supermario wrote:dice wrote:HomoSapien wrote:Trump just declared a national emergency. The fact that the guy who is repeatedly downplaying this has declared a national emergency should speak volumes as to how serious this is.
ironically, the stock market surged while he was presenting a coherent, serious response to the issue. he had previously been downplaying it to prevent the stock market from taking a hit and it was having the exact opposite effect
This is the first time the modern world has seen a virus this contagious and widespread. He shut down China quickly and much of the government approach i've seen so far has been quick and aggressive from both sides. We could produce a cure tomorrow and you would still bash him and his organization.
if "we" produced a cure tomorrow, you can bet that trump would take credit for it. just like he has tried to take credit (until recent days) for a stock market that had been on a bull run for over a decade. something that presidents frankly have very limited control over save extreme circumstances
the trump administration response has been WIDELY maligned:
1) fired the government pandemic response unit a couple of years ago. trump's recent response when questioned about the decision: "we couldn't have known that this was going to happen" the existence of the unit was precisely in case this DID happen!
2) trump suggested that the media response was a democrat hoax
3) he suggested that infected people should go to work
4) the administration nixed the CDC's recommendation of a public announcement that seniors should stay off planes
5) they continue to stand by their budget request to slash the CDC budget, which a former director has called "unsafe at any level of enactment"...and cut food stamps. a month ago he also proposed huge cuts to the national institute of health
6) in his oval office address (a prepared speech!) he caused a panic by inaccurately stating that all travel to europe would be banned for 30 days, causing americans in europe to frantically purchase last-minute flights back to the states at prices as high as $20,000
7) in the same speech he mistakenly said that major insurance companies would cover treatment for coronavirus for free, whereas they had actually only agreed to cover testing co-pays
8) said that he had a "hunch" that the expert estimates of coronavirus death rates were wrong and that it was actually only a fraction of 1%
9) was reluctant to agree to have individuals stuck on a cruise ship taken off and quarantined on US land because it would increase the official infection numbers
10) said that warm weather will cause the virus to disappear like a miracle
11) completely lied a week ago when he said that anyone who wants a test can get one...a day after his administration announced that they would fall far short of their goal of quickly getting a million tests out
12) promised that a vaccine would be available soon. it is estimated to take at least a year
13) amazingly tried to blame obama
gotta laugh to keep from crying:
this was all warned against:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/2/23/16974012/trump-pandemic-disease-responsewe've had pandemics before. we've never had anything approaching this level of dangerous misinformation and bumbling incompetence