All things CoronaVirus

[Typical Lax Dad]

On a personally positive note, my brother-in-law got his first dose on Friday. 70 years young physician at Northwell Cohen Children's Medical Center. My sister is more relieved than he is. He hadn't expected to get vaccinated until mid-January. The extra doses in the Pfizer vials are making lots of people happy. Only side effect was the same site soreness he gets with every annual flu vaccine.

Fantastic! That’s good news.

[wgdsr]

Then compare with SK, Australia, New Zealand, etc. and you see how effed up this has gotten to be. And yet Trump almost got re-elected...

A very good point that I previously tried to emphasize on this forum and on others. But in each instance the delusional and intransigent trump cultists just could not see that the real problem was with their Fuhrer & Savior tRUMP. He is the one responsible for the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. And that is the TRUTH whether these mental midgets choose to believe it or not.

good to see sk, australia and new zealand are getting regular play on here again for comps. it wasn't silly enough the first number of times.

[Brooklyn]

On a personally positive note, my brother-in-law got his first dose on Friday. 70 years young physician at Northwell Cohen Children's Medical Center. My sister is more relieved than he is. He hadn't expected to get vaccinated until mid-January. The extra doses in the Pfizer vials are making lots of people happy. Only side effect was the same site soreness he gets with every annual flu vaccine.

Fantastic! That’s good news.

Good news for now. But frankly, I am concerned with long term possible side effects. Thus far we have heard few reports of people suffering illness or allergy reactions. What we don't know is, will there be long term injury or illness to, say, the liver or other forms of organic damage. Got my fingers crossed but am planning on holding back for now from taking an injection until we hear the all clear sign re these vaccines.

[CU77]

Megan McArdle:

Our nation’s covid-19 failures extend far beyond Donald Trump

After the last vaccine is injected, and the last covid-19 patient is released from the hospital, we will need a public accounting of all the ways our government failed, starting with the man at the top. Recrimination is already largely pointless, but preparation isn’t, as this probably won’t be the last pandemic our country faces.

It’s an oversimplification to say that President Trump is responsible for more than 300,000 excess deaths. But given all the natural advantages our country started with — as varied as weather to Americans’ penchant for personal space — we should have been one of the developed world’s best performers, instead of among the worst. Much of the difference between how the United States should have fared and how it actually did can be chalked up to the ways that Trump bungled the pandemic: denying the seriousness of covid-19 and spreading misinformation about treatments; turning minor precautions such as masks into political litmus tests; ignoring his own scientists or, worse, feuding with them publicly. “Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won,” Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently told the New York Times.

“Damage has been done to the CDC that will take years to undo," said McGowan, a Trump appointee, suggesting that this interference not only hampered the response to this pandemic but also leaves us less prepared for the next. We need an inquiry to sort out what that damage is, how it can be repaired — and how best to prevent it in the future.

The media are already performing postmortems on Trump’s errors, and I suspect the Biden administration will happily extend their work. I worry, however, that they’ll stop before giving the public a full and unsparing analysis of all the ways our government failed, including ones that have little to do with Trump.

Some of those failures were as consequential as any of Trump’s missteps, most notably the testing debacle that left us blind for crucial weeks as the virus spread undetected. Certainly, that fiasco was compounded by Trump’s flaws, including his notable lack of interest in addressing the situation. But the CDC’s main reason for existence is to protect Americans from deadly disease, and after decades to prepare, it dropped the ball when the Big One arrived, and Trump can’t shoulder all the blame.

Trump’s failures were many, but he didn’t sneak into a CDC laboratory at night and mess with reagents so tests wouldn’t work. Trump didn’t make the CDC ship tests to health departments despite knowing there were problems. Trump’s political appointees — of which there were only four in the 11,000-person organization — did not cause the “process failures, a lack of appropriate recognized laboratory quality standards, and organizational problems related to the support and management of a laboratory supporting an outbreak response” cited in a CDC internal review recently obtained by NPR.

In fact, these sorts of problems long pre-date Trump. Years ago, there were issues with a CDC test for MERS; and again with the one for Zika. A scientist who was at the CDC during the Zika debacle told The Post that the agency’s covid-19 testing failures reflected “exactly the same mistake I saw during Zika.”

