Thursday, March 26, 2020
Obama presses for social distancing policies to remain in place
Obama presses for social distancing policies to remain in place
By Zack Budryk - 03/25/20 01:14 PM EDT
Article Link
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/489467-obama-presses-for-social-distancing-policies-to-remain-in-place
Former President Obama on Wednesday urged the continuance of social-distancing protocols amid a push by some lawmakers and public figures to end such measures earlier than public health officials have recommended.
“These are the burdens our medical heroes already face in NYC,” Obama tweeted Wednesday. The former president linked in his tweet a New Yorker article that described the burdens the coronavirus pandemic has placed on New York’s hospitals, including overextended intensive care units, lack of personal protective equipment and unclear protocols on handling coronavirus patients.
“It's only going to get harder across the country. Another reason to maintain social distancing policies at least until we have comprehensive testing in place. Not just for our sake—for theirs,” he added.
The tweet comes as President Trump has increasingly called for businesses and the economy to be reopened sooner rather than later, suggesting public gatherings could resume by Easter Sunday. However, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that this date should be “flexible."
“You can destroy a country this way, by closing it down, where it literally goes from being the most prosperous,” Trump said Tuesday.
However, other public officials have pushed back on the idea of a quick return to business as usual with Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), who is self-quarantining, telling CNN on Wednesday that the lockdown should be nationwide.
“I think the country should be on a lockdown,” Espaillat said on CNN. “Rather than abiding by this Easter Sunday scenario that the President is talking about, we should be in total lockdown.”
The Growing Chaos Inside New York’s Hospitals
By Lizzie Widdicombe
March 23, 2020
Article Link https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/shits-really-going-to-hit-the-fan-inside-new-yorks-overburdened-hospitals
Link https://www.newyorker.com/
Trump Says Parts of U.S. Could Go Back to Work in a Few Weeks
Trump Says Parts of U.S. Could Go Back to Work in a Few Weeks
Rebecca Ballhaus, Stephanie Armour Thursday,3/26/2020
Article Link
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-parts-of-us-could-go-back-to-work-in-a-few-weeks/ar-BB11HLp1?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=spartanntp
Quoted Excerpts:
But the federal government’s ability to force the reopening of the economy is limited, as much of that power rests with state governors and mayors.
The president claimed in a tweet Wednesday that the news media was pressuring him to keep much of the economy closed to hurt his re-election chances in November.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last week ordered the state’s 40 million residents to stay at home except for essential activities, said it would be “misleading to represent” that California would reopen by Easter.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, tweeted that he was looking forward to the day when the economy could reopen, but “it’s not yet here.”
Public health experts say it could take months, if not years, before life returns to normal. They say the U.S. is woefully behind on the type of widespread testing and quarantine measures adopted in Singapore and South Korea that were successful at reducing spread of the virus. They also say that reopening too soon could overwhelm hospitals, endanger health-care workers and fuel the virus’s spread in states where it isn’t prevalent now.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned in a briefing Wednesday that in the absence of necessary preparations, the virus could resurge once restrictions are eased. “The last thing any country needs is to open schools and businesses, only to be forced to close them again because of a resurgence,” he said.
Ned Price, who was an adviser to former President Barack Obama, said that while Mr. Trump has authority over CDC guidelines, the agency has traditionally been granted a level of independence by previous presidents. That practice, however, is dictated “not by laws but by norms,” which Mr. Trump has made a habit of shattering, he said.
Rebecca Ballhaus, Stephanie Armour Thursday,3/26/2020
Article Link
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-parts-of-us-could-go-back-to-work-in-a-few-weeks/ar-BB11HLp1?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=spartanntp
Quoted Excerpts:
But the federal government’s ability to force the reopening of the economy is limited, as much of that power rests with state governors and mayors.
Mr. Trump’s timeline also is considerably shorter than what many health experts, including some in his own administration, have said will be necessary to blunt the spread of coronavirus across the U.S. and keep the nation’s health care system from being overwhelmed.
