The blame game

[TDHoosier]

If you can take the sprinkling of lies in his daily pressers, then he is doing a great job....Pence and Pompeo appearances consist only of comments like "this president is doing an outstanding job"

I respect you are changing your view in November I believe there will be many that flip flop both ways. My questions is what do you want to be said out of the oval office? "Hey the President is doing a horrible job?" I can't stand it when statements like yours are made regardless of what side you stand on.

I realize the media is going to play to its audience depending on which side they support, but the journalism and how the American people cling to everything they say is laughable.

 

[TDHoosier]

What would you do? Trump done a hell of a job to keep an armed Society from going off the deep end!

I agree, I spoke to one of my more outspoken clients who I would say is Republican but really not a Trump fan at all and he said he is lock stocked and loaded. For anyone who has been around guns and ammo you know what that means. Trump and the governors have done a really good job of keeping the masses calm given the circumstances.

 

[thezinfan1]

Nope.

If you can take the sprinkling of lies in his daily pressers, then he is doing a great job....Pence and Pompeo appearances consist only of comments like "this president is doing an outstanding job"

I respect you are changing your view in November I believe there will be many that flip flop both ways. My questions is what do you want to be said out of the oval office? "Hey the President is doing a horrible job?" I can't stand it when statements like yours are made regardless of what side you stand on.

I realize the media is going to play to its audience depending on which side they support, but the journalism and how the American people cling to everything they say is laughable.

Have you listened to the press conferences? Every other line Pence says involves praising the president in some way. This isn't the press twisting anything. That is not normal. Obama's conferences weren't full of this kind of thing. Nor were Bush's. Literally no previous president has behaved like this or had to have his ass kissed like this (I was too young to remember Nixon, so not sure if he acted like this. Threatening Governors that he will withhold aid if they don't say nice things about him. It's crazy town.

 

[bigmac76]

I respect you are changing your view in November I believe there will be many that flip flop both ways. My questions is what do you want to be said out of the oval office? "Hey the President is doing a horrible job?" I can't stand it when statements like yours are made regardless of what side you stand on.

I realize the media is going to play to its audience depending on which side they support, but the journalism and how the American people cling to everything they say is laughable.

Of the assembled Covid 19 Team at the daily press conferences, only Dr Fauci speaks with authority in my opinion. Everyone else needs to give way to scientists and experts. Have you noticed Seema Verma typically just stands and nods approval? She lost all respectability during the 2016 election when she kept saying over and over "Obama invaded Afghanistan"....its time for a new team to do the daily pressers. What next, IMPOTUS accuses nurses of hoarding N95 masks?

 

[HillzHoozier]

This really isn’t hard for smart people to figure out and look skeptically upon miracle cures. I guess we’re woefully short of smart people.

The doctor defined success very clearly in the video as "zero deaths". I was smart enough to figure that out, but not everyone is. And thats ok.

 

[82hoosier]

He might have 100%. Jim Banker might have 100% with his magic elixer. We do not "know" what the success rate is until their are legitimate trials. Anyone in America can announce a 100% success rate.

Every day on Facebook I get a half a dozen advertisements for things that will cure diabetes.

I agree, I spoke to one of my more outspoken clients who I would say is Republican but really not a Trump fan at all and he said he is lock stocked and loaded. For anyone who has been around guns and ammo you know what that means. Trump and the governors have done a really good job of keeping the masses calm given the circumstances.

Hmmmmmm. No.

your post is a complete joke except it’s not funny. If you consider college kids going on spring break to Florida and partying and ignoring social distancing orders then yes he kept everybody calm - actually beyond calm. A lot of people were relieved when he said we needed to open up the economy by Easter. That the cure was worse than the cause.

If this was the Titanic Trump and his staff would’ve been the first ones in the lifeboats. He would be telling everybody else to go back to the cabins. That is not leadership.

It’s a hoax by the Democrats! There are only five cases and everybody is getting better! If we keep this down to 100,000 it’s because we did a good job. I sure hope he’s right and that deaths are only 100,000. But he has not demonstrated anything that would cause me to believe him. He could tell me his father was born in Germany and I would not believe him.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

Maybe we are overly cynical. I'll admit the perfect score bothers me. I wonder how many drugs work 700 times out of 700? That is in the "if it sounds too good to be true" range for me. But I hope he's right.