A structural problem, in other words, not a partisan one. The Food and Drug Administration similarly failed in a way that was predictable to its critics: a deadly lack of urgency and an aversion to altering sacred bureaucratic precedent, which manifested in a reluctance to authorize any test except the scarce, faulty ones from the CDC.

Fixing such deep bureaucratic problems will require hard and unrewarding work, serving no partisan agenda, since what’s needed is managerial reform, not bigger or smaller government. As with any such overhaul, many incumbent staffers will doubtless resist. And even if we persist with reform, there will be no real way to verify that it worked until there is another new disease to worry about.

It won’t be any easier for President Joe Biden to address the many problems evident at lower levels of government. States and cities were caught flat-footed, and many of those that failed catastrophically were led by Democrats, most notably New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Democrats will be tempted to take the easy way out of this morass: laying all the blame at Trump’s door and suggesting the problems were solved with his leaving office. But this is a kind of Trumpian fantasizing — the obvious villain, the easy conquest, the happily ever after. And that’s unlikely to serve us all any better than he did.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ald-trump/

[Typical Lax Dad]

Megan McArdle:

Our nation’s covid-19 failures extend far beyond Donald Trump

After the last vaccine is injected, and the last covid-19 patient is released from the hospital, we will need a public accounting of all the ways our government failed, starting with the man at the top. Recrimination is already largely pointless, but preparation isn’t, as this probably won’t be the last pandemic our country faces.

It’s an oversimplification to say that President Trump is responsible for more than 300,000 excess deaths. But given all the natural advantages our country started with — as varied as weather to Americans’ penchant for personal space — we should have been one of the developed world’s best performers, instead of among the worst. Much of the difference between how the United States should have fared and how it actually did can be chalked up to the ways that Trump bungled the pandemic: denying the seriousness of covid-19 and spreading misinformation about treatments; turning minor precautions such as masks into political litmus tests; ignoring his own scientists or, worse, feuding with them publicly. “Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won,” Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently told the New York Times.

“Damage has been done to the CDC that will take years to undo," said McGowan, a Trump appointee, suggesting that this interference not only hampered the response to this pandemic but also leaves us less prepared for the next. We need an inquiry to sort out what that damage is, how it can be repaired — and how best to prevent it in the future.

The media are already performing postmortems on Trump’s errors, and I suspect the Biden administration will happily extend their work. I worry, however, that they’ll stop before giving the public a full and unsparing analysis of all the ways our government failed, including ones that have little to do with Trump.

Some of those failures were as consequential as any of Trump’s missteps, most notably the testing debacle that left us blind for crucial weeks as the virus spread undetected. Certainly, that fiasco was compounded by Trump’s flaws, including his notable lack of interest in addressing the situation. But the CDC’s main reason for existence is to protect Americans from deadly disease, and after decades to prepare, it dropped the ball when the Big One arrived, and Trump can’t shoulder all the blame.

Trump’s failures were many, but he didn’t sneak into a CDC laboratory at night and mess with reagents so tests wouldn’t work. Trump didn’t make the CDC ship tests to health departments despite knowing there were problems. Trump’s political appointees — of which there were only four in the 11,000-person organization — did not cause the “process failures, a lack of appropriate recognized laboratory quality standards, and organizational problems related to the support and management of a laboratory supporting an outbreak response” cited in a CDC internal review recently obtained by NPR.

In fact, these sorts of problems long pre-date Trump. Years ago, there were issues with a CDC test for MERS; and again with the one for Zika. A scientist who was at the CDC during the Zika debacle told The Post that the agency’s covid-19 testing failures reflected “exactly the same mistake I saw during Zika.”

A structural problem, in other words, not a partisan one. The Food and Drug Administration similarly failed in a way that was predictable to its critics: a deadly lack of urgency and an aversion to altering sacred bureaucratic precedent, which manifested in a reluctance to authorize any test except the scarce, faulty ones from the CDC.

Fixing such deep bureaucratic problems will require hard and unrewarding work, serving no partisan agenda, since what’s needed is managerial reform, not bigger or smaller government. As with any such overhaul, many incumbent staffers will doubtless resist. And even if we persist with reform, there will be no real way to verify that it worked until there is another new disease to worry about.