The president claimed in a tweet Wednesday that the news media was pressuring him to keep much of the economy closed to hurt his re-election chances in November.
While the Trump administration has issued guidelines urging Americans to stay home, the most severe restrictions nationwide have come from governors, who have ordered nonessential businesses to close in at least 24 states and have imposed restrictions on those businesses in a dozen more. Nineteen states plan to or already require residents to stay home. Federal guidelines don’t trump state restrictions.
Governors in both parties rejected the Easter timeline the president offered and said they planned to chart their own course. Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state has been by far the hardest hit by the virus, stressed that the federal government was offering suggestions, not decrees. “They call them guidelines because they are guidelines,” he said at a briefing Wednesday. “We’ll come up with a plan that works for New York.”Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last week ordered the state’s 40 million residents to stay at home except for essential activities, said it would be “misleading to represent” that California would reopen by Easter.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, tweeted that he was looking forward to the day when the economy could reopen, but “it’s not yet here.”
Public health experts say it could take months, if not years, before life returns to normal. They say the U.S. is woefully behind on the type of widespread testing and quarantine measures adopted in Singapore and South Korea that were successful at reducing spread of the virus. They also say that reopening too soon could overwhelm hospitals, endanger health-care workers and fuel the virus’s spread in states where it isn’t prevalent now.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned in a briefing Wednesday that in the absence of necessary preparations, the virus could resurge once restrictions are eased. “The last thing any country needs is to open schools and businesses, only to be forced to close them again because of a resurgence,” he said.
Ned Price, who was an adviser to former President Barack Obama, said that while Mr. Trump has authority over CDC guidelines, the agency has traditionally been granted a level of independence by previous presidents. That practice, however, is dictated “not by laws but by norms,” which Mr. Trump has made a habit of shattering, he said.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Trump Has Given Unusual Leeway to Fauci, but Aides Say He’s Losing His Patience
Trump Has Given Unusual Leeway to Fauci, but Aides Say He’s Losing His Patience
Maggie Haberman Monday,3/23/2020
Article Link https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-has-given-unusual-leeway-to-fauci-but-aides-say-hes-losing-his-patience/ar-BB11BO9P?li=BBnb7Kz
Several quoted excerpts:
President Trump has praised Dr. Anthony S. Fauci as a “major television star.” He has tried to demonstrate that the administration is giving him free will to speak. And he has deferred to Dr. Fauci’s opinion several times at the coronavirus task force’s televised briefings.
But Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, has grown bolder in correcting the president’s falsehoods and overly rosy statements about the spread of the coronavirus in the past two weeks — and become a hero to the president’s critics because of it. And now Mr. Trump’s patience has started to wear thin.
So has the patience of some White House advisers, who see Dr. Fauci as taking shots at the president in some of his interviews with print reporters while offering extensive praise for Mr. Trump in television interviews with conservative hosts.
Mr. Trump knows that Dr. Fauci, who has advised every president since Ronald Reagan, is seen as credible with a large swath of the public and with journalists, and so he has given the doctor more leeway to contradict him than he has other officials, according to multiple advisers to the president.
Still, the president has resisted portraying the virus as the kind of threat described by Dr. Fauci and other public health experts. In his effort to create a positive vision of a future where the virus is less of a danger, critics have accused Mr. Trump of giving false hope.
Dr. Fauci and Mr. Trump have publicly disagreed on how long it will take for a coronavirus vaccine to become available and whether an anti-malaria drug, chloroquine, could help those with an acute form of the virus. Dr. Fauci has made clear that he does not think the drug necessarily holds the potential that Mr. Trump says it does.
In an interview with Science Magazine, Dr. Fauci responded to a question about how he had managed to not get fired by saying that, to Mr. Trump’s “credit, even though we disagree on some things, he listens. He goes his own way. He has his own style. But on substantive issues, he does listen to what I say.”
But Dr. Fauci also said there was a limit to what he could do when Mr. Trump made false statements, as he often does during the briefings.
