How Trump has handled the pandemic

Politics
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How to bungle a health crisis in 60 days or less:

February 10: Trump says without evidence that the coronavirus “dies with the hotter weather”

February 24: Trump baselessly claims the situation is “under control”

February 25: A senior White House official falsely claims the virus has been “contained”

February 25: Trump falsely claims Ebola mortality was “a virtual 100%”

February 25: Trump falsely claims “nobody had ever even heard of Ebola” in 2014

February 26: Trump wrongly says the coronavirus “is a flu”

February 26: Trump baselessly predicts the number of US cases is “going very substantially down” to “close to zero”

February 26: Trump wrongly says the flu death rate is “much higher” than Dr. Sanjay Gupta said

February 27: Trump baselessly hints at a “miracle”

February 28: Trump baselessly hints at an immigration link to the virus

February 29: Trump exaggerates Tim Cook’s comments about Apple and China

March 1: Azar wrongly says 3,600 people have been tested

March 2: Trump falsely claims “nobody knew” the number of US flu deaths

March 2: Trump says a vaccine is coming “relatively soon”

March 4: Trump falsely claims Obama impeded testing

March 4: Trump wrongly says as many as 100,000 people died of the flu in 1990

March 4: Trump says “the borders are automatically shut down”

March 4: Trump says he believes there was a coronavirus death in New York, though there hadn’t been one

March 4: Trump falsely claims the Obama administration “didn’t do anything” about H1N1

March 5: Trump misleadingly describes a Gallup poll relating to his handling of the virus

March 5: Trump wrongly claims the virus only hit the US “three weeks ago”

March 6: Azar wrongly claims there is no test shortage

March 6: As the number of cases and deaths in Italy rises, Trump says the number is “getting much better”

March 6: Trump falsely claims anybody can get tested if they want

March 6: Trump exaggerates the number of people on the Grand Princess cruise ship

March 6: Trump falsely says US coronavirus numbers “are lower than just about anybody”

March 6: Trump baselessly muses that “maybe” the coronavirus improved US jobs numbers

March 9: Pence says Trump’s “priority” was getting Americans off the ship

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Pence came into contact with that Brazilian guy too. Next in line would be Pelosi.

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:heart_eyes:

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To continue the thread on Trump’s incompetence here. The states were already screaming for him to declare an emergency so that funds can be freed up as of last week. Today 3 of the largest medical organizations across both blue and red states (Washington and North Carolina) begged him to declare one. Trump’s so tied up in his ego and Fox news bubble, he doesn’t want to declare one.

Also related:

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The proposed cuts had been proposed and been pushed for for sometime before the emergency supplemental was made and signed (all of which was this past week). He was saying it as a deflection as what they were proposing was not defensible.

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Trump is not adequate to deal with this virus. He is being lead down a path that will shut down the whole country. It became personal today. All the Tahoe ski resorts shut down. The whole country is being shut down, there is talk of closing all airports. When will it stop? When everyone is unemployed and they close all the grocery stores, gas stations and utilities shut down? We are being forced into third world conditions for our own good?

I call bull shit. Instead of quarantining the whole country, I suggest quarantining the 3% that are vulnerable. The rest of us would rather get infected than deal with this enforced imprisonment.

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Do it like all the successful Asian countries except China: quarantine people who tested positive and their close contacts. Believe in science. It saves lives.

Quarantine the whole country is medieval. We have better science now for God’s sake.

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Singapore’s approach. They didn’t close schools. They did extensive testing and aggressive contact tracing

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Have you actually read what they are doing?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/11/south-korea-shows-that-democracies-can-succeed-against-coronavirus/

“South Korea’s civil society has voluntarily pitched in. Major events have been canceled, church services have been moved online and the government has managed to persuade citizens to stay away from Daegu — where the majority of cases are — without turning the entire city into a prison.”

That sounds familiar. You were complaining about Trump banning domestic travel for highly infected read, but it seems that’s exactly what S Korea has done.

“ Some of South Korea’s measures have been controversial. For example, people who are confirmed to have coronavirus are tracked by GPS, and a live map of their locations (without their names) is available for anyone wishing to avoid them.”

Good luck with that one in the US.

So we’re already doing the majority of thing s they are doing. Meanwhile, you can’t stop praising them while calling the US response a disaster. You criticize a domestic travel ban which is exactly what S Korea encouraged for the most impacted area.

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Yeah the GPS will never fly in the US due to privacy concerns. Heck the media wouldn’t even release the slightest detail about the confirmed cases other than their gender and age (if you are lucky). I heard from the grapevine that someone got infected on BART and now the whole household has the Corona. Where can you find that information online? Nowhere.

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You read that as government locking down Daegu and banning people going in and coming out?

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Except the most important thing: extensive number of free tests.
When KCDC shared how the outbreak was spreading rapidly with real data through extensive number of tests, the whole population naturally stopped traveling to and from the high risk region.

The approach of Trump administration and S Korea are actually the opposite, US with limited tests and gradual lockdown and S Korea with extensive tests and targeted quarantine based on the result. S Korea didn’t even ban the travel from China.
In a few months, we can see which way works better.

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They didn’t have to lock it down. They said it was discouraged. People conformed and put society first. Do you think that’ll happen in the US? The net impact is the same. People aren’t traveling to or from the highest impacted. You said that’d cause a depression.

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The US is supposed to ramp up testing. If we do, then we’ll be doing that too. Are we really going to blame Trump that the CDC botched the first set of tests? They are the supposed experts and screwed it up. We also have extra red tape that prevented private labs from testing. It’s that whole FDA thing that’s supposedly there to protect us. The same FDA that passed opioids and said they weren’t habit forming.

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Where is Trump going to ban travel? NYC? California? Seattle? These are the vital economic regions of this country. Have you even heard of Daegu before the pandemic? I haven’t.

Discouraging travel is not the same as a rigid outright government ban. Being so anti-government I thought you’d know the difference. Like @Jane said, you give people enough data they will take care of themselves.

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Good information, but one thing different is that they did a way better job with the testing. It is valid to criticize the US for the botched testing. And the fault is widespread, not just Trump. FDA, CDC, and even a state regulator all have done things wrong.

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Have you guys seen this? Trump for sure has fumbled the response, however pence is like the polar opposite of trump and has been honest, upfront, calm and collected in his responses.

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The question the electorate will have to answer is whether Joe Biden (or possibly Bernie Sanders) would have handled it any better. And the “blame Trump” crowd is confined to urban centers which were never going to vote for him anyway.
In any event the final responsibility lies with the alphabet soup of government agencies. The same “deep state” Trump has been railing about since the beginning.

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Both Obamas’ and Trump’s statements are correct.

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I’m not 100% on Obama’s statement… I wouldn’t listen to the CDC right now. They’ve botched this to hell. John’s Hopkins updates have way better info and latest research developments.