Maybe not that. But say, for example, there was a killer asteroid. There have been people saying we need to prepare for that event, and we actually could to some degree, but whenever it is brought up people just go “Hur, Hur, those idiots saw Armageddon and thought it was a documentary”. Maybe this pandemic will rub in that it is worth putting a little preparation in for other possible disasters.
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I think we have known he was strategic since he planted the fake birth announcement as a neonate when he was born “in Hawaii”. He even managed to pose as a much older relative when placing it.
The dude is super crafty.
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There are a lot of “what if” scenarios to be tossed around, and the one that I’d like to see worked out, is what if Trump had somehow overlooked the CDC and its pandemic crew in his budget slashing Obama-be-gone redecoration spree?
I have to imagine it still would have made a mark, it still would have hurt. But with some responsible adults at the helm, and the german test in full production six weeks sooner, we could be playing a much more interesting and effective game than, “everybody stay home”.
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I think the likelihood is that T**** wouldn’t have done anything differently.
I don’t think there’s much of an argument can be made to say that he wasn’t aware of the probability that the virus would become a pandemic. It was brewing for the whole of January. He definitely knew about it, he just chose not to take any useful action.
Would having a few more grown-ups in the room have made a difference? Doubtful. When has he ever listened to experts before? I can’t think of any examples but maybe they exist.
And when he finally did take some action, were any of those actions decisive or even timely? Not really. Essentially, he did nothing for the whole of January and February.
He cancelled some flights from China on January 30.
House passes 8.3 billion dollar emergency bill on March 4.
He canceled some flights from Europe on March 11.
He didn’t take responsibility at all, then declared a state of emergency on March 13 and the individual states take their own actions.
Senate announces stimulus package on March 19.
Did he invoke the DPA? Sort of…
Did he order ventilators from GM? Who knows…
What’s he been up to for the last couple of weeks? Blaming Obama, the Chinese and the WHO. Daily election campaign ramblings…
Emasculating the CDC has undoubtedly contributed to the disaster but I don’t think it has been a game changer.
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It might be responsible, but it would also be the kind of thing that dictators are allowed to do. In dictatorships.
Further proof that he was a time traveler sent here to save us from ourselves.
There are no libertarians in a pandemic. Besides, we already have an example of what dictators do during such periods.
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parts of my more distant extended family are pretty right wing.
They’ve posted stories warning of the danger’s of “authoritarian overreach.” I can’t help thinking that those same authors cheered on the elimination of scientific expertise within the executive branch.
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I am sure they also have nice things to say about both Orban and Bolsonaro. Orban is a racist piece of crap and Bolsonaro is anti-environment.
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From what I can see, there’s a split,
Unfortunately, the ideological similarities that the rival “factions” hold in common is a distressing one.
Not sure that they consider Bolsonaro to be worth of discussion.
The warning against “Authoritariuan Overreach” comes in this form:
which ends with this peculiar summation:
The preservation of a free society requires ordered liberty. The government can never forget that the objective is not order for its own sake, or for the sake of “progressive” social transformation. The point of order is the flourishing of freedom.
I’m sure that ordered liberty means something to the people at National Review, and it probably means something bad for us.
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It depends on how much you can separate his fecklessness from other causes. Was firing Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer, the head of global health security on the White House’s National Security Council, “solely feckless”? 80%? 90%? Is firing someone who refuses to take an illegal loyalty oath feckless? Or do you think he had some unspoken, yet honest and legitimate reason for gutting our ability to respond to public health crises?
Check out this 2018 article describing the effects of his firing:
Ziemer, who had been described as “one of the most quietly effective leaders in public health,” was widely lauded in the global health community for his work on the President’s Malaria Initiative, which helped save 6 million lives, before joining this administration.
“Admiral Ziemer’s departure is deeply alarming, especially when the administration is actively working to cut funds that addressed past pandemics like Ebola,” Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), the vice ranking member of the foreign affairs committee, told HuffPost in a statement. “Expertise like his is critical in avoiding large outbreaks.”
[/quote]
Or are you saying that the feckless removal of key expert leadership is not enough, we also have to prove fecklessness in all his missteps, from his entire organization’s refusal to take the possibility of a pandemic seriously; ignoring warnings of a pandemic before the advent of SARS-nCoV-2; his failure to stockpile masks when he was told year after year that the stockpiles were depleted; through his (failed) attempt to defund the CDC? Because we can go down that road, too, and it’s “fecklessness all the way down”.