Details are important. I'm not a bit bothered by the 700/700 average knowing how Dr. Zelenko defined success. He really doesn't say the drug "worked" 700/700 times. If I were able to put Dr. Zelenko under oath and ask him questions, I'd have this cleared up in about thirty minutes. All the published information about this treatment emphasizes that it works best at early onset. I looked but haven't found comments from Dr. Raoult, Dr. Zelenko or anyplace else about how it works with patients with ARDS. You are quite right in suggesting that patient improvement and use of this drug might be coincidental. But that doesn't explain why those who know more about this than me are wanting to use it. I know of one MD who has secured several 5 day doses and sent them to close relatives for use if needed.

 

[thezinfan1]

Every day on Facebook I get a half a dozen advertisements for things that will cure diabetes.



Hmmmmmm. No.

your post is a complete joke except it’s not funny. If you consider college kids going on spring break to Florida and partying and ignoring social distancing orders then yes he kept everybody calm - actually beyond calm. A lot of people were relieved when he said we needed to open up the economy by Easter. That the cure was worse than the cause.

If this was the Titanic Trump and his staff would’ve been the first ones in the lifeboats. He would be telling everybody else to go back to the cabins. That is not leadership.

It’s a hoax by the Democrats! There are only five cases and everybody is getting better! If we keep this down to 100,000 it’s because we did a good job. I sure hope he’s right and that deaths are only 100,000. But he has not demonstrated anything that would cause me to believe him. He could tell me his father was born in Germany and I would not believe him.

Wasn't it just last week that that 2 million number was a false irresponsible media panic?

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Details are important. I'm not a bit bothered by the 700/700 average knowing how Dr. Zelenko defined success. He really doesn't say the drug "worked" 700/700 times. If I were able to put Dr. Zelenko under oath and ask him questions, I'd have this cleared up in about thirty minutes. All the published information about this treatment emphasizes that it works best at early onset. I looked but haven't found comments from Dr. Raoult, Dr. Zelenko or anyplace else about how it works with patients with ARDS. You are quite right in suggesting that patient improvement and use of this drug might be coincidental. But that doesn't explain why those who know more about this than me are wanting to use it. I know of one MD who has secured several 5 day doses and sent them to close relatives for use if needed.

Does he not also say people with symptoms, not people tested and confirmed. In Indiana, roughly 1 out of 6 tests are positive. To get a test, you have to have symptoms. So assuming similar numbers, he may have had 135 actual COVID cases. Out of that 135, how many were obese, elderly, or with diabetes or other conditions.

That is what we do not know. It might be 135 otherwise completely healthy people survived Coronavirus. Is that statistically significant?

 

[HillzHoozier]

Fauci is not lending his power to get the drug tested with federal funds. I know it is CNN below, but the feds are not sponsoring research for this combo at this time. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...ronavirus-hydroxychloroquine-trial/index.html

Some movement on hydroxychloroquine research.

 

[cosmickid]

I respect you are changing your view in November I believe there will be many that flip flop both ways. My questions is what do you want to be said out of the oval office? "Hey the President is doing a horrible job?" I can't stand it when statements like yours are made regardless of what side you stand on.

I realize the media is going to play to its audience depending on which side they support, but the journalism and how the American people cling to everything they say is laughable.

What's "laughable" (but not at all funny) is that you seem to equate whining about Governors being "mean to me", and telling a female Black reporter to "play nice" as Presidential... Who does those things? How in the world does that qualify as leadership, that you somehow deem "worthy of respect"?

Do you think maybe Gov Inslee (WA) is more than just a little perturbed because while people at a Nursing Home in his state were dying of covid 19, Trump was telling the sycophants at his rallies that it was the "latest impeachment hoax"?

 

[hoosboot]

I agree, I spoke to one of my more outspoken clients who I would say is Republican but really not a Trump fan at all and he said he is lock stocked and loaded. For anyone who has been around guns and ammo you know what that means. Trump and the governors have done a really good job of keeping the masses calm given the circumstances.

FYI, you are agreeing with a troll account that was created to lampoon the perspective you are agreeing with and more.

 

[HillzHoozier]

China created a fail-safe system to track contagions. It failed.

The alarm system was ready. Scarred by the SARS epidemic that erupted in 2002, China had created an infectious disease reporting system that officials said was world-class: fast, thorough and, just as important, immune from meddling.

Hospitals could input patients’ details into a computer and instantly notify government health authorities in Beijing, where officers are trained to spot and smother contagious outbreaks before they spread.
It didn’t work

After doctors in Wuhan began treating clusters of patients stricken with a mysterious pneumonia in December, the reporting was supposed to have been automatic. Instead, hospitals deferred to local health officials who, over a political aversion to sharing bad news, withheld information about cases from the national reporting system — keeping Beijing in the dark and delaying the response.