“I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down,” Dr. Fauci said. “OK, he said it. Let’s try and get it corrected for the next time.”
Dr. Fauci came to his current role as the AIDS epidemic was exploding and President Reagan was paying it little attention. He and C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general, were widely credited with spurring the Reagan administration to action against AIDS, a fact that underscores Dr. Fauci’s ability to negotiate difficult politics.
He has recognized Mr. Trump’s need for praise; in the president’s presence and with audiences that are friendly to him, Dr. Fauci has been complimentary. He told the radio host Mark Levin on Fox News of the administration’s response to the virus: “I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more.”
Maggie Haberman Monday,3/23/2020
Article Link https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-has-given-unusual-leeway-to-fauci-but-aides-say-hes-losing-his-patience/ar-BB11BO9P?li=BBnb7Kz
Several quoted excerpts:
President Trump has praised Dr. Anthony S. Fauci as a “major television star.” He has tried to demonstrate that the administration is giving him free will to speak. And he has deferred to Dr. Fauci’s opinion several times at the coronavirus task force’s televised briefings.
But Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, has grown bolder in correcting the president’s falsehoods and overly rosy statements about the spread of the coronavirus in the past two weeks — and become a hero to the president’s critics because of it. And now Mr. Trump’s patience has started to wear thin.
So has the patience of some White House advisers, who see Dr. Fauci as taking shots at the president in some of his interviews with print reporters while offering extensive praise for Mr. Trump in television interviews with conservative hosts.
Mr. Trump knows that Dr. Fauci, who has advised every president since Ronald Reagan, is seen as credible with a large swath of the public and with journalists, and so he has given the doctor more leeway to contradict him than he has other officials, according to multiple advisers to the president.
Still, the president has resisted portraying the virus as the kind of threat described by Dr. Fauci and other public health experts. In his effort to create a positive vision of a future where the virus is less of a danger, critics have accused Mr. Trump of giving false hope.
Dr. Fauci and Mr. Trump have publicly disagreed on how long it will take for a coronavirus vaccine to become available and whether an anti-malaria drug, chloroquine, could help those with an acute form of the virus. Dr. Fauci has made clear that he does not think the drug necessarily holds the potential that Mr. Trump says it does.
In an interview with Science Magazine, Dr. Fauci responded to a question about how he had managed to not get fired by saying that, to Mr. Trump’s “credit, even though we disagree on some things, he listens. He goes his own way. He has his own style. But on substantive issues, he does listen to what I say.”
But Dr. Fauci also said there was a limit to what he could do when Mr. Trump made false statements, as he often does during the briefings.
“I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down,” Dr. Fauci said. “OK, he said it. Let’s try and get it corrected for the next time.”
Dr. Fauci came to his current role as the AIDS epidemic was exploding and President Reagan was paying it little attention. He and C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general, were widely credited with spurring the Reagan administration to action against AIDS, a fact that underscores Dr. Fauci’s ability to negotiate difficult politics.
He has recognized Mr. Trump’s need for praise; in the president’s presence and with audiences that are friendly to him, Dr. Fauci has been complimentary. He told the radio host Mark Levin on Fox News of the administration’s response to the virus: “I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more.”
How South Korea Flattened the Coronavirus Curve
Notes:
I quoted the last part/paragraph from the article.
I am not suggesting that South Korea's methods are right or wrong.
I do not know any answers.
I am not a medical expert.
I do suggest that before you arrive at an opinion, read the entire article.
How South Korea Flattened the Coronavirus Curve
Max Fisher and Choe Sang-Hun Monday,3/23/2020
Article Link https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-south-korea-flattened-the-coronavirus-curve/ar-BB11AJwA?ocid=spartanntp
Note: I quoted this last part/paragraph from the article.
Is The Korean Model Transferable?
For all the attention to South Korea’s successes, its methods and containment tools are not prohibitively complex or expensive.
