Rachel Maddow of MSNBC: Statements on the Comfort and Mercy

[Kurieuo]

Rachel Maddow on MSNBC said:

In terms of the happy talk we`ve had on this front from the federal government, there is no sign that the Navy hospital ships that the president made such a big deal of, the Comfort and the Mercy, there`s no sign that they`ll be anywhere on-site helping out anywhere in the country for weeks yet. The president said when he announced that those ships would be put into action against the COVID-19 epidemic. He said one of those ships would be operational in New York harbor by next week. That`s nonsense. It will not be there next week. (http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel ... 2020-03-20)

Why the unnecessary attack? Why the divisiveness? No surprise that I now read in Daily Mail: MSNBC star Rachel Maddow is slammed for peddling 'fake news' after she claimed 10 days ago the hospital ships Mercy and Comfort would not be in LA and NY for weeks and called Trump's promise they would arrive 'nonsense'

[edwardmurphy]

What's the point of this? Yes, a liberal pundit was wrong about something. So what? Conservative pundits are wrong all the time, too. It's not alway possible to be simultaneously hyper partisan and factually correct and when push comes to shove partisan pundits will usually pick an attention-grabbing statement over an honest one. Is that news to you?

Speaking of being hyper partisan and wrong, do you want me to post the entire list of all the times that Donald Trump said that covid-19 was no big deal, follow it up with the time he insisted that he'd known all along that it was a pandemic, and then segue into a list of dishonest and/or misleading statements that he's made about the pandemic? Oh, and how about a few instances of him blathering on about how great his ratings have been since he started talking to the press again? Maddow was wrong about the ships, but she's spot on about the big picture.

Whose mistakes do you think mattered most?

EDIT:

From that Daily Mail story:

During her show on March 20th, Maddow said that the president's claim that hospital ships would be sent to both the east and west coasts by next week was 'nonsense'.

However, her pronouncement has turned out to be false as both the USNS Mercy was deployed to Los Angeles and arrived over the weekend, while the USNS Comfort pulled into New York Harbor on Monday - just 10 days after her broadcast.

Maddow made that statement on the 20th. The Mercy got to LA on the 27th and started taking patients on the 29th. The Comfort arrived in NYC on the 30th, but I haven't heard if they've started taking patients. If, on the 20th, Trump claimed that the hospital ships would arrive "next week" then he was right about the Mercy and wrong about the Comfort.

Seems to me that if we're going to go after a pundit for being wrong then it's only appropriate to be much, much, much harder on the Commander-in-Chief of the United States military. Never forget - Donald J Trump is the best informed person in the entire planet, or would be if he was willing to pay attention when they try to brief him. He's also the President, not some pundit. Pundits don't matter much. The President is supposed to get the details right.

[Kurieuo]

World Health Organisation should have been on the pulse, but what were they saying during January?

Taiwan did a much better job, and they have a special group setup for monitoring diseases due to SARS. Now everyone realised there needs to be a special task force setup for such. So not to let Trump administration off (or US intelligence agencies?? who should have been better informed).

Wasn't there also some legal proceedings brought on by the Democrats to do with some impeachment trial during January? I wonder if that could have been a massive distraction. It's actually not the job of the POTUS to be individually around everything, but certainly to be well advised by intelligence agencies and the like.

He did close flights from China, and gained a lot of flak for that calling such rash and racist, etc. Seems to me Trump made the right call there given the information he had, despite protests to such. But, between Russia and the all the impeachment stuff, I seriously don't know many people that could take on the stress of legal stuff as well as presidential duties. Given such, I think Trump has done quite well, and is doing a pretty good job since.

I don't know what I'd be doing different. Is there anything you would do different right now to what Trump is doing?

[edwardmurphy]

World Health Organisation should have been on the pulse, but what were they saying during January?

Let's just start by agreeing that it was reprehensible for China to withhold information and downplay the impact of the coronavirus when it first emerged. I'll even grant you that the WHO was naive to trust the Chinese back in January. Fine.

Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America. He has access to the entire American intelligence apparatus. We don't expect China to be honest, and we never have. That's why we spy on them. Which we did. That's why out intelligence agencies put out risk assessments. Which they did, regarding the potential of a pandemic, back in January. Unfortunately Donald J Trump ignored them. Any argument premised on Trump not knowing something is made in bad faith. Trump has the option of being the best informed man on the planet. He chooses not to be. That's on him. No excuses.