The central health authorities first learned about the outbreak not from the reporting system but after unknown whistle-blowers leaked two internal documents online.

Even after Beijing got involved, local officials set narrow criteria for confirming cases, leaving out information that could have provided clues that the virus was spreading among humans.

Hospitals were ordered to count only patients with a known connection to the source of the outbreak, the seafood market. Doctors also had to have their cases confirmed by bureaucrats before they were reported to higher-ups.

As the United States, Europe and the rest of the world struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic, China has cast itself as a model, bringing down a raging outbreak to the point where the country has begun to lift the kinds of onerous restrictions on life that are now imposed around the world.

This triumphant narrative obscures the early failures in reporting cases, squandered time that could have been used to slow infections in China before they exploded into a pandemic.

“According to the rules, this of course should have been reported,” Yang Gonghuan, a retired health care official involved in establishing the direct reporting system, said in an interview. “Of course they should have seized on it, found it, gone to understand it.”

Aggressive action just a week earlier in mid-January could have cut the number of infections by two thirds, according to a recent study whose authors include an expert from Wuhan’s municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Another study found that if China had moved to control the outbreak three weeks earlier, it might have prevented 95 percent of the country’s cases.

“I regret that back then I didn’t keep screaming out at the top of my voice,” Ai Fen, one of the doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital who spotted cases in December, said in an interview with a Chinese magazine. “I’ve often thought to myself what would have happened if I could wind back time.”

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has sought to move quickly past the early failings and shift attention to the country’s drive to end the outbreak. The Chinese government has been widely castigated for its initial mistakes, which have become a top talking point of President Trump.

The central leadership has focused blame on local bureaucrats, including for censuring doctors who warned others about the infections. It promptly dismissed two health officials and, later, the party secretaries for Hubei Province and its capital, Wuhan.

Now, interviews with doctors, health experts and officials, leaked government documents, and investigations by the Chinese media reveal the depth of the government’s failings: how a system built to protect medical expertise and infection reports from political tampering succumbed to tampering.

Others tried to fill the void of information when the early warning system failed. The medical community found other, informal ways to alert others, disclosing government directives and hospital reports on the internet. During a rare burst of relative transparency early in the epidemic, Chinese journalists did much to expose the problems, but censors closed that window.

The government has vowed to fix flaws exposed in the disease surveillance system, but similar promises were made after SARS. Fresh efforts to repair the system now could also falter under a political hierarchy that leaves experts — doctors, even public health officials — unwilling to take on local leaders. In China, politics often ends up overriding the very safeguards created to prevent interference in the flow of information.

The failures in the first weeks “greatly reduced the vigilance and self-protection of the public and even medical workers, making it harder to contain the epidemic,” said a study of the epidemic by 12 medical experts from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. “Only precautions in ordinary times can prevent great disasters from arising.”

Preparing for the Worst
Last year, health officials exuded confidence that China would never again suffer a crisis like SARS.
In July, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention held what it called the nation’s biggest infectious outbreak training exercise since the SARS epidemic in 2002 and 2003, showcasing the strides that the government had made since the virus killed hundreds and traumatized the nation.

More than 8,200 officials took part in the online drill, focused on a traveler arriving from abroad with a fever who sets off temperature monitors, triggering a hunt for other passengers. The officials raced to test how quickly and effectively they could track, identify and contain the virus, including by notifying Beijing.
“Who knows what the next one will be?” said Feng Zijian, a senior disease control official who helped design the exercise, according to the center.

“The enemy is constantly evolving,” Dr. Feng said, “and our capacity to respond must also constantly improve.”

At the heart of China’s defenses was the Contagious Disease National Direct Reporting System. Started in 2004, it was designed to prevent a repeat of the SARS epidemic, when slow, patchy reporting, compounded by local leaders’ reluctance to share bad news, delayed the government’s fight.

Using this system, health officers in Beijing could pore over screens showing reports from hospitals or local disease control centers, ready to spot warning signs within a few hours of a doctor diagnosing a troublesome infection, such as cholera or tuberculosis, as well as hard-to-diagnose cases of viral pneumonia.

“Viruses like SARS could emerge anytime, but there’ll never be another SARS incident,” Gao Fu, director of China’s disease control center, said in a speech last year. “That’s thanks to how well our national contagious disease surveillance system works.”

The boasts were not empty.
The system had helped when China and other countries suffered outbreaks of avian influenza. In 2013, authorities filed cases of a potentially deadly H7N9 avian influenza virus, with orders to submit them within two hours of confirmation.