Some of the technology the country has used is as simple as specialized rubber gloves and cotton swabs. Of the seven countries with worse outbreaks than South Korea’s, five are richer.
Experts cite three major hurdles to following South Korea’s lead, none related to cost or technology.
One is political will. Many governments have hesitated to impose onerous measures in the absence of a crisis-level outbreak.
Another is public will. Social trust is higher in South Korea than in many other countries, particularly Western democracies beset by polarization and populist backlash.
But time poses the greatest challenge. It may be “too late,” Dr. Ki said, for countries deep into epidemics to control outbreaks as quickly or efficiently as South Korea has.
China turned back the catastrophic first outbreak in Hubei, a province larger than most European countries, though at the cost of shutting down its economy.
South Korea’s methods could help the United States, though “we probably lost the chance to have an outcome like South Korea,” Mr. Gottlieb, the former F.D.A. commissioner, wrote on Twitter. “We must do everything to avert the tragic suffering being borne by Italy.”
I quoted the last part/paragraph from the article.
I am not suggesting that South Korea's methods are right or wrong.
I do not know any answers.
I am not a medical expert.
I do suggest that before you arrive at an opinion, read the entire article.
How South Korea Flattened the Coronavirus Curve
Max Fisher and Choe Sang-Hun Monday,3/23/2020
Article Link https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-south-korea-flattened-the-coronavirus-curve/ar-BB11AJwA?ocid=spartanntp
Note: I quoted this last part/paragraph from the article.
Is The Korean Model Transferable?
For all the attention to South Korea’s successes, its methods and containment tools are not prohibitively complex or expensive.
Some of the technology the country has used is as simple as specialized rubber gloves and cotton swabs. Of the seven countries with worse outbreaks than South Korea’s, five are richer.
Experts cite three major hurdles to following South Korea’s lead, none related to cost or technology.
One is political will. Many governments have hesitated to impose onerous measures in the absence of a crisis-level outbreak.
Another is public will. Social trust is higher in South Korea than in many other countries, particularly Western democracies beset by polarization and populist backlash.
But time poses the greatest challenge. It may be “too late,” Dr. Ki said, for countries deep into epidemics to control outbreaks as quickly or efficiently as South Korea has.
China turned back the catastrophic first outbreak in Hubei, a province larger than most European countries, though at the cost of shutting down its economy.
South Korea’s methods could help the United States, though “we probably lost the chance to have an outcome like South Korea,” Mr. Gottlieb, the former F.D.A. commissioner, wrote on Twitter. “We must do everything to avert the tragic suffering being borne by Italy.”
Saturday, March 21, 2020
U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic
National Security
U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic
By Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima
March 20, 2020 at 8:10 p.m. EDT
Article Link https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html
Link To https://www.washingtonpost.com/
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U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic
Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima Friday,3/20/2020
Article Link https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/ar-BB11udi8?ocid=spartanntp
U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.
The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.
Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month, as officials scrambled to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals braced for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Intelligence agencies “have been warning on this since January,” said a U.S. official who had access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress and their staffs as well as to officials in the Trump administration, and who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information.
“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” this official said. “The system was blinking red.”
Spokespeople for the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and a White House spokesman rebutted criticism of Trump’s response.
“President Trump has taken historic, aggressive measures to protect the health, wealth and safety of the American people — and did so, while the media and Democrats chose to only focus on the stupid politics of a sham illegitimate impeachment,” Hogan Gidley said in a statement. “It’s more than disgusting, despicable and disgraceful for cowardly unnamed sources to attempt to rewrite history — it’s a clear threat to this great country.”
Public health experts have criticized China for being slow to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, and have said precious time was lost in the effort to slow the spread. At a White House briefing Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said officials had been alerted to the initial reports of the virus by discussions that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had with Chinese colleagues on Jan. 3.
The warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies increased in volume toward the end of January and into early February, said officials familiar with the reports. By then, a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers and digests from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA was about covid-19, said officials who have read the reports.