It won’t be any easier for President Joe Biden to address the many problems evident at lower levels of government. States and cities were caught flat-footed, and many of those that failed catastrophically were led by Democrats, most notably New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Democrats will be tempted to take the easy way out of this morass: laying all the blame at Trump’s door and suggesting the problems were solved with his leaving office. But this is a kind of Trumpian fantasizing — the obvious villain, the easy conquest, the happily ever after. And that’s unlikely to serve us all any better than he did.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ald-trump/

Excellent summary

[wgdsr]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

[MDlaxfan76]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

[Brooklyn]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

I am not convinced her summary is as thorough or honest as it could be. After all, she completely disregarded President Obama's pandemic playbook:

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/ ... -his-work/


And, as we discussed previously, the Idiot-In-Chief initially blame Obama for the failed response when it could have been a great deal more effective if that idiot had not disregarded the warnings:

Sensing this threat, the Obama administration acted early and decisively to prevent the swine flu pandemic from devastating the U.S. Just a week after the flu first appeared in Mexico, Obama instructed every federal agency to play a role in preparing the U.S. for a pandemic. H1N1 was first detected in the U.S. on April 15, 2009 and within a week, the CDC had already begun working to develop a vaccine and activated its Emergency Operations Center to respond to what it identified as a growing public health threat.

Eleven days after the first case was confirmed, the federal government declared a public health emergency and began releasing medical supplies and drugs from the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile. By April 28, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new CDC test to detect H1N1 infections.

Obama’s response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak was similarly marked by action.


We did not see any such response from moronic tRUMP. While McArdle does make some valid points, for her to disregard tRUMP's stupidity in this regard is beyond all reason. Obviously she is trying to defend her hero but anyone who has kept up with the headlines knows that her claims fall FAR short of the truth truth.

[wgdsr]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

I am not convinced her summary is as thorough or honest as it could be. After all, she completely disregarded President Obama's pandemic playbook:

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/ ... -his-work/


And, as we discussed previously, the Idiot-In-Chief initially blame Obama for the failed response when it could have been a great deal more effective if that idiot had not disregarded the warnings:

Sensing this threat, the Obama administration acted early and decisively to prevent the swine flu pandemic from devastating the U.S. Just a week after the flu first appeared in Mexico, Obama instructed every federal agency to play a role in preparing the U.S. for a pandemic. H1N1 was first detected in the U.S. on April 15, 2009 and within a week, the CDC had already begun working to develop a vaccine and activated its Emergency Operations Center to respond to what it identified as a growing public health threat.

Eleven days after the first case was confirmed, the federal government declared a public health emergency and began releasing medical supplies and drugs from the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile. By April 28, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new CDC test to detect H1N1 infections.

Obama’s response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak was similarly marked by action.


We did not see any such response from moronic tRUMP. While McArdle does make some valid points, for her to disregard tRUMP's stupidity in this regard is beyond all reason. Obviously she is trying to defend her hero but anyone who has kept up with the headlines knows that her claims fall FAR short of the truth truth.

no less than incoming chief of staff ron klain, who was biden's chief of staff at the time and obama's future ebola czar, said they did absolutely everything wrong and were fortunate that there weren't mass casualties as a result.
or, we could do everything perfectly in hindsight.

[Brooklyn]

no less than incoming chief of staff ron klain, who was biden's chief of staff at the time and obama's future ebola czar, said they did absolutely everything wrong and were fortunate that there weren't mass casualties as a result.
or, we could do everything perfectly in hindsight.

Oh sure those Dems under Obama did everything wrong. In fact the God fearing do goodies in Fox said Obama should be removed from office for his incompetence in dealing with Ebola. Why, he did such a bad job, two innocent Americans died from it, for shame for shame.

Today far more than 2 Americans die per hour thanks to tRUMP's stupidity. But that's ok. After all he is a republican and a different standard is always applied for one of that ilk. It is ordained under Divine Law that we must all say and believe that Republicans are God's Special Chosen, the epitome of excellence, the nonpareils of politics, the paradigm of perfection, gods among gods, and possessed of other values of such transcendent supremacy the likes of which are unmatchable in all of human creation that we must all bow down and kow tow to them as if our lives depend upon displaying such open obeisance on a daily basis.

