Handling the coronavirus crisis

[Admin]

Trump on testing..

"Everybody that wants a test can get one"  (March 6 at the CDC)

• Nonsense even now, more than 6 weeks later and there are shortages in swaps and reagents
  
• Trump finally invokes the Defense Production Act, admitting there are shortages. This should have been done two months ago.
  

It's a local thing, the states are responsible

• No, they're bidding against one another, it needs Federal coordination
  

We have enough testing for reopening the economy

• No, the US is at 1.5M tests a week, needs to triple that for reopening
  

[Admin]

The coronavirus pandemic has overwhelmed health systems in Europe and North America. The US, France, Italy, Spain and the UK have all experienced shortages of doctors, ventilators, personal protective equipment and testing capacity. But it’s going to be even worse in poor countries where medical resources are scarce. Ten African countries have no ventilators at all. In Uganda, there are only 55 intensive care beds for 43 million citizens. And no poor country could afford the economic safety net that is currently sustaining citizens and companies here in the UK. In fact, Covid-19 is the biggest disaster for developing nations in our lifetime.

Coronavirus is the biggest disaster for developing nations in our lifetime | Ian Goldin | Opinion | The Guardian

Developing nations face a severe crisis:

• Much of their population can't socially isolate as they scrape by a living in the informal sector and live with multiple family members in cramped rooms without running water.
  
• There is little or no safety net or monetary and/or fiscal firepower to soften the blow.
  
• There is a severe lack of medical capacity already.
  

And in the midst of that, when many of these countries have the WHO (World Health Organization) as their main source of tests and help (also for other diseases like dengue, TB, malaria, etc.), Trump defunds the WHO..

[Admin]

President Donald Trump has been calling for states to reopen their economies sooner rather than later — and journalist Catherine Rampell, in her Washington Post column, argues that doing so is a “hail Mary” move by a president who fears not being reelected. “Public health experts worry that ‘reopening’ the country too soon will be bad for public health,” Rampell explains. “Economists worry it will be bad for the economy. The general public worries it will bad for, well, everyone. So why is President Trump agitating to do so anyway, even encouraging insurrection against his own administration’s stay-at-home guidance? Because it’s the only hail Mary chance he has at reelection.” 

The more desperate Trump feels, Rampell warns, the more “dangerous” that could be for the United States this election year. “Right now, Trump is a man with almost nothing to lose, and that makes him dangerous,” Rampell asserts. “He’s more than happy to risk the lives of the old, infirm or otherwise vulnerable — even if they’re his voters.”

Columnist details a compelling theory about why Trump is attempting a desperate ‘hail Mary’ – Alternet.org

[Admin]

After weeks of hyping it as a potential coronavirus miracle drug, President Donald Trump and Fox News have suddenly lost faith in hydroxychloroquine. A study of coronavirus patients in Veterans Affairs hospitals released Tuesday found more deaths among those treated with hydroxychloroquine than those treated with standard care. Researchers reported finding no benefit to its use. The study, which the National Institutes of Health posted to its website and is the largest of its kind, was not peer-reviewed. The authors concluded more rigorous studies are needed before adopting widespread use of the drug. Asked about the findings during the White House briefing hours after it was published, Trump dodged, saying “I don’t know of the report,” and tried to distance himself from the drug...

But just as Trump and Fox News have tried to do with the months-long period in January, February, and March in which they downplayed the coronavirus, they’re now trying to put their hydroxychloroquine hype down the memory hole. On Wednesday morning, Dr. Oz — who just weeks ago was writing op-eds touting “the tantalizing possibility that hydroxychloroquine may prevent infection” and asserting that “doctors around the world are choosing hydroxychloroquine more than any other solution” — went on Fox & Friends and said he thinks it’s important for wait for more studies.

Trump and Fox News stop talking about hydroxychloroquine after VA study - Vox

• But not before this:
  

The former head of the federal office that will be at the forefront of developing a cure for COVID-19 said he was forced out after he prioritized science instead of promoting unproven treatments. Rick Bright told The New York Times he was removed as the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) because he limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, two drugs that President Trump repeatedly pushed as potential cures without evidence. Bright was moved to a narrower job at the National Institutes of Health.

