding patterns of infection. But also useful in understanding the difference in performance is to take a broader look at the underlying political and cultural differences between Singapore and Trump’s America. One dimension on which those two polities are poles apart is the degree of respect for public service, including professional civil servants.
Probably no other country in the world displays more such respect than Singapore. Public service is where many of the best and brightest of young Singaporeans—whose American counterparts may instead be heading to a Wall Street investment bank—choose to work. The high status of the civil service does not imply any intention or ability to undermine the policy direction of elected political leaders. On the contrary, the civil servant’s professional ethic of political neutrality is at least as strong in Singapore as in other states. A happy result is a well-placed confidence among everyone concerned, including the public, that the political leadership and the bureaucracy consist of highly capable people working together to address important matters of public concern.
Burr’s ‘defense’ actually indicts Trump. One of Burr’s claims in his and Trump’s defense is that it’s unfair to claim daylight between Burr’s private warnings about the coronavirus and Trump’s downplaying of it.
Burr is pointing to a briefing that Trump and administration officials gave in late February, suggesting that this showed that they warned Americans about the need to “begin making plans” for serious inconveniences to come.
But that very same briefing from Trump and his officials actually shows them vastly downplaying the threat and vastly inflating the success of their own efforts.
In it, Trump declared that their strategy was already having “tremendous success, beyond what people thought.” And multiple other officials also hailed the “success” of their containment strategy.
We now know this was the opposite of the truth — the threat was not remotely contained, and the administration’s failures were to blame for it. Burr’s own defense actually shows that the administration was dramatically misleading the public, even as Burr privately warned that the situation was far more dire.
11:55 AM
If the NYT told you to vote for a NAZI, you would.
Russ, the military pays for your healthcare, lodging, clothing, food, dental work, has its own towns, police force and stores.
Weren't you in it? Sounds a lot like socialism.
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