Trump's New Reality Show: "Calling Dr. Donald" Medical & Virus Expert in a Crisis

Me, me, me — “It's my natural ability I get it”

(CDC Atlanta, March 6)

A rather long post today – bear with me:

Lead-in based on the picture above – in Trump’s own words, not mine when he visited CDC in Atlanta (March 6, 2020) and boasted to reporters during his tour of the CDC where he met with actual doctors and scientists who are feverishly scrambling to contain and combat the deadly COVID-19 illness.

He said he likes to say that he fell into politics almost by accident, suggested he would have thrived in another profession — as a medical expert adding: “I like this stuff. I really get it.”

He then cited a “great, super-genius uncle” who taught at MIT saying it must run in the family genes, “Because people are really surprised I understand this stuff. Every one of these doctors said, “How do you know so much about this?” Maybe I have a natural ability.”

That session explains what we now about his inaction to this deadly virus in the NY Times story below that is 100% absolutely a great article put together by nine NY Times reporters (via MSN) – with this headlines:

He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus

Brief History: A week after the *first coronavirus case had been identified in the United States, and six long weeks before Trump finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing — a pandemic that is now forecast to take tens of thousands of American lives — Dr. Carter Mecher at the VA was urging the upper ranks of the nation’s public health bureaucracy to wake up and prepare for the possibility of far more drastic action.

* Press release from the CDC (January 21, 2020): CDC today is confirming that the first case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV later called COVID -19) in the United States in the state of Washington. The patient recently returned from Wuhan, China, where an outbreak of pneumonia caused by this novel coronavirus has been ongoing since December 2019.

While originally thought to be spreading from animal-to-person, there are growing indications that limited person-to-person spread is happening. It’s unclear how easily this virus is spreading between people. The patient from Washington with a confirmed infection returned to the United States from Wuhan on January 15, 2020. 

The patient sought care at a medical facility in Washington, where the patient was treated for the illness. Based on the patient’s travel history and symptoms, healthcare professionals suspected this new coronavirus. 

A clinical specimen was collected and sent to CDC overnight, where laboratory testing yesterday confirmed the diagnosis via CDC’s Real time Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (rRT-PCR) test.

Time line since then:

Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms, and made clear the need for aggressive action.

Trump though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, protecting gains in the economy, and batting away warnings from senior officials.

January 28: In an email to a group of public health experts scattered around the government and universities Dr. Mecher wrote: “Any way you cut it, this is going to be bad. The projected size of the outbreak already seems hard to believe.”

January 31: Trump takes his first concrete action — limiting travel from China — but public health often had to compete with economic and political considerations in internal debates, slowing the path toward belated decisions to seek more money from Congress, obtain necessary supplies, address shortfalls in testing, and ultimately move to keep much of the nation at home.

Trump’s responses were always colored by his suspicion of and disdain for what he viewed as the “Deep State” (people left over from the Obama years those Trump hates with a passion) — the very people in his government whose expertise and long experience might have guided him more quickly toward steps that would slow the virus, and likely save lives. Decision-making was also complicated by a long-running dispute inside the administration over how to deal with China.

The virus at first took a back seat to a desire not to upset Beijing during trade talks, but later the impulse to score points against Beijing left the world’s two leading powers further divided as they confronted one of the first truly global threats of the 21st century.

The shortcomings of Trump’s performance have played out with remarkable transparency as part of his daily effort to dominate television screens and the national conversation during the virus task force briefings (now on-going). 

But dozens of interviews with current and former officials and a review of emails and other records revealed many previously unreported details and a fuller picture of the roots and extent of his halting response as the deadly virus spread.

■ The NSC, office responsible for tracking pandemics received intelligence reports in early January predicting the spread of the virus to the United States, within weeks was raising options like keeping Americans home from work and shutting down cities the size of Chicago. Trump avoided such steps until March.

■ January 29: Despite Trump’s denial weeks later, he was told at the time about a memo produced by his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, laying out in striking detail the potential risks of a coronavirus pandemic: as many as half a millions deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.

■ January 30: HHS Secretary, Alex Azar, directly warned Trump of the possibility of a pandemic during which was the second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks. The president, who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest, responded that “Azar was being alarmist.”

■ February: Azar publicly announced that the government was establishing a “surveillance” system in five American cities to measure the spread of the virus and enable experts to project the next hot spots. It was delayed for weeks. The slow start of that plan, on top of the well-documented failures to develop the nation’s testing capacity, left administration officials with almost no insight into how rapidly the virus was spreading. “We were flying the plane with no instruments,” one official said.

■ February (3rd week): The administration’s top public health experts concluded they should recommend to Trump a new approach that would include warning the American people of the risks and urging steps like social distancing and staying home from work. But the White House focused instead on messaging and crucial additional weeks went by before their views were reluctantly accepted by the president — time when the virus spread largely unimpeded.

■  March: Trump finally agreed in mid-March to recommend social distancing across the country, effectively bringing much of the economy to a halt, he seemed shell shocked and deflated to some of his closest associates. One described him as “subdued” and “baffled” by how the crisis had played out. An economy that he had wagered his re-election on was suddenly in shambles.