“I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in a statement to the paper.  "Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit,” Bright said. “While I am prepared to look at all options and to think ‘outside the box’ for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public," Bright said.

Doctor says he was removed from federal post after opposing funding for unproven drugs | TheHill

[Admin]

Mr Trump sparred with reporters in the wild opening minutes of yet another coronavirus news conference, with journalists pressing him on why he sounds so sure the virus will not return when his own experts say it could. He could not provide a scientific or medical response, however, as he quickly grew agitated. About a half hour later, Mr Trump's top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, sounded less confident. He told reporters that unless Americans continue to follow social distancing and other steps, the likelihood of a second wave will be high. A poll released on Wednesday, however, found more than half of those surveyed in six 2020 swing states believe others are taking those mitigation measures too far. "There will be coronavirus in the fall," Mr Fauci said. "It will take off, that's what viruses do. ... We are going to respond to it to not allow it to do that."

Trump calls on CDC director to denounce 'fake news' – who admits paper's quotes were accurate | The Independent

Tempers flared after Mr Trump immediately made clear he was there, in large part, to rebut a Washington Post article published on Tuesday that was based on an interview with his CDC boss. It was topped with this headline: "CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating". The crux of the presidential gripe was the word "devastating" in the headline. Mr Redfield, under questioning from reporters, acknowledged The Post quoted him accurately in the actual article. In a stunning scene, with the US death toll approaching 46,500, the president of the United States was focused on an adjective in a news article.

Trump calls on CDC director to denounce 'fake news' – who admits paper's quotes were accurate | The Independent

[Admin]

On January 21, the day the first U.S. case of coronavirus was reported, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services appeared on Fox News to report the latest on the disease as it ravaged China. Alex Azar, a 52-year-old lawyer and former drug industry executive, assured Americans the U.S. government was prepared. “We developed a diagnostic test at the CDC, so we can confirm if somebody has this,” Azar said. “We will be spreading that diagnostic around the country so that we are able to do rapid testing on site.”

Shortly after his televised comments, Azar tapped a trusted aide with minimal public health experience to lead the agency’s day-to-day response to COVID-19. The aide, Brian Harrison, had joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years. Five sources say some officials in the White House derisively called him “the dog breeder.” Azar’s optimistic public pronouncement and choice of an inexperienced manager are emblematic of his agency’s oft-troubled response to the crisis.. 

Harrison, 37, was an unusual choice, with no formal education in public health, management, or medicine and with only limited experience in the fields. In 2006, he joined HHS in a one-year stint as a “Confidential Assistant” to Azar, who was then deputy secretary. 

A promised virus surveillance program failed to take root, despite assurances Azar gave to Congress. Rather than share information, three current and three former government officials told Reuters, Azar and top staff sidelined key agencies that could have played a higher-profile role in addressing the pandemic. “It was a mess,” said a White House official who worked with HHS.

Special Report: Former Labradoodle breeder was tapped to lead U.S. pandemic task force - Reuters

Stunning stuff:

• The test went completely astray
  
• Azar put a dog breeder with no medical or scientific experience running the COVID-19 response..
  
• The article in full is a real horror story..
  

[Admin]

The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week. In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”. A few days after Grenon dispatched his letter, Trump went on national TV at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Thursday and promoted the idea that disinfectant could be used as a treatment for the virus. To the astonishment of medical experts, the US president said that disinfectant “knocks it out in a minute. One minute!”

Paradoxically, Trump’s outburst about the possible value of an “injection” of disinfectant into the lungs of Covid-19 sufferers came just days after a leading agency within the president’s own administration took action to shut down the peddling of bleach as a coronavirus cure around the US.