Last November, the country’s Center for Disease Control alerted the public to an outbreak of pneumonic plague in the sparsely populated Inner Mongolia, after only two cases emerged.

Since the outbreak in Wuhan, some doctors have said they were unsure how to report early cases, which did not fit into the standard list of infections. But little-understood infections could still be logged as “pneumonia of unknown etiology” — or unknown cause — when the patients did not respond to the usual treatment.
Year after year, Chinese health authorities warned hospitals to look out for such outliers.

“For many infectious diseases when you don’t know the cause, it can often present itself as pneumonia of unknown etiology,” said Dr. Yang, the retired official. “This was a way of capturing an outbreak while it was embryonic.”

The health authorities held regular meetings to train disease control officials in spotting and investigating unexplained and hard-to-treat pneumonia cases; the last was in Shanghai in October.

They inspected hospitals and local disease control centers to try to ensure that they were reporting all listed diseases, and the National Health Commission demanded 100 percent compliance. Although implementation was patchy, doctors reported a handful of unusual pneumonia infections, galvanizing investigators to track down the cause.

In early December, Hubei’s local Center for Disease Control called together officials from across the province to instill the system’s importance.
Huang Xibao, a deputy director of the center, told them to make sure that in 2020 Hubei was “number one nationwide in the overall quality of its contagious disease information.”


‘Far Worse’
Dr. Ai, the head of the intensive care unit at Wuhan Central Hospital, was among the first doctors to note a disturbing pattern among patients staggering into the city’s hospitals with dry coughs, high fevers and crippling lethargy. Computerized tomography or “CT” scans often revealed extensive damage to their lungs.

“It was a baffling high fever,” Dr. Ai said of a patient who turned up on Dec. 16, according to an interview in a Chinese magazine called People. “The medicines used throughout didn’t work, and his temperature didn’t move.”
By the end of the month, local disease control centers in Wuhan were receiving worried calls from doctors, telling of the strange, tenacious pneumonia cases that often seemed to emanate from the Huanan seafood market. Seven in one hospital, three in another, three in yet another.

“These patients may be infectious. Caring for them in a general hospital is a safety risk,” warned Huang Chaolin, a senior doctor at Jinyintan Hospital, the city’s main facility for infectious diseases. He saw seven patients from another hospital on Dec. 27, according to a report in the Health News, the official newspaper of the medical system.

In theory, doctors could have reported such cases directly, but Chinese hospitals also answer to Communist Party bureaucracies. Over time, hospitals often came to defer to local health authorities about reporting troublesome infections, apparently to avoid surprising and embarrassing local leaders.

That deference may not have mattered much most of the time. Now it gave officials in Wuhan an opening to control and distort information about the virus.

Local disease control offices in the city had counted 25 such cases by Dec. 30, said an official internal report that was leaked online last month by unknown whistle-blowers. The brief document was one of the first attempts by Wuhan to understand the extent of cases, and listed patients had fallen ill starting Dec. 12.
“The local health administration clearly made a choice not to use the reporting system,” said Dali Yang, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who studies policymaking in China. “It is clear they were trying to resolve the problem within the province.”

Leaders in Wuhan seem to have assumed that the outbreak would peter out like bursts of avian flu infection — short-lived and localized — Shao Yiming, a virologist at the Center for Disease Control, said in an interview with Caixin, a Chinese magazine.

“This fixed mind-set caused errors in judgment, so we lost the opportunity to early on adopt encircling tactics and tell the public how to self-protect,” Dr. Shao said.

Word of the outbreak started to reach disease control officials in Beijing after rumors and the leaked documents began to spread online. The national center for disease control has pointedly avoided saying in announcements that it had been notified by Wuhan, instead noting that it had “learned of” the outbreak. Local officials have hedged over when and how they told Beijing.

The leaked documents were two internal Wuhan government directives, which emerged online on Dec. 30, possibly released by worried medical workers. The directives, marked “urgent,” ordered hospitals to send the city health commission information about cases of the mysterious pneumonia, improve treatment of patients and avoid infection in hospitals. At the same time, doctors alerted colleagues to the outbreak in private group chats on social media, which prompted official reprimands.

Gao Fu, the director of the Center for Disease Control, spotted the information circulating online and raised alarms, according to an account by Hua Sheng, a prominent Chinese economist who has defended the center. Dr. Gao declined to answer questions. The center ordered teams of experts to rush to Wuhan, and the first group arrived by the next morning.

“News that pneumonia of unknown cause had emerged in Wuhan shook the nerves of every emergency response worker in the Chinese Center for Disease Control,” said a report issued by the center.
Officials from the National Health Commission have said that they ordered Wuhan to issue its first official announcement on the outbreak on Dec. 31. That day the government also informed the World Health Organization’s office in Beijing.