The surge in warnings coincided with a move by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to sell dozens of stocks worth between $628,033 and $1.72 million. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr was privy to virtually all of the highly classified reporting on the coronavirus. Burr issued a statement Friday defending his sell-off, saying he did so based entirely on publicly available information, and he called for the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate.
A key task for analysts during disease outbreaks is to determine whether foreign officials are trying to minimize the effects of an outbreak or take steps to hide a public health crisis, according to current and former officials familiar with the process.
At the State Department, personnel had been nervously tracking early reports about the virus. One official noted that it was discussed at a meeting in the third week of January, around the time that cable traffic showed that U.S. diplomats in Wuhan were being brought home on chartered planes — a sign that the public health risk was significant. A colleague at the White House mentioned how concerned he was about the transmissibility of the virus.
“In January, there was obviously a lot of chatter,” the official said.
Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously, according to multiple officials with knowledge of meetings among those advisers and with the president.
Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials. When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said.
On Jan. 27, White House aides huddled with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus, according to people briefed on the meeting. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, argued that the administration needed to take the virus seriously or it could cost the president his reelection, and that dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.
Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings. In early briefings, however, officials said Trump was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.
By early February, Grogan and others worried that there weren’t enough tests to determine the rate of infection, according to people who spoke directly to Grogan. Other officials, including Matthew Pottinger, the president’s deputy national security adviser, began calling for a more forceful response, according to people briefed on White House meetings.
But Trump resisted and continued to assure Americans that the coronavirus would never run rampant as it had in other countries.
“I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said on Feb. 19. “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.”
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” Trump tweeted five days later. “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
But earlier that month, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services delivered a starkly different message to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a classified briefing that four U.S. officials said covered the coronavirus and its global health implications.
Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response — who was joined by intelligence officials, including from the CIA — told committee members that the virus posed a “serious” threat, one of those officials said.
Kadlec didn’t provide specific recommendations, but he said that to get ahead of the virus and blunt its effects, Americans would need to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives, the official said. “It was very alarming.”
Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.
Some of Trump’s advisers told him that Beijing was not providing accurate numbers of people who were infected or who had died, according to administration officials. Rather than press China to be more forthcoming, Trump publicly praised its response.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted Jan. 24. “The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Some of Trump’s advisers encouraged him to be tougher on China over its decision not to allow teams from the CDC into the country, administration officials said.
In one February meeting, the president said that if he struck a tougher tone against Xi, the Chinese would be less willing to give the Americans information about how they were tackling the outbreak.
Trump on Feb. 3 banned foreigners who had been in China in the previous 14 days from entering the United States, a step he often credits for helping to protect Americans against the virus. He has also said publicly that the Chinese weren’t honest about the effects of the virus. But that travel ban wasn’t accompanied by additional significant steps to prepare for when the virus eventually infected people in the United States in great numbers.
As the disease spread beyond China, U.S. spy agencies tracked outbreaks in Iran, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy and elsewhere in Europe, the officials familiar with those reports said. The majority of the information came from public sources, including news reports and official statements, but a significant portion also came from classified intelligence sources. As new cases popped up, the volume of reporting spiked.
As the first cases of infection were confirmed in the United States, Trump continued to insist that the risk to Americans was small.
“I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine,” he said on Feb. 10.
“We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it,” he said four days later. “It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”
On Feb. 25, Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, sounded perhaps the most significant public alarm to that point, when she told reporters that the coronavirus was likely to spread within communities in the United States and that disruptions to daily life could be “severe.” Trump called Azar on his way back from a trip to India and complained that Messonnier was scaring the stock markets, according to two senior administration officials.
Trump eventually changed his tone after being shown statistical models about the spread of the virus from other countries and hearing directly from Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, as well as from chief executives last week rattled by a plunge in the stock market, said people familiar with Trump’s conversations.
But by then, the signs pointing to a major outbreak in the United States were everywhere.
shane.harris@washpost.com
greg.miller@washpost.com
josh.dawsey@washpost.com
ellen.nakashima@washpost.com
Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.