People of the world, REJOICE for the Übermenschen are here ~ yes, it's your beloved, pedestaled, ennobled Republicans!

[MDlaxfan76]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

I am not convinced her summary is as thorough or honest as it could be. After all, she completely disregarded President Obama's pandemic playbook:

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/ ... -his-work/


And, as we discussed previously, the Idiot-In-Chief initially blame Obama for the failed response when it could have been a great deal more effective if that idiot had not disregarded the warnings:

Sensing this threat, the Obama administration acted early and decisively to prevent the swine flu pandemic from devastating the U.S. Just a week after the flu first appeared in Mexico, Obama instructed every federal agency to play a role in preparing the U.S. for a pandemic. H1N1 was first detected in the U.S. on April 15, 2009 and within a week, the CDC had already begun working to develop a vaccine and activated its Emergency Operations Center to respond to what it identified as a growing public health threat.

Eleven days after the first case was confirmed, the federal government declared a public health emergency and began releasing medical supplies and drugs from the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile. By April 28, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new CDC test to detect H1N1 infections.

Obama’s response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak was similarly marked by action.


We did not see any such response from moronic tRUMP. While McArdle does make some valid points, for her to disregard tRUMP's stupidity in this regard is beyond all reason. Obviously she is trying to defend her hero but anyone who has kept up with the headlines knows that her claims fall FAR short of the truth truth.

I think you've missed...she's not a Trump supporter.
Remember, some conservatives really, really dislike Trump.

[MDlaxfan76]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

I am not convinced her summary is as thorough or honest as it could be. After all, she completely disregarded President Obama's pandemic playbook:

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/ ... -his-work/


And, as we discussed previously, the Idiot-In-Chief initially blame Obama for the failed response when it could have been a great deal more effective if that idiot had not disregarded the warnings:

Sensing this threat, the Obama administration acted early and decisively to prevent the swine flu pandemic from devastating the U.S. Just a week after the flu first appeared in Mexico, Obama instructed every federal agency to play a role in preparing the U.S. for a pandemic. H1N1 was first detected in the U.S. on April 15, 2009 and within a week, the CDC had already begun working to develop a vaccine and activated its Emergency Operations Center to respond to what it identified as a growing public health threat.

Eleven days after the first case was confirmed, the federal government declared a public health emergency and began releasing medical supplies and drugs from the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile. By April 28, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new CDC test to detect H1N1 infections.

Obama’s response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak was similarly marked by action.


We did not see any such response from moronic tRUMP. While McArdle does make some valid points, for her to disregard tRUMP's stupidity in this regard is beyond all reason. Obviously she is trying to defend her hero but anyone who has kept up with the headlines knows that her claims fall FAR short of the truth truth.

no less than incoming chief of staff ron klain, who was biden's chief of staff at the time and obama's future ebola czar, said they did absolutely everything wrong and were fortunate that there weren't mass casualties as a result.
or, we could do everything perfectly in hindsight.

I suspect you'd agree that Klain's point was one of humility, and a warning, not the notion that they were purposely idiotic for drill, or worse, for political gain.

He gets quoted quite unreasonably IMO, unless one credits the humility involved, the recognition that this is deadly serious stuff and deserves far more advance planning than they'd done, or their predecessors had done...it was a forward leaning statement of warning.

[wgdsr]

no less than incoming chief of staff ron klain, who was biden's chief of staff at the time and obama's future ebola czar, said they did absolutely everything wrong and were fortunate that there weren't mass casualties as a result.
or, we could do everything perfectly in hindsight.

Oh sure those Dems under Obama did everything wrong. In fact the God fearing do goodies in Fox said Obama should be removed from office for his incompetence in dealing with Ebola. Why, he did such a bad job, two innocent Americans died from it, for shame for shame.