Some of the first cases were finally entered into the system on Jan. 3, though by then it was too late to serve as the early warning system it was intended to be.


Narrow Criteria
When the central government became involved, local officials outwardly welcomed the expert investigators sent by Beijing. Officials described the infections as nothing too serious.

“They said that the illness was quite light, not much different from seasonal influenza, and there’d been no illnesses among hundreds of people with close contact,” Zeng Guang, a Chinese epidemiologist who visited Wuhan on Jan. 9, said of his talks there, according to the China Youth Daily. “They sounded very relaxed.”
Behind the scenes, officials in Wuhan mounted an effort to limit the number of infections counted as part of the outbreak, creating barriers against doctors filing cases.

A leaked report from Wuhan Central Hospital describes how in the first half of January local officials told doctors that cases had to be confirmed by bureaucratic overseers, above all, city and province health authorities.

An official from a district disease control center in Wuhan told the hospital doctor handling infection reports on Jan. 3 that “this was a special contagious disease and we should report only after superiors had notified us,” the leaked report said.

Starting on Jan. 3, Wuhan’s Health Commission set narrow criteria for confirming that a case was officially part of the outbreak, according to a copy of the diagnostic guide that was leaked to the Chinese media, possibly by a medical professional. The rules said patients could be counted if they had been to the market or had close contact with another patient who had. That excluded a growing number of likely cases with no clear link to the market.

For most of the first half of January, local officials maintained that there had been no new confirmed infections, even as doctors in Wuhan and visiting experts suspected that a dangerous contagion was spreading from person to person.

“I lived through SARS, and to me the early period of this epidemic felt shockingly like SARS,” Li Liming, a Peking University professor of public health who was among the experts sent to Wuhan, told a Chinese newspaper. “In both, there was no rapid system response at the start.”

Zhong Nanshan, a disease expert who helped identify SARS, was also skeptical of the official optimism in Wuhan after visiting the city and hearing from his former students there.

He and other experts finished their assessment of Wuhan on Jan. 19, convinced the virus had gained a menacing foothold, and conveyed their alarm to senior officials in meetings in Beijing.

“All the members of the expert team reported that the situation was grim,” Yuen Kwok-yung, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong who was among the expert group, told Caixin magazine. “Preventive measures had to fall in place immediately.”

After weeks of reporting no new infections, the Wuhan government disclosed four new cases on Jan. 18, followed by 17 the next day and 136 the next.

Four days later, Wuhan was shut down to contain the spread.
At the time, the coronavirus had killed 26 people and sickened more than 800. By Sunday, there were more than 670,000 cases worldwide; more than 31,000 people have died.

Reporting and research were contributed by Amber Wang, Claire Fu, Qiqing Li and Paul Mozur.

The bat market still open?

 

[TDHoosier]

What's "laughable" (but not at all funny) is that you seem to equate whining about Governors being "mean to me", and telling a female Black reporter to "play nice" as Presidential... Who does those things? How in the world does that qualify as leadership, that you somehow deem "worthy of respect"?

Do you think maybe Gov Inslee (WA) is more than just a little perturbed because while people at a Nursing Home in his state were dying of covid 19, Trump was telling the sycophants at his rallies that it was the "latest impeachment hoax"?

I have no idea what Gov Inslee was thinking? Personally I believe our President has done a good job of doing all he can to combat this virus. Given that this is a brand new deal, I'm not sure how I would expect the our leader to act or what "leadership" would look like? I know Trump is a bit outspoken, but that has been from the onset (I know you are going to throw out a but of turd quotes that I really don't care about to offset this statement so please don't bother). Personally I think our President has done a great job in his four years of office, but that is my opinion on the things I would like addressed he has done and I believe has made strides to fulfill the promises he made in 2016 and that is all I can ask. I think where America looses focus is in the fact that we put no self blame on ourselves, or in cases like Spring Break the parents of kids that let their kids go? I have a lady that works for me who is very outspoken about social distancing and sanitizing everything here at the office, yet she let her 18 year old go to Florida during Spring Break?

I would suggest others like you should voice your concern on November 4th and if you happen to be on the right side of things then congrats. For now God's speed to the leaders of our Nation and most notably our President.

 

[Lucy01]

FYI, you are agreeing with a troll account that was created to lampoon the perspective you are agreeing with and more.

No, I am not a troll account! But if that keeps your head from exploding go ahead and think that! That’s your answer to anyone having a conservative point of view.

