Me as well, I don't know why that comparison has stuck one has nothing to do with the other. Every morning on Morning Joe they repeat it and it irks me to know end. I am actually getting tired of the pile on with Trump it's starting to become nonsensical and people will start tuning out.
The metric is that one has nothing to do with the other. You can pull Troops out of a war or sign a treaty, you cannot do the same with a pandemic. Yes Trump has royally screwed the pooch and his incompetence has contributed to deaths but it is not the same as sending troops to vietnam.
Using the DPA to order the manufacturing of test kits? Eh. But hamburgers... er, hambergers? Essential to national security.
This is where having a plan would have probably been a good thing. This has been known to be brewing for some time...why hasn't some of the national stockpile been sent to these plants already to ensure safety if we need them open? I mean, I know the answer, but the question still needs to be asked.
Also interesting that trump via executive order is providing a private business sovereign immunity from liability?
umm one is dead.. and the other? Yep ded too. It sucks that covid is more than swimming pools or vietnam. They are factual numbers. Repugs like to call it an overreaction and more dead than vietnam is 2 months is a sobering number. Sorry these facts are tough to swallow. I wish it had been a hoax too or could try to the fact of sweep 50,000 bodies under the rug gonna need a big rug:
I protested the war in Vietnam at the time, but it's ironic that it's essentially impossible, with social distancing, to protest trump's terrible response to the worst disaster to hit this country, short of war, since the Great Depression. My parents lived through the Depression and Dad fought in WWII. While I would give anything for them to still be alive, in a way, I'm glad they missed this. I'm beginning to get concerned that the prediction of about 67,000 killed by this terrible virus is going to be much worse. I hope not, but it's only the end of April and it is over 56,000, and that's likely under counted. What a nightmare, a nightmare that seems to be without end.
This is the type of smart ass answer I'd give my dad growing up that got me an ass whooping. Someone should of whooped his ass growing up.
I assume that workers will be required to wear full protective gear, and that it will be paid for, one way or another, by the Federal government? That, or they are certified immune to the virus. You can't force workers to put their lives at risk, and they sure as hell shouldn't be "blackmailed" in order to coerce them.
What? Do you think I am a Repug or that I think this is a hoax? What is the point of comparing it to Vietnam? What value does that add IYO. This tribalism has to stop, just because I don't like the comparison now I am on the other team or trying to sweep it under the rug? How does comparing it to Vietnam stop it from being swept under the rug?
Opinion How Trump and His Team Covered Up the Coronavirus in Five Days The president and senior officials manipulated Americans and played down the severity of the pandemic. By Ryan Goodman and Danielle Schulkin Mr. Goodman is a professor at New York University School of Law, where Ms. Schulkin is a student. April 28, 2020 The strongest critics of the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic point to its flat-footedness and the consequences of time lost. But the full account looks worse. Over the last five days of February, President Trump and senior officials did something more sinister: They engaged in a cover-up. A look at this window of time gives insight into how several members of the president’s team were willing to manipulate Americans even when so many lives were at stake. The recent reports that the president wanted to fire the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s top expert on viral respiratory diseases, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, during this period helps put the pieces of the puzzle together. What was her offense to the president? In a conference call with reporters on the final Tuesday of the month, Dr. Messonnier spoke frankly. “We want to make sure the American public is prepared,” she said, then put it in personal terms by saying what she told her children that morning: “We as a family ought to be preparing for significant disruption to our lives.” Dr. Nancy Messonnier spoke frankly about the threat of the coronavirus.Credit...Amanda Voisard/Reuters At the time, senior officials knew the coronavirus was an extreme threat to Americans. Thanks to information streaming in from U.S. intelligence agencies for months, officials reportedly believed that a “cataclysmic” disease could infect 100 million Americans and discussed lockdown plans. The warnings were given to Mr. Trump in his daily brief by the intelligence community; in calls from Alex Azar, the secretary of health; and in memos from his economic adviser Peter Navarro. The same day that Dr. Messonnier spoke, the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence raised the warning level inside the government to WATCHCON1, concluding that the coronavirus was imminently likely to develop into a full-blown pandemic. But the White House did not want the American public to know. The president’s stated concerns were specific. He didn’t want to upset the markets or China during trade talks, and it appears he may have also simply been in denial, counting on his personal hunches and luck. So the president’s top advisers took to the airwaves with a united purpose: to deny the truth. That Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Azar appeared at a news briefing, public health professionals including Dr. Anthony Fauci behind him, and discussed Dr. Messonnier’s comments. “We’re trying to engage in radical transparency with the American public as we go through this,” he declared. But within 20 seconds of that statement, he uttered state propaganda. “Thanks to the president and this team’s aggressive containment efforts,” he said, coronavirus “is contained.” That same day, Larry Kudlow, the president’s National Economic Council director, in direct response to Dr. Messonnier’s comments, told CNBC: “We have contained this. I won’t say airtight, but pretty close to airtight.” The following day, Defense Secretary Mark Esper spoke to the military. In a video conference with American commanders around the world, he instructed them to give notice on decisions made about how to protect their personnel from the virus if doing so might “run afoul of President Trump’s messaging,” according to a New York Times report. (A Pentagon spokesman denied this, and when Mr. Esper later appeared before Congress, he called the article “completely wrong.” Yet as The Hill reported, Mr. Esper “seemed to confirm key details” of the Times report at the hearing by saying he asked for a “heads-up” on such decisions to make sure the administration was “integrated across the interagency” — including the White House.) That Wednesday, the president used the day’s news conference by the coronavirus task force, with Dr. Fauci alongside him, to lie to the public. “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” he told the American public. He and Mr. Azar would continue to make such assurances over the next two days — Mr. Azar in remarks before lawmakers and the president in statements from the White House and bellowed at political rallies. At the end of the five days, Dr. Fauci spoke on the “Today” show in public messaging that would later become controversial. The question was put to him in terms Americans could easily appreciate: “So, Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America. People are waking up right now with real concerns about this. They want to go to malls and movies, maybe the gym as well. Should we be changing our habits and, if so, how?” Dr. Fauci offered a nuanced reply: “No. Right now, at this moment, there’s no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day by day basis. Right now the risk is still low.” He added, however, that this could change. Dr. Fauci might now regret how he tried to thread the needle, but he also knew to expect the question and he repeated the party line. In effect, for five days, the president along with some of his closest senior officials disseminated an egregiously false message to Americans. The messaging would continue well beyond those days until the stark images of refrigerated morgue trucks and spiked lines on colored graphs showed the escalating numbers of cases and dead. Understanding this playbook is not only important in its own terms. It goes to the heart of whether Americans can trust this administration in the months ahead when they must make life-or-death decisions about how to protect their health and when to reboot the economy. Ryan Goodman, editor in chief of Just Security, is a professor at New York University School of Law, where Danielle Schulkin is a third-year student. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/opinion/coronavirus-trump-coverup.html