If Trump had believed his briefings he could have been preparing. It was going to be bad no matter what, but he could have taken steps to mitigate the damage. He could have been stockpiling ventilators and masks and personal protective equipment, but instead he sent a [poop] load of it to China. If the Chinese need a ton of masks, ventilators, and PPE to get through the coronavirus outbreak then it stands to reason that the US will need those things, too. But Trump made no effort to increase production or to get Federal control of the existing supply.

I'll also grant that he "closed flights from China," sort of. He actually barred entry to the US to nonresident Chinese nationals. But plenty of resident Chinese and plenty of American citizens were able to enter the US from China, and any Chinese nationals who wanted to come in could just fly in from not-China. My point isn't that he should have banned Americans from returning home, it's that he should have understood that the virus wasn't going to be contained in China because potential carriers weren't contained in China. That brings us back around to he knew it was coming and he should have been preparing.

Rather than doing anything to prepare he went on TV and on Twitter and downplayed the threat of the the outbreak. He said it wasn't serious. He said it would just miraculously disappear. And, predictably, most of the right wing media parroted his lines and attacked any mention of the virus as partisan scaremongering. So not only did Trump not do anything - anything at all - to prepare the country for a potential pandemic, he actually worked against efforts by the CDC and other members of government to sound the alarm. He didn't do much of anything until he finally declared a state of emergency in mid March.

Trump's disinclination to take the pandemic seriously has had a profound impact on our efforts to contain it. Lots of people simply didn't believe it was an issue, even after an emergency was declared and schools closed all over the country. We've been told that if we implement aggressive social distancing we should still expect 100,000-240,000 deaths as a best case scenario, but as of right now we've still got 12 Republican governors declining to issue stay at home orders. It's probably time to stop pussyfooting around.

Taiwan did a much better job, and they have a special group setup for monitoring diseases due to SARS. Now everyone realised there needs to be a special task force setup for such. So not to let Trump administration off (or US intelligence agencies?? who should have been better informed).

He was informed. He didn't believe it. He wasn't willing to face the risk of hurting "his" boom economy by warning of a potential pandemic, much less spook the markets by taking concrete steps to prepare for one.

Wasn't there also some legal proceedings brought on by the Democrats to do with some impeachment trial during January? I wonder if that could have been a massive distraction. It's actually not the job of the POTUS to be individually around everything, but certainly to be well advised by intelligence agencies and the like.

That's the absolute worst excuse I've ever heard. If Trump didn't want to be impeached then I guess he shouldn't have tried to pressure a foreign government into interfering in our election and then covered it up. But he did, so he did. Crying that he shouldn't be held accountable for failing to do his job because he was distracted by the consequences of his criminal acts is...a bit much.

I don't know what I'd be doing different. Is there anything you would do different right now to what Trump is doing?

I'd have avoided the whole mess by not pretending that I was qualified to be President, but I guess that ship has sailed. If I was stuck with all of Trump's dawdling and ****ty decisions and I had to just suck it up and take over right this second I guess I'd try to turn it into a redemption story...

[*]I'd admit that my preoccupation with protecting the economy had blinded me to the seriousness of the coronavirus, but I'd assure the nation that I now fully understood the challenges that we faced and that the entire weight of the Federal government was being marshalled to fight the pandemic and lay the groundwork for a vigorous recovery. If that cost me the next election so be it, but this isn't the time for [nonsense].

[*]I'd use the bully pulpit to demand that every single governor in the country immediately issue a stay at home order and instruct the police to enforce it vigorously.

[*]I'd use the War Powers Act to order every single manufacturer capable of making masks, PPE, or ventilators to start doing so at their highest possible rate, right this second and not stop until I told them to. I'd also use the WPA to speed up testing, if at all possible.

[*]I'd nationalize all existing stocks of masks, ventilators, and PPE and assign some Air Force general with 3 doctorates in organization and logistics to make sure that the stuff the hospitals needed got there quickly and efficiently (with no interstate bidding wars or profiteering), and that as soon as numbers dropped everything reusable was moved straight to the next hot spot.

[*]I'd go on TV and tell everyone that the worst is yet to come but that we'll get through it, and to encourage, and if need be demand, that they practice rigorous social distancing and stay at home unless absolutely necessary.

[*]I'd try to figure out how to get ahead of the food shortages that we'll face if things get bad enough that the supply chain temporarily breaks down and grocery stores get cleaned out.

After that I'd start talking seriously with Pelosi and McConnell about fast tracking that monster infrastructure bill the Democrats are working on, and I'd make damned sure it passed.

From there, I don't really know.

[Kurieuo]

While I may not agree with all sentiments that was a pretty good response.