U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic
By Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima
March 20, 2020 at 8:10 p.m. EDT
Article Link https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/2020/03/20/299d8cda-6ad5-11ea-b5f1-a5a804158597_story.html
Link To https://www.washingtonpost.com/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic
Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima Friday,3/20/2020
Article Link https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-intelligence-reports-from-january-and-february-warned-about-a-likely-pandemic/ar-BB11udi8?ocid=spartanntp
U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.
The intelligence reports didn’t predict when the virus might land on U.S. shores or recommend particular steps that public health officials should take, issues outside the purview of the intelligence agencies. But they did track the spread of the virus in China, and later in other countries, and warned that Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.
Taken together, the reports and warnings painted an early picture of a virus that showed the characteristics of a globe-encircling pandemic that could require governments to take swift actions to contain it. But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans. Lawmakers, too, did not grapple with the virus in earnest until this month, as officials scrambled to keep citizens in their homes and hospitals braced for a surge in patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Intelligence agencies “have been warning on this since January,” said a U.S. official who had access to intelligence reporting that was disseminated to members of Congress and their staffs as well as to officials in the Trump administration, and who, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information.
“Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,” this official said. “The system was blinking red.”
Spokespeople for the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and a White House spokesman rebutted criticism of Trump’s response.
“President Trump has taken historic, aggressive measures to protect the health, wealth and safety of the American people — and did so, while the media and Democrats chose to only focus on the stupid politics of a sham illegitimate impeachment,” Hogan Gidley said in a statement. “It’s more than disgusting, despicable and disgraceful for cowardly unnamed sources to attempt to rewrite history — it’s a clear threat to this great country.”
Public health experts have criticized China for being slow to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, and have said precious time was lost in the effort to slow the spread. At a White House briefing Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said officials had been alerted to the initial reports of the virus by discussions that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had with Chinese colleagues on Jan. 3.
The warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies increased in volume toward the end of January and into early February, said officials familiar with the reports. By then, a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers and digests from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA was about covid-19, said officials who have read the reports.
The surge in warnings coincided with a move by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to sell dozens of stocks worth between $628,033 and $1.72 million. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr was privy to virtually all of the highly classified reporting on the coronavirus. Burr issued a statement Friday defending his sell-off, saying he did so based entirely on publicly available information, and he called for the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate.
A key task for analysts during disease outbreaks is to determine whether foreign officials are trying to minimize the effects of an outbreak or take steps to hide a public health crisis, according to current and former officials familiar with the process.
At the State Department, personnel had been nervously tracking early reports about the virus. One official noted that it was discussed at a meeting in the third week of January, around the time that cable traffic showed that U.S. diplomats in Wuhan were being brought home on chartered planes — a sign that the public health risk was significant. A colleague at the White House mentioned how concerned he was about the transmissibility of the virus.
“In January, there was obviously a lot of chatter,” the official said.
Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously, according to multiple officials with knowledge of meetings among those advisers and with the president.
Azar couldn’t get through to Trump to speak with him about the virus until Jan. 18, according to two senior administration officials. When he reached Trump by phone, the president interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market, the senior administration officials said.
On Jan. 27, White House aides huddled with then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in his office, trying to get senior officials to pay more attention to the virus, according to people briefed on the meeting. Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, argued that the administration needed to take the virus seriously or it could cost the president his reelection, and that dealing with the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.
Mulvaney then began convening more regular meetings. In early briefings, however, officials said Trump was dismissive because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.
By early February, Grogan and others worried that there weren’t enough tests to determine the rate of infection, according to people who spoke directly to Grogan. Other officials, including Matthew Pottinger, the president’s deputy national security adviser, began calling for a more forceful response, according to people briefed on White House meetings.
But Trump resisted and continued to assure Americans that the coronavirus would never run rampant as it had in other countries.
“I think it’s going to work out fine,” Trump said on Feb. 19. “I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.”
