March 16th, 2020 via Twitter (as usual), America’s Moron-in-Chief absolved himself (again) of any responsibility for the utter lack of action America has taken on containing the global pandemic of COVID-19 (aka coronavirus): “We have an invisible enemy. We have a problem a month ago nobody ever thought about. It’s just so contagious-- sort of record-setting type of contagion.”
Every day with this guy. PLENTY of people thought about this. Until Trump disbanded it in 2018, we had an entire government OFFICE devoted to EXACTLY THIS-- global pandemics. Trump took hard-won lessons learned from things like SARS, MERS, and H1N1 and unilaterally decided to "save money" by disbanding that office, then, predictably, disclaimed any responsibility while looking around him cluelessly like, "who, me? I don't know anything about a pandemic office. Pence, YOU know anything about a pandemic office? No? Anyone? Buehler? No? Nope, totally wasn't us!"
This guy. This. f*cking. guy. Him and his whole damned party, every single one of them, has waged a WAR against science. They've derided expertise at every turn. They've constantly pretended that the most rank ignorance is equal to hard-won knowledge, and LAUDED THEMSELVES for it.
Two months ago, it was "we have it totally under control." But former administration officials from the pandemic team Trump had disbanded the year before were on television, Twitter, social media, and print media sounding the alarm. Tom Bossert, Trump’s former homeland security adviser and member of the global health security team that Trump disbanded when he “reorganized” America’s priorities and put John Bolton in charge of national security, tweeted, “we face a global health threat.” On television, he stated, “My sole motivation for weighing in is to promote good public health awareness to do everything within our means to limit human loss or suffering.” Scott Gottlieb, former head of the FDA who was once described in the press as “an unusually activist regulator in the Trump administration,” and Gary Cohn, former head of the National Economic Council, were also all over TV and Twitter, sounding the alarm and arguing the administration must prepare for the situation to get worse. Note, these weren’t tree-hugging liberals primed to hysterical over-reaction at the first goddamned sneeze, but people who WORKED IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION.
Gottlieb penned an Op-Ed at CNBC at the beginning of February, stating openly that, “There are policy steps that we can take now to reduce these viral threats, and precautions that Americans can take to lower their individual risk. The policy steps start with broader screening to spot small outbreaks. Patients presenting with unusual [symptoms]... should be screened for novel coronavirus, even if they don’t have a history of travel to China... Federal health officials must be ready to backstop cities. Plans for supplemental funding of state health programs and deployment of additional medical supplies should be at the ready.”
Cohn’s replacement, Larry Kudlow,simultaneously was claiming “we have contained this... pretty close to airtight.” Trump responded by stating “Many people are getting better... we’re in very good shape,” and then went golfing. By the end of February, he was on television patting himself on the back, even as stock markets tumbled--
Within a couple of days, [it’s] going to be down close to zero. That’s a pretty good job.”
Even as the stock markets had the worst drop since the Great Depression, Trump was busy tweeting--
The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. ...Stock Market starting to look very good to me!
On February 25th, Trump was once again patting himself on the back-- “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus, including the very early closing of our borders to certain areas of the world.” Simultaneously, the administration was barring Dr. Anthony Fauci from speaking publicly about the virus without prior approval. Nevertheless, Fauci publicly warned of the coming epidemic: “When you start to see sustained transmission in other countries throughout the world, it’s inevitable that it will come to the United States.”
Dr. Nancy Messonier, head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC spoke out the same day during a media briefing-- “It’s not so much a question of IF this will happen, anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when... and how many people in this country will have severe illness.
Simultaneously, the CDC was warning Americans to prepare for disruptions to their daily lives-- closing schools, working from home, delaying elective medical procedures.
“We should all be dusting off our pandemic preparedness plans and rehearse them very quickly, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University. “The core concept is social distancing.”
Trump, meanwhile, continued to live in a rich fantasy world where his administration had already defeated the virus. “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Two days later, the state of Washington declared a public health emergency, followed quickly by Florida and California.
Three days ago, several weeks after published reports of the infections rate (R0) of coronavirus suggested anywhere from a quarter to half of all Americans would become infected, Trump was claiming he doubted we’d need anywhere near the (incorrect) number of tests he was claiming we would be able to bring online within the week. Yesterday he claimed “we have tremendous control over” the virus, then backtracked today to claim “I was talking about what [sic] we’re doing is under control, but I’m not talking about the virus.”
Actions have consequences. Electing an entitled, proudly ignorant narcissist seems to have been a bad move for anyone looking for sober, professional leadership in the midst of a global pandemic. But one thing is certain-- no one could have seen this coming, except for the vast pool of experts who did. And no one could have done a better job responding to this crisis than Trump, except for every single person who sounded the alarm only to meet his derision, or perhaps anyone on the team whose sole purpose was to respond to this sort of thing, back before Donald Trump and the Republican Party decided that team was a waste of money.
The Trump administration has no more self-awareness than a dog licking his own balls in public.
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