Trump only regained his swagger, an associate said, from conducting his daily White House briefings, at which he often seeks to rewrite the history of the past several months. 

He declared at one point saying publicly that he felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic and insisted at another that he had to be a cheerleader for the country as if that explained why he failed to prepare the public for what was coming.

Trump’s allies and some administration officials say the criticism has been unfair.

The Chinese government misled other governments, they say. And they insist that the president was either not getting proper information, or the people around him weren’t conveying the urgency of the threat. In some cases, they argue, the specific officials he was hearing from had been discredited in his eyes, but once the right information got to him through other channels, he made the right calls.

For example, said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman said: “While the media and Democrats refused to seriously acknowledge this virus in January and February, President Trump took bold action to protect Americans and unleash the full power of the federal government to curb the spread of the virus, expand testing capacities and expedite vaccine development even when we had no true idea the level of transmission or asymptomatic spread.”

There were key turning points along the way, opportunities for Trump to get ahead of the virus rather than just chase it. There were internal debates that presented him with stark choices, and moments when he could have chosen to ask deeper questions and learn more. 

How he handled them may shape his re-election campaign. They will certainly shape his legacy.

Major takeaway from this article that show the real dangerous nature and style of Trump a truly serious crisis that underscores the need to have him out of office in November – he is in a word “A clear and present danger” to the country.

Two key points based on the evidence and facts:

1.  From the time the virus was first identified as a concern, the administration’s response was plagued by the rivalries and factionalism that routinely swirl around Trump and, along with the president’s impulsiveness, undercut decision making, and policy development.

2. Faced with the relentless march of a deadly pathogen, the disagreements and a lack of long-term planning had significant consequences. They slowed the president’s response and resulted in problems with execution and planning, including delays in seeking money from Capitol Hill, and a failure to begin broad surveillance testing.

The efforts to shape Trump’s view of the virus began early in January, when his focus was elsewhere:

■ The fallout from his decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s security mastermind.

■ His push for an initial trade deal with China.

■ His Senate impeachment trial, which was about to begin.

Even after Azar first briefed him about the potential seriousness of the virus during a phone call on January 18 while the president was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump projected confidence that it would be a passing problem.

A few days later while attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland Trump he told an interviewer: “We have it totally under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

Back in Washington, voices outside of the White House peppered Trump with competing assessments about what he should do and how quickly he should act. The efforts to sort out policy behind closed doors were contentious and sometimes only loosely organized.

That was the case when the NSC convened a meeting on short notice on the afternoon of January 27.

The Situation Room was standing room only, packed with top White House advisers, low-level staffers, Trump’s social media guru, and several cabinet secretaries. There was no checklist about the preparations for a possible pandemic, which would require intensive testing, rapid acquisition of protective gear, and perhaps serious limitations on Americans’ movements.

Instead, after a 20-minute description by Azar of his department’s capabilities, the meeting was jolted when Stephen Biegun, the newly installed deputy secretary of state, announced plans to issue a level four travel warning, strongly discouraging Americans from traveling to China. The room erupted into bickering.

A few days later, on the evening of January 30, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff at the time, and Azar called Air Force One as the president was making the final decision to go ahead with the restrictions on China travel. Azar was blunt, warning that the virus could develop into a pandemic and arguing that China should be criticized for failing to be transparent.

Trump rejected the idea of criticizing China, saying the country had enough to deal with. And if the president’s decision on the travel restrictions suggested that he fully grasped the seriousness of the situation, his response to Azar indicated otherwise.

“Stop panicking,” Trump told Azar.

That sentiment was present throughout February, as the president’s top aides reached for a consistent message but took few concrete steps to prepare for the possibility of a major public health crisis.

During a briefing on Capitol Hill on February 5, senators urged administration officials to take the threat more seriously. Several asked if the administration needed additional money to help local and state health departments prepare.

Derek Kan, a senior official from the OMB replied that the administration had all the money it needed, at least at that point, to stop the virus, two senators who attended the briefing said.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) wrote in a tweet shortly after: “Just left the Administration briefing on Coronavirus. Bottom line: they aren’t taking this seriously enough.”

My 2 cents: This great article continues here and you will note that it is very long and very detailed. My earlier related post is here.

Also, ref: my post that follows this one. If he hires only the best, how come he never listens to them and takes their expert advice? Oh, yeah, he gets it — it's in his genes, right? Okee dokee then, never mind.

I simply plucked highlights to fit the blog – but main article is worth your time. It surely is a keeper to build on chapter by chapter until this crisis is over – which it will be, but right now no one knows when for sure – best guess near the end of the year.

Good news is that a team in the UK thinks they may have a vaccine by September.

History is now before us and still unfolding and being written by the Trump administration led by the biggest boob ever in that office a totally incompetent man when it comes to government management and especially in desperate times like now.

How his base can stick with him in such times is truly amazing.

My last point: More troubling is to see what one man can do to America in only three years is astonishing after all we have come through in nearly 244 years – what we see today is frankly unbelievable.

Thanks for stopping by.