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” Trump tweeted five days later. “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
But earlier that month, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services delivered a starkly different message to the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a classified briefing that four U.S. officials said covered the coronavirus and its global health implications.
Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response — who was joined by intelligence officials, including from the CIA — told committee members that the virus posed a “serious” threat, one of those officials said.
Kadlec didn’t provide specific recommendations, but he said that to get ahead of the virus and blunt its effects, Americans would need to take actions that could disrupt their daily lives, the official said. “It was very alarming.”
Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.
Some of Trump’s advisers told him that Beijing was not providing accurate numbers of people who were infected or who had died, according to administration officials. Rather than press China to be more forthcoming, Trump publicly praised its response.
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted Jan. 24. “The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Some of Trump’s advisers encouraged him to be tougher on China over its decision not to allow teams from the CDC into the country, administration officials said.
In one February meeting, the president said that if he struck a tougher tone against Xi, the Chinese would be less willing to give the Americans information about how they were tackling the outbreak.
Trump on Feb. 3 banned foreigners who had been in China in the previous 14 days from entering the United States, a step he often credits for helping to protect Americans against the virus. He has also said publicly that the Chinese weren’t honest about the effects of the virus. But that travel ban wasn’t accompanied by additional significant steps to prepare for when the virus eventually infected people in the United States in great numbers.
As the disease spread beyond China, U.S. spy agencies tracked outbreaks in Iran, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy and elsewhere in Europe, the officials familiar with those reports said. The majority of the information came from public sources, including news reports and official statements, but a significant portion also came from classified intelligence sources. As new cases popped up, the volume of reporting spiked.
As the first cases of infection were confirmed in the United States, Trump continued to insist that the risk to Americans was small.
“I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine,” he said on Feb. 10.
“We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it,” he said four days later. “It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”
On Feb. 25, Nancy Messonnier, a senior CDC official, sounded perhaps the most significant public alarm to that point, when she told reporters that the coronavirus was likely to spread within communities in the United States and that disruptions to daily life could be “severe.” Trump called Azar on his way back from a trip to India and complained that Messonnier was scaring the stock markets, according to two senior administration officials.
Trump eventually changed his tone after being shown statistical models about the spread of the virus from other countries and hearing directly from Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, as well as from chief executives last week rattled by a plunge in the stock market, said people familiar with Trump’s conversations.
But by then, the signs pointing to a major outbreak in the United States were everywhere.
shane.harris@washpost.com
greg.miller@washpost.com
josh.dawsey@washpost.com
ellen.nakashima@washpost.com
Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
What we know about the Americans who died from coronavirus
Note: This is not the entire article. For all of the details read the entire article.
What we know about the Americans who died from coronavirus
Saturday,3/14/2020
Quoted Excerpts:
So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not released a summary of basic demographic information about the people who have died, but according to information collected by ABC News' Medical Unit, the majority of deaths have been among people in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
In the U.S., of the cases for which there is data, only one person who died was in their 40s, while two people died in their 50s. Seven people were in their 60s, nine people in their 70s, 13 people in their 80s and 10 people were in their 90s.
This means the vast majority of deaths so far are among people older than 70, which matches roughly with data emerging from Italy, China and other countries hard-hit by COVID-19.
The CDC has said repeatedly that people with underlying medical conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes and immune system disorders, are more likely to die of COVID-19.
What we know about the Americans who died from coronavirus
Saturday,3/14/2020
Article Link
Quoted Excerpts:
So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not released a summary of basic demographic information about the people who have died, but according to information collected by ABC News' Medical Unit, the majority of deaths have been among people in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
In the U.S., of the cases for which there is data, only one person who died was in their 40s, while two people died in their 50s. Seven people were in their 60s, nine people in their 70s, 13 people in their 80s and 10 people were in their 90s.
This means the vast majority of deaths so far are among people older than 70, which matches roughly with data emerging from Italy, China and other countries hard-hit by COVID-19.
The CDC has said repeatedly that people with underlying medical conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes and immune system disorders, are more likely to die of COVID-19.