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Long-ish read, but it telles you what was in place at the time Trump took office - the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense (the pandemic preparedness team at the White House’s National Security Council), how it was dismantled by the Trump administration, and what that means in the current situation.
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National Review is a worthless relic back when Fiscal Conservatives meant something. Nowadays they just pucker up to Trump’s posterior.
Overall, we rate the National Review Right Biased based on story selection that always favors the right and Mostly Factual in reporting due to a few misleading claims and occasional use of poor sources.
Okay, two questions:
If the president has the authority to order states to shut down, does he also have the authority to order states to re-open?
If Trump had ordered NYC to close its schools on Feb.15, would that have been constitutional?
For the first question, it should be noted that the Federal government refused to take any responsibility in handling of the pandemic, leaving the states to come up with their own measures. So even if such authority existed, it was not used. By passing the buck to the states, he has given up the authority to reverse it, since he did not institute the shutdown in the first place.
As for the second, school closings are always a local matter. But if the president declared all schools closed nationwide, it would be a more appropriate use of federal authority.
Short answer:
- Yes
- Yes.
The president has emergency powers which are limited in duration and scope specifically to prevent what is happening now. A hodgepodge of different state actions and measures which are conflicting and counterproductive to the nation in general. Trump, being a lazy sack of shit, has always avoided doing anything which smacks of obligations of his position and responsibilities of leadership.
“I take no responsibility at all” is a motto for his entire administration.
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When you look at the impact of this virus state by state it seems clear that there are
- super high density states with lots of international travel where the virus has just gone apeshit. Basically the NYC - New Jersey metro area, which is pretty much a factory farm for humans, with the same susceptibility to a highly contagious disease.
- a second tier of states where infection and death rates are on a par with European countries, countries which are not governed by Trump. And in those states, most of the problem is confined to the higher density cities.
- a third tier of states, mostly rural but with a mix of more heavily populated such as VA, MN, CA, where the infection and death rates have stubbornly failed to escalate to more than a small fraction of Italy-Spain-Metro NY levels. If Nebraska was getting hit as hard as NY percentagewise, they would have around 1000 deaths instead of 18.
It seems pretty clear that the measures taken so far, state by state measures which do not assume the USA is a sphere of uniform temperature and density, are working well at keeping the rest of the country from NY-NJ levels of infection and death. Another two or maybe three weeks should enable us to know that for sure.
And at that time, it’s going to be appropriate to remember that the purpose of all these social distancings and shutdowns was to prevent a catastrophic surge of cases hitting our health care system. The purpose was not to reduce coronavirus infections to a graphed straight line with y equal to 0.0. We are going to have to mitigate and re-open at a low, but nonzero, number of infections for some time to come.
Italy and Spain have rather high population densities in the area afflicted. In Italy it was almost entirely coming from just one province. So we already had a heads up as to how it would affect places like NY and NJ if decisive actions were not done by the Federal government.
Japan has a higher population density than the US and had far fewer deaths from the initial infections. However they re-opened their economy too early and are getting second order increases.
You are completely wrong here because there is still only one effective measure at the moment,
now that we missed the chance for containment and mass testing, social distancing. It makes no difference how heavily populated areas are, it is the only action which can be done.
Social distancing measures REQUIRE a uniform application across regions to avoid what is going on now, which is a ripple effect of infection and death depending on who instituted such measures the fastest.
We already see the failure of the hodgepodge uncoordinated efforts 2 months after the first cases hit here. It has led to a rapidly increasing death toll, states overspending for equipment that FEMA should be purchasing and political profiteering by the administration.
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If you were the governor of NY, would you wait until you had gotten the go ahead from Donald Trump before doing anything?
Would you have a choice?
The state barely had the budget to operate business as usual before the pandemic. It is not the job of a state government to provide for something so far outside their power. National level disasters REQUIRE national level responses. Trump’s actions in forcing states to fend for themselves drove up prices for equipment and then they would be undermined by Federal efforts. Trump’s lack of leadership made a bad situation far worse.
Think about it this way, did we see people attacking Gov. Pataki for not having sufficient police/fire and cleanup people after the 9/11 attacks? Of course not. It was so beyond the state’s capacity that such thoughts could only come from someone truly ignorant, dishonest and irresponsible. GW Bush simply had federal assistance brought to ground zero as soon as possible. Bush the Lesser understood and acknowledged the power and responsibility of his position. Trump the Useless still doesn’t.
Rather than decisive action, even now, all we have from the administration is trying to shift blame and reckless talk about sacrificing working class people to kickstart the economy.
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