Dr Fauci trusted China's data and concluded COVID is just a more serious flu back in Feb 28

NY leadership encouraged dining, parades and movies all the way into march. New orleans continued with mardi gras. Houston shut down the rodeo. Which one of these cities has fared the best so far? But lets blame Trump for New York. Imagine the numbers if NY/NJ would have been proactive.

February 13
Mayor de Blasio conducted a taped interview with NBC News that ran during MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He said, “We have an extraordinary public health apparatus here in New York City . . . and what became clear to me was it was really about telling the people of our city, this is something we can handle, but you got to follow some basic rules. . . . This should not stop you from going about your life. It should not stop you from going to Chinatown and going out to eat. I am going to do that today myself.”

March 2
He also declared on Twitter, “I’m encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives and get out on the town despite Coronavirus.”

 

Thanks. People not happy with de Blasio right now.

 

I think the heart of the issue here is that there is now, with some passage of time, a collapse of the timeline. But it really wasn't that long ago so I remember how it went, at least in my little world.

Somewhere in January we came out of our Christmas fog and they had a new illness in part of China. We said that sucks for China. Hopefully it doesn't come here. Then people started avoiding Chinatowns and those businesses were suffering and we said, well that's dumb, it hasn't come to the States yet and there's no reason to think it'd show up first in a Chinatown.

Jan 21 we had our first US case who had traveled to Wuhan and we said there's no community spread yet and we (perhaps naively) trusted they would trace and isolate all his contacts. Ten days later, there was a China travel ban and several cases of travel infection, but again no confirmation of community spread. By then I think the mood (or at least the liberal mood) was that it was only a matter of time before there was community spread so we had better get ready.

Feb 24, Pelosi has her Chinatown visit, which was probably foolish. The first community spread patient was diagnosed Feb 23 (though it looks like it hit the papers Feb 26). Also at the end of February, the Kirkland nursing home story blew up. I think that's when we moved -- or should have moved -- from "let's get ready" to "it's here and we're out of time."

With that timeline, it's not that surprising that before community spread was confirmed that people didn't feel like it was yet time to change our behavior (though Feb 24 is pretty late, Nancy), but after Jan 21 it was time (1) to recognize its potential to be much more calamitous than a flu, (2) to get the testing, hospital capacity, inventory, etc all ready for the inevitable arrival of community spread, and (3) start building public expectation of the next steps -- the shutdowns, social distancing, etc. At the time, I assumed the ramp up was happening. It wasn't until early March that we heard that we had no testing capacity.

 

Feb 13, I can understand. It's in that gray area when we didn't know if the problem had started yet or not (as it turns out, it had). March 2, he should have known better. The timing on Mardi Gras and Rodeo were also unfortunate because of the uncertainty. There's quite a few leaders who were too late in recognizing the threat. But again there's a difference between knowing when it's time to make behavior changes and knowing when it's time to get capacity ramped up -- and understanding what is just a flu and what is a legit threat.

 

I felt bad for the participants of the livestock show but figured it was the best move even though I rarely agree with turner and hidalgo.

 

I would hope the President has better information than the mayor of New York.

 

And there's the difference between the President and governors/mayors. I would hope the president of the US has the best information possible regarding threats to national security.

I feel confident in saying that the America people can handle that we didn't fast enough, but it's harder to handle the president saying "I take no responsibility".

 

Comparing Houston to New York in terms of population density and international business wise you might as well compare Charleston WV to NYC. You can blame both the Mayor and the President. They aren't mutually exclusive to messing up.

As far as Texas there isn't testing capabilities either in the rural areas or metropolitan areas that still give us a accurate estimation on the cases. We are 49th in testing per million which is either due to incompetence by our local government compounded with exacerbation of testing capabilities, or Texas is scewing the numbers to downplay the rate of the contagion.

This pandemic has been mismanaged at all levels across both parties. You have one lying to the American people every night in his propaganda evening chats. And you have one in Houston lying through his teeth about testing and the state of Houston.

 

MADA
Make America Die Again

 

I’ve criticized de Blasio on here for sure. His lack of action cost lives in his city.

but Trump mainly gets criticized for the countless questionable or absurd things that HE says and does.

today asking several states to rise up against their elected local officials? Yeah, that’s objectively awful. As was telling the public that a virus like this would magically disappear. And so on. He and his spastic management team are definitely a huge part of why we have lapped all other countries in cases.

 

He is one of the biggest China Hawks in existence. If we are taking his word on things defunding the WHO will be nothing compared to what is coming.

 

Fauci could have been lying to the public like Navarro. Maybe they were scared trump was going to fire them.

 

While you're at it find the 5 different reports that the White House ignored, starting in November.

Then find the CDC director in Beijing who got fired a year+ ago.

Then find the NSC desk that was specifically designed to deal with pandemics but got disbanded.

Keep us posted on your search results.

 

Gwb did forsee this. And Obama prepared for this.

 

Fire Fauci and the Who... hire Didier Raoult

 

What is it about Hillary that makes you think she wouldn't ban China flights as early as Trump?

Almost 40 nations had restrictions on travel to China before Trump's ban took effect. Hillary has a history of being pretty hawkish in her foreign policy, so I don't being hawkish in her foreign policy.

You might be right, but I'm curious about why think that?