Today far more than 2 Americans die per hour thanks to tRUMP's stupidity. But that's ok. After all he is a republican and a different standard is always applied for one of that ilk. It is ordained under Divine Law that we must all say and believe that Republicans are God's Special Chosen, the epitome of excellence, the nonpareils of politics, the paradigm of perfection, gods among gods, and possessed of other values of such transcendent supremacy the likes of which are unmatchable in all of human creation that we must all bow down and kow tow to them as if our lives depend upon displaying such open obeisance on a daily basis.

People of the world, REJOICE for the Übermenschen are here ~ yes, it's your beloved, pedestaled, ennobled Republicans!

i have no idea what you're talking about. your post was about h1n1. talk to ron klain if you have an issue with his take. he's on twitter.

[wgdsr]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

I am not convinced her summary is as thorough or honest as it could be. After all, she completely disregarded President Obama's pandemic playbook:

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/ ... -his-work/


And, as we discussed previously, the Idiot-In-Chief initially blame Obama for the failed response when it could have been a great deal more effective if that idiot had not disregarded the warnings:

Sensing this threat, the Obama administration acted early and decisively to prevent the swine flu pandemic from devastating the U.S. Just a week after the flu first appeared in Mexico, Obama instructed every federal agency to play a role in preparing the U.S. for a pandemic. H1N1 was first detected in the U.S. on April 15, 2009 and within a week, the CDC had already begun working to develop a vaccine and activated its Emergency Operations Center to respond to what it identified as a growing public health threat.

Eleven days after the first case was confirmed, the federal government declared a public health emergency and began releasing medical supplies and drugs from the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile. By April 28, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new CDC test to detect H1N1 infections.

Obama’s response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak was similarly marked by action.


We did not see any such response from moronic tRUMP. While McArdle does make some valid points, for her to disregard tRUMP's stupidity in this regard is beyond all reason. Obviously she is trying to defend her hero but anyone who has kept up with the headlines knows that her claims fall FAR short of the truth truth.

no less than incoming chief of staff ron klain, who was biden's chief of staff at the time and obama's future ebola czar, said they did absolutely everything wrong and were fortunate that there weren't mass casualties as a result.
or, we could do everything perfectly in hindsight.

I suspect you'd agree that Klain's point was one of humility, and a warning, not the notion that they were purposely idiotic for drill, or worse, for political gain.

He gets quoted quite unreasonably IMO, unless one credits the humility involved, the recognition that this is deadly serious stuff and deserves far more advance planning than they'd done, or their predecessors had done...is it was a forward leaning statement of warning.

it was a forward thinking think tank.
but i suspect it was more honesty than you'll ever hear? how you conflate that with humility in the context of the convo is perplexing.

[MDlaxfan76]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

I am not convinced her summary is as thorough or honest as it could be. After all, she completely disregarded President Obama's pandemic playbook:

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/ ... -his-work/


And, as we discussed previously, the Idiot-In-Chief initially blame Obama for the failed response when it could have been a great deal more effective if that idiot had not disregarded the warnings:

Sensing this threat, the Obama administration acted early and decisively to prevent the swine flu pandemic from devastating the U.S. Just a week after the flu first appeared in Mexico, Obama instructed every federal agency to play a role in preparing the U.S. for a pandemic. H1N1 was first detected in the U.S. on April 15, 2009 and within a week, the CDC had already begun working to develop a vaccine and activated its Emergency Operations Center to respond to what it identified as a growing public health threat.

Eleven days after the first case was confirmed, the federal government declared a public health emergency and began releasing medical supplies and drugs from the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile. By April 28, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new CDC test to detect H1N1 infections.

Obama’s response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak was similarly marked by action.


We did not see any such response from moronic tRUMP. While McArdle does make some valid points, for her to disregard tRUMP's stupidity in this regard is beyond all reason. Obviously she is trying to defend her hero but anyone who has kept up with the headlines knows that her claims fall FAR short of the truth truth.

no less than incoming chief of staff ron klain, who was biden's chief of staff at the time and obama's future ebola czar, said they did absolutely everything wrong and were fortunate that there weren't mass casualties as a result.
or, we could do everything perfectly in hindsight.

I suspect you'd agree that Klain's point was one of humility, and a warning, not the notion that they were purposely idiotic for drill, or worse, for political gain.

