Watching the evolution of the Coronavirus is like staring into a petri dish as the germs react to stimuli. Every dish is different because the stimuli are different and each produces a different result. Some healthcare workers bravely dive into solving the problem of saving lives while others expose themselves to danger through their efforts at containing said virus in the streets. All this while our despicable President denies the pandemic altogether because he fears damage to his re-election chances. Then, when he has already put the nation in grave danger by his negative approach, he almost reverses course, acknowledging the pandemic while still refusing to go all out in the fight against it. What he doesn’t forget, in any of his speeches, is to claim responsibility for a brief comeback in a market that has already been obliterated by his tragic mishandling of the crisis.
If I seem to be blaming a lot of the problems of the fight against this plague on Donald Trump you have interpreted my intention correctly. Why is this my intent?
A poll today told us that there is almost twenty percent spread in those in the population that believe Coronavirus is real and those that think it’s either a hoax or an unimportant occurrence. Really? How could this be possible? Simple. These are, for the most part, according to the same poll, the exact people who are full out Trumpets. There’s no accounting for stupid.
On the one hand these ignorant clowns are exposing all of us to greater danger. On the other hand by carelessly exposing themselves to the inherent danger they are guaranteeing there will eventually be far fewer stupid people to deal with.
Among those indicated above, should certainly be Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin who has used the fact that South Korea tested 200,000 people last month with only a few positive results to support the President’s position that the whole plague is really just media hype by Democratic hoaxers.
Maybe if we had the same testing capacity as South Korea instead of almost no testing at all we would know better how to treat our situation.
The Trump administration let the ball drop on test kits because they didn’t want info to get out and effect the stock market, but people getting sick and dying while there is a pandemic all over the world is just too obvious even for the Trumpers to cover up. Then the market crashed anyway, partly because of lack of information from the administration and partly because of fears generated by all the business closings. Mnuchin should have known that would happen but he has his nose so far up Trump’s ass he can’t tell his own ass from his elbow.
If you want to see how this whole situation has been grossly mishandled, if you want to see how derelict this administration has been in it’s duty to lead, if you want to see unbelievable malfunction on the part of government, all you have to do is look at our airports as evidenced by O’Hare in Chicago, plus JFK in NY and Dallas-Fort Worth this week.
Homeland Security and the US Immigration Service have turned the processing of passengers arriving from overseas into an unmitigated disaster. When Trump babbled about shutting down travel from overseas, he instigated a wave of returnees. They hit US airports yesterday and the wave only threatens to get bigger. This should not come as a surprise. So why weren’t these government agencies ready for this influx? Because the President didn’t do his job! He didn’t even acknowledge the medical problem until it hit the stock market. He just wasn’t interested in the safety of our citizens, only in the health of the markets and belief in the false narrative that the American economy is great because he made it that way.
Then the shit hit the fan in Chicago, hundreds of incoming passengers stuffed into dangerously close proximity in inadequate quarters, with too few agents checking hem back into the US from foreign countries. The pictures showed a perfect situation to spread infection. Why? Certainly the officers of Customs and Immigration and Homeland Security had to know this was coming when the President announced that he was banning incoming flights. So what happened? Incompetence happened. Leadership is about anticipation and planning. Obviously, none of this was accomplished by the agencies, the airports or the administration. And as per todays news reports, nothing has been done to alleviate this situation for the huge crowds expected to arrive in airports all over the country today. What was needed? More agents to process incoming passengers, more security to organize and instruct the crowds, more space to spread out the crowds and reduce contact. Pretty simple huh? Not for our government agencies that have been gutted by this administration. Trump stooges, who don’t need a history of competence but only proof of having kissed the President’s ass to get their jobs, have replaced functional civil servants.
The problems that we see festering are nowhere near insurmountable. All it would have taken to solve any one of them was organization, anticipation and function; all completely missing from the agencies involved. They knew this was coming; they choked, just like the President.
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Everybody’s asking the same question. Why aren’t more tests available? No one, it seems, could answer that question. Now a doctor from Mass General has finally revealed the problem. It seems the FDA wouldn’t let anyone outside their province do the testing, and they weren’t functional enough to get the kits out from their suppliers. We all know that the surveillance done by the FDA on who does what in medical science is very exacting and very important to the health and safety of the nation, but this was an emergency and it seems that in this case the FDA couldn’t get out of its own way. Why were they so non-functional and why? When the realization hit, why didn’t they just step out of the way and let the hospitals, medical services and private manufacturers step into the void? No one seems ready to say, but for one who has been watching government for well over seventy years it’s pretty clear that it had to do with the “almighty buck”. Who’s been on the take, should be the first question asked. We are living under a government that operates on the principle that the most important person in the room is the one who can do Trump the most good. There’s got to be an awful lot of that involved in this fuck up.
As I’ve stated any number of times, this is a country that can create manufacturing miracles when they are necessary. When it doesn’t, it’s always because some dumb or dishonest SOB is standing in the way. There are people, including the President, who are looking to profit in some way from this disaster. They must be kicked out of the way and then be made to pay.
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And then of course, there’s the latest debate. Not much to say about it. Joe ran roughshod over Bernie in the first quarter, looking presidential and leaving Bernie in the dust. Then Bernie kind of caught up and held it even for the next three quarters. But it never looked like the real thing. I had the feeling most of the time that Bernie saw the writing on the wall and was just trying to get Joe to agree on a couple of points to make it easier for him to talk his followers into supporting Joe when he ran against Trump. I find it kind of depressing that he should have to do this. What the hell is the matter with the Bernie Bros? We all know they hated Hillary so they threw their share of the election to Trump last time and basically fucked the country. Are they really dumb enough to make the same mistake again? I sure hope not, as that would be the end of the progressive branch of the Democratic Party and we definitely need them.