Often it takes an incident like this for everyone to take a viral outbreak seriously, hence why Taiwan was much more prepared (given they had to deal with SARS). I expect second time around, things will be much different worldwide, new intelligence agencies internally setup to closely monitor epidemics (rather than depending upon the WHO).

It's like new territory, and just shows how unprepared many countries are. It wasn't just Trump, but governers saying don't worry, and the media downplaying it, and really, noone believes the sky is falling in until they start seeing it, and then fingers start getting pointed every which way.

The one thing we can both agree on is that it was absolutely disgusting of China to withhold valuable information from all countries (not just US). It seems obvious to me there are also many leading the WHO are bought by China, such just seemed to want to compliment China rather than help prepare the world.

[edwardmurphy]

Often it takes an incident like this for everyone to take a viral outbreak seriously, hence why Taiwan was much more prepared (given they had to deal with SARS). I expect second time around, things will be much different worldwide, new intelligence agencies internally setup to closely monitor epidemics (rather than depending upon the WHO).

This is the third time around. We already had H1N1 and ebola, and we learned from them. That's why the PREDICT initiative was launched back in 2009. Alas, the Trump Administration killed it in September.

Trump administration ended pandemic early-warning program to detect coronaviruses

Months before the discovery of the deadly coronavirus in China, the Trump administration ended a program that helped laboratories around the world detect viruses that could spread from animals to humans and cause the next global pandemic.

Two months before the novel coronavirus probably began spreading in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.

The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified 2019-nCoV, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September, and organizations that worked on the PREDICT program laid off dozens of scientists and analysts, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the program.

On Wednesday, USAID granted an emergency extension to the program, issuing $2.26 million over the next six months to send experts who will help foreign labs squelch the pandemic. But program leaders say the funding will do little to further the initiative’s original mission.

“Look at the name: Our efforts were to predict this before it happens. That’s the part of the program that was exciting — and that’s the part I’m worried about,” Daszak said.

“It’s absolutely critical that we don’t drop the idea of a large-scale, proactive, predictive program that tries to catch pandemics before they happen. Cutting a program that could in any way reduce the risk of things like COVID-19 happening again is, by any measure, shortsighted,” he added.

It is unclear whether another five-year grant would have dulled the impact of the current pandemic. But the Trump administration has come under increased criticism for its past moves to downgrade global health security, including proposals to slash funding to science agencies and the elimination of the National Security Council’s key global health post.

A spokesman for USAID said PREDICT was “just one component of USAID’s global health security efforts and accounted for less than 20% of our global health security funding.” He also said a new initiative to stop the spillover of viruses from animals to humans is scheduled to be awarded in August.

The PREDICT project, which operated on two five-year funding cycles that formally concluded last September, enrolled both epidemiologists and wildlife veterinarians to examine the types of interactions between animals and humans that researchers suspect led to the current outbreak of COVID-19.

The pandemic “didn’t surprise us, unfortunately,” said Jonna Mazet, executive director of the One Health Institute in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, who served as the global director of PREDICT for a decade. “The work had been ongoing for some time. And when the crisis hits, everybody stands up and takes notice and says, ‘OK, we believe you.’”

The PREDICT project, launched in response to the 2005 H5N1 “bird flu” scare, gathered specimens from more than 10,000 bats and 2,000 other mammals in search of dangerous viruses. They detected about 1,200 viruses that could spread from wild animals to humans, signaling pandemic potential. More than 160 of them were novel coronaviruses, much like 2019-nCoV.

They also took blood samples from people in rural China, and learned that, in living among wildlife, they had been exposed to coronaviruses — a clear sign that, if those viruses spread easily among humans, they could take off. That “raised the red flag,” said Mazet. “Coronaviruses were jumping easily across species lines and were ones to watch for epidemics and pandemics,” she said.

The program also trained nearly 7,000 people across medical and agricultural sectors in 30 countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East to help them detect deadly new viruses on their own. One of those labs was the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the Chinese lab that quickly identified 2019-nCoV, Mazet said.

The Wuhan lab received USAID funding for equipment, and PREDICT coordinators connected the scientists there with researchers in other countries in order to synchronize tracking of novel viruses before 2019-nCoV.

The project’s second funding cycle concluded on Sept. 30, 2019, less than two months before the new coronavirus probably began spreading. It was granted a zero-dollar six-month extension — through March 2020 — to write up final reports.

Dennis Carroll, a widely respected scientist who headed USAID’s emerging threats division, oversaw the initiative for its duration, but retired around the time it was shut down. Carroll did not respond to an inquiry from The Times, but told the New York Times last year that by January 2019, the program had “essentially collapsed into hibernation,” and that its conclusion was due to “the ascension of risk-averse bureaucrats.” Other members of the consortium included Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity and several institutes that manage major U.S. zoos.