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Inside Trump Administration, Debate Raged Over What to Tell Public
My Comment: To get a complete idea of what went on within Trump's Administration read the entire article.
Inside Trump Administration, Debate Raged Over What to Tell Public
Michael D. Shear, Sheri Fink and Noah Weiland Sunday,3/8/2020
Article Link
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/inside-trump-administration-debate-raged-over-what-to-tell-public/ar-BB10SKCK?ocid=spartanntp
Quoted Excerpts:
From the beginning, the Trump administration’s attempts to forestall an outbreak of a virus now spreading rapidly across the globe was marked by a raging internal debate about how far to go in telling Americans the truth. Even as the government’s scientists and leading health experts raised the alarm early and pushed for aggressive action, they faced resistance and doubt at the White House — especially from the president — about spooking financial markets and inciting panic.
But from Mr. Trump’s first comments on the virus in January to rambling remarks at the C.D.C. on Friday, health experts say the administration has struggled to strike an effective balance between encouraging calm, providing key information and leading an assertive response. The confused signals from the Trump administration, they say, left Americans unprepared for a public health crisis and delayed their understanding of a virus that has reached at least 28 states, infected more than 300 people and killed at least 17.
The Trump administration had eliminated the global health unit that had been part of the National Security Council, but within days, a team was meeting daily in the basement of the West Wing, pleading with Chinese officials to allow doctors from the C.D.C. into their country.
On Saturday, Jan. 18, a day after the C.D.C. dispatched 100 people to three American airports to screen travelers coming from Wuhan, China, Mr. Azar made his first call to Mr. Trump about the virus, dialing him directly at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. The president insisted on talking about e-cigarettes first, but Mr. Azar steered him to the virus.
Last week, Vice President Mike Pence was given control of the public messaging, and although Mr. Pence has had some mixed messages of his own — he promised more tests before they were available — the White House has since displayed more discipline. Mr. Pence holds twice daily conference calls with officials from across the country, and a virus task force he leads issues daily talking points, with comment from the health professionals, to make sure the message is consistent.
Inside Trump Administration, Debate Raged Over What to Tell Public
Michael D. Shear, Sheri Fink and Noah Weiland Sunday,3/8/2020
Article Link
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/inside-trump-administration-debate-raged-over-what-to-tell-public/ar-BB10SKCK?ocid=spartanntp
Quoted Excerpts:
From the beginning, the Trump administration’s attempts to forestall an outbreak of a virus now spreading rapidly across the globe was marked by a raging internal debate about how far to go in telling Americans the truth. Even as the government’s scientists and leading health experts raised the alarm early and pushed for aggressive action, they faced resistance and doubt at the White House — especially from the president — about spooking financial markets and inciting panic.
But from Mr. Trump’s first comments on the virus in January to rambling remarks at the C.D.C. on Friday, health experts say the administration has struggled to strike an effective balance between encouraging calm, providing key information and leading an assertive response. The confused signals from the Trump administration, they say, left Americans unprepared for a public health crisis and delayed their understanding of a virus that has reached at least 28 states, infected more than 300 people and killed at least 17.
The Trump administration had eliminated the global health unit that had been part of the National Security Council, but within days, a team was meeting daily in the basement of the West Wing, pleading with Chinese officials to allow doctors from the C.D.C. into their country.
On Saturday, Jan. 18, a day after the C.D.C. dispatched 100 people to three American airports to screen travelers coming from Wuhan, China, Mr. Azar made his first call to Mr. Trump about the virus, dialing him directly at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. The president insisted on talking about e-cigarettes first, but Mr. Azar steered him to the virus.
Last week, Vice President Mike Pence was given control of the public messaging, and although Mr. Pence has had some mixed messages of his own — he promised more tests before they were available — the White House has since displayed more discipline. Mr. Pence holds twice daily conference calls with officials from across the country, and a virus task force he leads issues daily talking points, with comment from the health professionals, to make sure the message is consistent.
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