He gets quoted quite unreasonably IMO, unless one credits the humility involved, the recognition that this is deadly serious stuff and deserves far more advance planning than they'd done, or their predecessors had done... it was a forward leaning statement of warning.

it was a forward thinking think tank.
but i suspect it was more honesty than you'll ever hear? how you conflate that with humility in the context of the convo is perplexing.

why "more honesty than you'll ever hear?"...we heard it...he chose to say it...it was a humble statement, in the context of challenging ourselves to do better going forward.

Hard sometimes in the politicized world in which taking responsibility, being humble about mistakes, is too often tagged as weakness. But it's exactly what we voters and citizens should appreciate and reward when we can.

I'd think that you'd agree.

[wgdsr]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

I am not convinced her summary is as thorough or honest as it could be. After all, she completely disregarded President Obama's pandemic playbook:

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/14/ ... -his-work/


And, as we discussed previously, the Idiot-In-Chief initially blame Obama for the failed response when it could have been a great deal more effective if that idiot had not disregarded the warnings:

Sensing this threat, the Obama administration acted early and decisively to prevent the swine flu pandemic from devastating the U.S. Just a week after the flu first appeared in Mexico, Obama instructed every federal agency to play a role in preparing the U.S. for a pandemic. H1N1 was first detected in the U.S. on April 15, 2009 and within a week, the CDC had already begun working to develop a vaccine and activated its Emergency Operations Center to respond to what it identified as a growing public health threat.

Eleven days after the first case was confirmed, the federal government declared a public health emergency and began releasing medical supplies and drugs from the CDC’s Strategic National Stockpile. By April 28, 2009, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new CDC test to detect H1N1 infections.

Obama’s response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak was similarly marked by action.


We did not see any such response from moronic tRUMP. While McArdle does make some valid points, for her to disregard tRUMP's stupidity in this regard is beyond all reason. Obviously she is trying to defend her hero but anyone who has kept up with the headlines knows that her claims fall FAR short of the truth truth.

no less than incoming chief of staff ron klain, who was biden's chief of staff at the time and obama's future ebola czar, said they did absolutely everything wrong and were fortunate that there weren't mass casualties as a result.
or, we could do everything perfectly in hindsight.

I suspect you'd agree that Klain's point was one of humility, and a warning, not the notion that they were purposely idiotic for drill, or worse, for political gain.

He gets quoted quite unreasonably IMO, unless one credits the humility involved, the recognition that this is deadly serious stuff and deserves far more advance planning than they'd done, or their predecessors had done... it was a forward leaning statement of warning.

it was a forward thinking think tank.
but i suspect it was more honesty than you'll ever hear? how you conflate that with humility in the context of the convo is perplexing.

why "more honesty than you'll ever hear?"...we heard it...he chose to say it...it was a humble statement, in the context of challenging ourselves to do better going forward.

Hard sometimes in the politicized world in which taking responsibility, being humble about mistakes, is too often tagged as weakness. But it's exactly what we voters and citizens should appreciate and reward when we can.

i don't disagree with the above. that doesn't, as your post prior suggests, that he's unreasonably quoted unless his humility is put face forward. i haven't the slightest idea why they effed up, in his words. we were coming out of a recession, and had a lot of priorities. i don't know and neither do you. and i don't suggest i know.

all i know is brooklyn said to contrast everything today by how great they did then. so i replied. and the guy in the room and with some chops said that if we weren't fortuitous, we would've had one of the mass casualty events in our history on our hands.

in addition to that, honesty and humility are appreciated.

[jhu72]

so someone finally said some of it out loud. surprising, she has some chutzpah.

I dunno, she's a well known conservative blogger and columnist for the the Wash Post. But not a Trump supporter, obviously. Pretty on brand for her.

It's a good piece IMO and an appropriate challenge for the Biden folks.

She makes some obvious points, but I really really doubt her depth of knowledge of the subject. She is more a rank and file republican apologist.

[youthathletics]

UFB: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/aoc-recor ... ssion=true

[Typical Lax Dad]

UFB: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/aoc-recor ... ssion=true

She’s part of the ruling class...you think the people responsible for running the country are going to wait in line like a peasant?

[njbill]

UFB: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/aoc-recor ... ssion=true

Are you equally offended that Mother got vaccinated?