Earlier this year, as COVID-19 took off, U.S. lawmakers expressed frustration over the program’s end.

“Addressing and preventing the spread of coronavirus and potential pandemic disease outbreaks is a serious matter that requires adequate resources for and cooperation between experts throughout the federal government,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Angus King wrote in a letter to USAID’s administrator earlier this year, asking for details on the decision.

On Wednesday, the PREDICT program was extended through September to offer emergency technical assistance to foreign labs battling the coronavirus pandemic. To date, PREDICT-supported labs in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are actively testing for coronavirus cases, Daszak said, and he has been sending reagents and other supplies to assist them.

Meanwhile, in Rwanda, scientists who had been trained in the PREDICT program triggered early social distancing measures, Mazet said. “I do think that what we were doing has changed the outcomes for a lot of countries,” she said. “But unfortunately, not our own,” she added.

Daszak said he’s eager to further examine the hundreds of wildlife samples collected during the PREDICT initiative over the years, looking to identify whether any of them could have been intermediate hosts for the virus currently sweeping the globe.

But with the limited budget and timeline, efforts to continue in-depth field work under PREDICT will be minimal. Most of the extension funding will be focused on squelching the current outbreak, not preventing the next.

“It’s common sense to know your enemy,” Daszak said. “Instead, we’re all hiding inside our houses as we wait around for a vaccine — that’s not a good global strategy to battling a dangerous virus.”

So yeah...

It's like new territory, and just shows how unprepared many countries are. It wasn't just Trump, but governers saying don't worry, and the media downplaying it, and really, noone believes the sky is falling in until they start seeing it, and then fingers start getting pointed every which way.

The thing is, some countries did believe that the sky was on the verge of falling and they sorted it out. Russia shares a huge border with China, but they seem to be doing just fine. South Korea is also right next to China but has also managed to contain the virus.

The one thing we can both agree on is that it was absolutely disgusting of China to withhold valuable information from all countries (not just US). It seems obvious to me there are also many leading the WHO are bought by China, such just seemed to want to compliment China rather than help prepare the world.

That's a pretty harsh indictment of the WHO.

China screwed up royally when they withheld information, but they also seem to have done a spectacular job containing the virus. That's an amazing feat in a nation of 3 billion people, many of whom are packed together like sardines. If they'd taken our approach - do nothing, do nothing, do nothing, PANIC! - then they'd have 300 million cases and climbing right now, but last I looked they had fewer than 100K. We have 250K and climbing rapidly, so who seems like they've earned bragging rights? When somebody pulls off something like that it makes sense to hold them up as an example of what to do, doesn't it?

[Philip]

How anyone truly know China's present number of cases is pure speculation!

[Kurieuo]

The one thing we can both agree on is that it was absolutely disgusting of China to withhold valuable information from all countries (not just US). It seems obvious to me there are also many leading the WHO are bought by China, such just seemed to want to compliment China rather than help prepare the world.

That's a pretty harsh indictment of the WHO.

Don't you read CNN? https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia ... index.html

WION - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8TfKok9Rns

See what Japan's said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-746eJGyUI

Many are crying foul at the WHO.

The reason why the CCP Virus spread around the world like it did is:
#1 Chinese Government censorship
#2 WHO being China's mouthpiece and playing down crisis
#3 Governments failing to have their own finger on the pulse

Possibly the most important factor is a "failure of pre-preparation", which is perhaps an everyone responsibility thing.

Diseases will break out. Movies have been done on it, including many zombie apocalypse ones right? More realistically, how long has the Contagion movie been out for? Yet, we are all just lackadaisical about it. Except perhaps those amusing doomsdayer preparation types who have their hidden bunkers and have been preparing for an apocalypse.

We prepare for fires, flooding, storms and like. But, nothing really comes to my mind on how we prepare for a deadly virus breakout. Then questions are arising, like Phil's about how we clean shopping goods (something my wife and I went through just a few days before his post), and I was like, "meh, too much hassle bring them in...", but then we both did our best to wipe some down, and others we just left out for three days.

This doesn't just fall on governments, but if we ourselves care about being proactive then it also falls upon us, everyone. We're probably lucky the current virus isn't much worse wiping out a third or half of humanity. It could have been much worse. Did you even have face masks in your home Ed? It's not like you weren't aware something like this could happen -- we all were! I bet after this crisis you and many others will now keep them on hand, maybe even wear them as normal part of life like many do in Asia.

It looks to me like Taiwan are leaders here, and the WHO isn't even giving them a seat or look in.

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