Revealed: leader of group peddling bleach as coronavirus 'cure' wrote to Trump this week | World news | The Guardian

[Admin]

Donald Trump has attempted to offer an excuse about this bizarre claims that injecting disinfectant was actually intended as sarcasm.  The president said that the statement was made to mock journalists when he was actually talking to one of his medical experts at the time. At this point we have gone far beyond the realms of parody and have entered some sort of surreal twilight zone where facts and figures no longer matter. It's almost as if we are living in a world written by the satirical news website The Onion. Speaking of which... On March 25, almost a month before Trump made his claim about bleach, The Onion published an article with the headline Man Just Buying One Of Every Cleaning Product In Case Trump Announces It’s Coronavirus Cure

The joke story looks at a man called Troy Mitchell from Evanston, Wyoming, who was buying every possible cleaning product from his local convenience store, just in case Trump said it would cure coronavirus. In the article, they write: I got toilet bowl cleaner, carpet cleaner, Swiffer WetJet refills—you name it—just so me and my family will be ready if the president announces one of these things can treat Chinese virus. I’m not getting caught without some oven degreaser should Trump say it’s going to save us, so I better go ahead and grab me a bottle. After this, I’m hitting the hardware store to pick up a 5-gallon bucket of roof sealant to make sure I’m prepared in the event that turns out to be what gets rid of the Wuhan. Could just be 10 or 20 squirts of Windex into each nostril. You never know what might work in a pinch! Obviously the main intention of The Onion is for jokes and mockery but few would have predicted that something like this would actually happen but a month later here we are.

Trump news: The Onion predicted the president's bleach cure in March | indy100

[Admin]

On the afternoon of Saturday, April 4, President Trump stood at the White House podium and escalated his marketing blitz on behalf of hydroxychloroquine, hyping the old malaria drug’s alleged promise in treating COVID-19, as well as his administration’s success in acquiring huge amounts of it. “We have millions and millions of doses of it—29 million to be exact,” he said, as the official tally of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. topped 260,000 and governors across the country pleaded for federal support to acquire tests, ventilators, and protective gear for health care workers. “We’re just hearing really positive stories, and we’re continuing to collect the data.”

That evening, according to emails obtained by Vanity Fair, Trump’s political appointees would ramp up the pressure on career health officials to make good on the president’s extravagant promises, despite clear warnings from federal clinicians about the risks and unproven benefits of chloroquine-based treatments for COVID-19. Vanity Fair has assembled this account based on documents and interviews provided by multiple federal officials with knowledge of internal Trump administration proceedings.

The president had been touting hydroxychloroquine for weeks, sparking worldwide shortages of the drug and prompting negotiations with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to lift export restrictions on its active ingredients. But on March 24, the federal government’s top interagency working group of clinicians and scientists privately threw cold water on his claims, according to a federal official with knowledge of the working group’s deliberations. In an internal consensus statement, a medical countermeasures group within Health and Human Services recommended that chloroquine-based COVID-19 treatments should be studied only in controlled, hospital-based clinical trials, as their safety and efficacy was “not supported by data from reliable clinical trials or from non-human primates” and carried “potential risks.” The medicines—which are used to treat malaria as well as autoimmune conditions such as lupus—can have serious side effects, including heart arrhythmias.

And yet, just hours after that April 4 press conference, White House officials pushed ahead with a massive behind-the-scenes pressure campaign on the government’s top health officials to deliver huge amounts of chloroquine drugs to just about anyone who wanted them, according to documents reviewed by Vanity Fair. 

“Really Want to Flood NY and NJ”: Internal Documents Reveal Team Trump’s Chloroquine Master Plan | Vanity Fair

• Amazing story, Trumpies wanted to provide everyone with an untested drug which can have dangerous side effects, over strong objections of professionals in relevant institutions (one of which was sacked), just to prove Trump (and the Fox News peddlers) right, who had been peddling the drug for weeks on national TV. 
  

[Admin]

“I told him it’s not helping him,” one adviser told Axios. “Seniors are scared. And the spectacle of him fighting with the press isn’t what people want to see.” Trump has reportedly been hesitant to end his briefing appearances, Axios reported, because he said they bring in good television ratings. The president has also used the briefings as an opportunity to rile up his base in a way that would typically be done at his rallies. Trump has criticized Democrats and attacked Biden, referring to him as “Sleepy Joe” during briefings, veering far away from the subject of Covid-19.

Trump says briefings 'not worth the effort' amid fallout from disinfectant comments | Donald Trump | The Guardian

• Stopping the press briefings only because it's hurting his campaign, after numerous own goals (injecting bleach, etc.)
  
• Ratings, riling up the base as the main rationale for holding press briefings on the most terrifying pandemic of the last 9 decades??