 

[hoosboot]

No, I am not a troll account! But if that keeps your head from exploding go ahead and think that! That’s your answer to anyone having a conservative point of view.

Not bad, but It would have been a better performance with a sprinkle of "socialist," "liberal hoax", or "hate for our President" worked in there somewhere. I prefer Early Lucy - the sharp-edged freshness of the character had the bite of early Chappelle.

 

[UncleMark]

I think where America looses focus is in the fact that we put no self blame on ourselves, or in cases like Spring Break the parents of kids that let their kids go? I have a lady that works for me who is very outspoken about social distancing and sanitizing everything here at the office, yet she let her 18 year old go to Florida during Spring Break?

Meanwhile, Trump goes to Norfolk with his entire entourage to say Bon Voyage! to the hospital ship being dispatched to New York.

 

[iuwclurker]

Not bad, but It would have been a better performance with a sprinkle of "socialist," "liberal hoax", or "hate for our President" worked in there somewhere. I prefer Early Lucy - the sharp-edged freshness of the character had the bite of early Chappelle.

The main difference between early and later Chappelle was new material...

 

[Courtsensetwo]

Meanwhile, Trump goes to Norfolk with his entire entourage to say Bon Voyage! to the hospital ship being dispatched to New York.

No issue with that and frankly have not understood why he hasn't visited production sites for American built supplies. O'bama and Bush would have been all over those photo ops.

 

[Courtsensetwo]

How has the POTUS's effort been poor? Didn't vote for him and really can't stand him but I'm failing to see how his and his team's effort has been poor. Please expound.

Now you are just trolling.

 

[UncleMark]

No issue with that and frankly have not understood why he hasn't visited production sites for American built supplies. O'bama and Bush would have been all over those photo ops.

I beg to differ. I'm certain Obama and Bush would have followed their own advise and limited their travel.

And even if you're right, it was still the wrong thing to do. He could have done something with a big screen or projection or some such and made sure Fox and all his other PR outlets covered it. It would have shown him "working from home" like so many of the rest of us. That's the kind of small but important messages that a true leader sends.

 

[iuwclurker]

I beg to differ. I'm certain Obama and Bush would have followed their own advise and limited their travel.

And even if you're right, it was still the wrong thing to do. He could have done something with a big screen or projection or some such and made sure Fox and all his other PR outlets covered it. It would have shown him "working from home" like so many of the rest of us. That's the kind of small but important messages that a true leader sends.

In short, presidential involves making others feel bigger and better, not yourself.

I seriously believe that most Trumpniks live, succeed and “win” vicariously through Trump. He can lie all he wants as long as he never admits it and keeps portraying himself as the winner. And this is a problem for Democrats, insofar as having lost some of these voters. They don’t give a hoot about his politics, they just depend on him to inflate their egos.

 

[IUclover]

I have no idea what Gov Inslee was thinking? Personally I believe our President has done a good job of doing all he can to combat this virus.

Serious question... Is the "has done a good job of doing all he can" set at the Trump bar of good or in line with what other great leaders would have done/acted/behaved/said?

 

[Courtsensetwo]

I beg to differ. I'm certain Obama and Bush would have followed their own advise and limited their travel.

And even if you're right, it was still the wrong thing to do. He could have done something with a big screen or projection or some such and made sure Fox and all his other PR outlets covered it. It would have shown him "working from home" like so many of the rest of us. That's the kind of small but important messages that a true leader sends.

Video would have been good as well. It would be good for the workers and good PR for themselves.

 

[Courtsensetwo]

In short, presidential involves making others feel bigger and better, not yourself.

I seriously believe that most Trumpniks live, succeed and “win” vicariously through Trump. He can lie all he wants as long as he never admits it and keeps portraying himself as the winner. And this is a problem for Democrats, insofar as having lost some of these voters. They don’t give a hoot about his politics, they just depend on him to inflate their egos.

I trust this wasn't aimed at me.

 

[Sope Creek]

I can't stand it when statements like yours are made regardless of what side you stand on.

Why?

 

[sglowrider]

The Political Genius of Donald Trump
The president is transmuting his calamitous failures into political gold.

Donald Trump is presiding over one of the worst calamities to befall the nation in living memory, and anyone who has followed his response since the coronavirus morphed from a worrisome outbreak in a Chinese province into a global pandemic knows the truth: Trump’s response has been disastrous. It’s no wonder that just a couple of weeks ago, a writer in this magazine concluded that “the Trump presidency is over.”

It seemed reasonable, logical. But once the polls started coming in, it turned out the American public—at least for now—disagrees. Despite his well-documented incompetence and lies, Trump is now enjoying some of the highest approval ratings of his presidency. Even more baffling, a majority of Americans—as many as 60 percent in one poll—think he’s doing a good job tackling the crisis.

Give the president his due: Trump is a genius. He is a master manipulator, a political alchemist capable of transmuting calamitous errors into political gold. Even as he continues to lie and deceive, the president has seized control of the narrative, taking possession of the national microphone to saturate the public with his self-serving version of events.

And it’s working.

All the fact-checkers, scientists, journalists, doctors, nurses, mayors, and governors may be telling a different story. But Trump takes to the White House podium day after day, crafting a narrative, offering the same staccato sentences over and over—“We’ve done a great job”—taking credit for each positive development, conjuring nonexistent progress, blaming others for every failure, demanding that those around him sing his praises before the cameras, and extorting praise from governors in exchange for Federal aid. He repeats this until the extent of his failures, however well documented, fades from the minds of a large segment of Americans, desperate to feel protected in the face of a mysterious and frightening threat.

When Trump stands at the podium and Vice President Mike Pence and others slather him with adulation, some viewers may find it stomach-turning. Those of us who have witnessed similar displays in dictatorships are sickened to see it in the United States. It may seem like pointless ego massaging for an insecure man, but it has tactical value. Every desperate governor who refrains from pointing out Trump’s outrages, every Trump toady who lavishes praise, helps erect a monument to Trump’s greatness, obscuring the facts.


That Trump failed in his responsibilities as president at the worst possible time should be beyond dispute. Shelves will creak under the weight of volumes describing all that made the pandemic explode out of control; dissertations will delve into the horrific mistakes not just by the Trump administration but by the president, personally.

The virus is not Trump’s fault, and not every one of his decisions was a mistake, but his failings kept the United States from taking actions that might have prevented a crisis whose full toll, overwhelming as it already is, remains unknowable: thousands of deaths, trillions in government spending, trillions more in lost government revenues, personal bankruptcies, lost businesses, and national trauma.

The timeline of the pandemic is a story of Trumpian misinformation. Trump’s alternative reality has grown familiar, but this time the consequences are deadly.

“Are there worries about a pandemic?” a reporter asked Trump in late January. “No, not at all,” he said, “we have it totally under control.” He repeated the message for weeks, as the caseload grew at home and abroad. “We’re going down, not up,” he said in late February, predicting once again that “it’s going to disappear … it’s like a miracle.” It would disappear by April, he said.


Was he simply misinformed? No. The information was there. In January and February, intelligence officials tried to persuade him that the risk was real. But he had no patience for them. He told Fox viewers, “It’s all under control.” Fox anchors repeated what he said, and Trump got his news from Fox, in a deadly feedback loop.

strategists’ agendas. Just last year, Trump’s own Department of Health and Human Services ran a simulation of a pandemic originating in China. The simulation projected that more than 100 million Americans could be infected, and found the U.S. underprepared. But Trump had dismantled the National Security Council’s office devoted to global-health threats, and had little tolerance for anyone warning of a looming disaster.

When Nancy Messonnier, a top scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, raised the alarm over the novel coronavirus, saying we should be preparing for “significant disruption of our lives,” and exhorted “hospitals, schools and everyday people to begin preparing,” Trump was reportedly furious. Two days later, her boss, CDC chief Robert Redfield, all but apologized in Congress for Messonnier’s words.

The signal to other government employees was clear: Stick to Trump’s message.

After stocks crashed, Trump’s denial ended, replaced with a barrage of misinformation. He falsely claimed there were tests for anyone who wants them; he promoted unproven cures from the podium; and, most importantly, he proclaimed himself a master of pandemic response.

Anything that went wrong was someone else’s fault. “I don’t take responsibility at all,” he memorably declared. “No one expected” a pandemic, he said over and over, lying about what he had been told.

He resisted pleas from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to use the unmatched power of the federal government to produce desperately needed ventilators. After inexcusable delays, and prompted by pressure from businesses, he belatedly invoked the Defense Production Act—but has continued to suggest the need for ventilators is being exaggerated. He said he wanted to open up the country in time for “packed churches” on Easter, a course that would have worsened the catastrophe.


Thankfully, on Sunday, he changed course—unveiling his latest gambit to emerge triumphant from one of the most colossal failures of leadership in the history of the United States. Trump cited a study that said up to 2.2 million Americans could die from COVID-19 unless appropriate measures were taken. Trump already knew about the widely publicized study when he touted lifting restrictions by Easter. But suddenly, Trump saw it as his lifeline.

“You’re talking about a potential of up to 2.2 million. And some people said it could even be higher than that. So you’re talking about 2.2 million deaths—2.2 million people from this,” he said, repeating the number over and over, anchoring his audience’s expectations.

“And so, if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000—that’s a horrible number—maybe even less, but to 100,000; so we have between 100 [thousand] and 200,000—we all, together, have done a very good job.”

Trump has found a new marketing plan just in time for the November elections. If 200,000 Americans die on his watch, he will boast of having saved 2 million—and many Americans will see him as a hero.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Basically, if you're willing to just shamelessly lie and cause people to die, it's not hard to control messaging even though he has blood on his hands.

As always, I don't blame Trump -- he is who he has been since the 80s. A con-man.

I blame the apparatus that allows this to happen.

To be honest, America deserves its fate at this point. If the people won't rise up against this idiocy to save a million lives, why even bother holding out hope?

 

[82hoosier]

Serious question... Is the "has done a good job of doing all he can" set at the Trump bar of good or in line with what other great leaders would have done/acted/behaved/said?

he got rid of the pandemic response team that was in the homeland security department. That help reduce the federal deficit.

In all seriousness he’s done basically nothing right. But when I have arguments with my friends I will say let’s address every single point that you think Trump is doing right. And I’ll contest it. And at the end it always comes out to the same thing: I am told that it’s all just because I don’t like Donald Trump.

 

[TDHoosier]

Meanwhile, Trump goes to Norfolk with his entire entourage to say Bon Voyage! to the hospital ship being dispatched to New York.

With guys like you there is no "winning" for our President. If he doesn't show compassion you belittle him if he goes to waive off the ship then it is an issue. This is a comedy show over here, I'm kind of glad it is full of goofy banter to keep me busy on a slow day at the office.

 

[cosmickid]

With guys like you there is no "winning" for our President. If he doesn't show compassion you belittle him if he goes to waive off the ship then it is an issue. This is a comedy show over here, I'm kind of glad it is full of goofy banter to keep me busy on a slow day at the office.

Hey credit where credit is due- Trump is sometimes capable of brutal honesty. Like when he went on Fox Friends and basically admitted that "expanding voting access" ie having more people vote would basically mean the end of the GOP as a viable alternative (and admittedly MINORITY) party...

Doesn't really reconcile with his claims of "All Americans" that he uses incorrectly when what he really means "my supporters" (who are admittedly a minority of the electorate), but at least for once he's being honest.

"On "Fox & Friends," Trump went several steps further by directly suggesting that Republicans shot down those measures specifically because they would increase voter turnout and make it harder for the GOP to win elections.

"I will tell you this, when you look at the before and after, the things they had in there were crazy," Trump said. "They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again, they had things in there about election days, and what you do...and it was totally crazy."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-falsely-claimed-expanding-voting-213050944.html

So more people voting is "BAD"? WTF??- I guess THAT is the rationale for GOP Voter Suppression??

 

[82hoosier]

Trump didn’t call the coronavirus a hoax.

Lookin at some of your other posts and I was attempting to figure out what your thought process was. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish I could change something.

Do you still back that Trump didn’t think this is a hoax. Cases going to zero. Full churches at Easter. Shoot the looters. I am not advocating being soft on looters. But it’s not a message to lead with. You shouldn’t frame an argument about civil unrest with how you are going to vanquish the anarchists, You can’t win an argument without at least being able to acknowledge the others side’s pain.

this isn’t going to be solved by killing everybody who does with you.

 

[Courtsensetwo]

That's just so dumb. Lol.

He used to be pretty good, but like most parody posters, their own rage ends up taking over and they forfeit quality,

 

[Courtsensetwo]

"Off-label prescribing can expose patients to risky and ineffective treatments," medical ethics professor Rebecca Dresser and Joel Frader, MD, write in the fall 2009 issue of The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics.

"Fen-Phen is one of the best examples of off-label use with a poor outcome. The FDA approved medications fenfluramine hydrochloride and phentermine hydrocholoride as individual, short-term treatments for obesity. But doctors eventually began prescribing the two drugs together after an article describing the cocktail's dramatic weight loss effects appeared in a medical journal and numerous mainstream publications.

"That off-label drug combination had devastating results: Many patients ended up with severe, and potentially deadly, heart valve damage, an outcome that triggered a multi-billion dollar lawsuit. In 1997, the FDA ordered Fen-Phen off the market."

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/off-label-drug-use-what-you-need-to-know#2

Without off label use...there would be no Viagra.