Just when you foolishly thought it might be safe to go near the water, Trump.45 is at it again, peddling his profoundly ignorant mumble jumbles to an unsuspecting American public.
Kudos to the New York Times for dogged pursuit of facts on Coronavirus 2020 in the Live Updates Section. If you care, you should consult it frequently. Sad to say, this private information tracker is so much more informative than the official governments websites which are either being heavily censored by Trump.45’s political appointments or being manned by dumbbells.
New York Times: Coronavirus News Live Updates
One small example. Just yesterday the CDC stopped reporting to the public on the actual number of coronavirus tests done across the entire United States, in favor of LSD infused rosy dreams from various Trumpites on TV. Last actual reported count Friday was less than 500. CDC testimony today before Congress was 3,600, a number only admitted after tooth pulling, since it doesn’t comport with the agreed upon public relations strategy. Pence, Azar and crew promised up to a million tests in kit form by this Friday on the Sunday shows.
There are 100 qualified public health labs in US, which can perform about 100 tests per day each, give or take. That’s a current max capacity of 10,000 tests per day, when the entire system is supplied and functional. As of Tuesday PM, less than 50 labs have kits. When they get kits, the daily test number capacity still won’t go above 10,000 per day due to personnel and lab resource constraints.
The only solution is to open the testing to other competent regional medical centers and academic hospitals, which will drastically boost capacity. The CDC has been sitting on this problem for more than 6 weeks, while South Korea has already tested more than 70,000 patients. South Korea’s population (2017) was 51.5 million; the US 325.7 million.
Comparatively speaking, the U.S should have been able to run 440,000 tests during that time. So much for Trump.45’s muscularity and World Leading US Public Health presence. Rather, it is one very sickly child indeed. The rest of the advanced world public health community would be laughing at us, if the COVID-19 epidemic situation weren’t so serious. Trump.45’s preferred solution, stop reporting the numbers. They look really, really bad.
In truth, the virus crossed the U.S border six weeks ago (and didn’t even need to sneak across the southern border from Mexico; it took an easy plane ride here), and testing was bungled, restricted, and delayed by CDC bureaucrats deathly afraid of Trump.45’s ignorant rages. You can’t find what you don’t look for. You don’t need an MD of PhD in virology or epidemiology to grasp that golden nugget.
Trump can thunder all he likes, pray for a miracle, and try to browbeat vaccine manufacturers to cut corners.
Virus don’t scare; Virus don’t care.
Trump.45’s Latest Corona Bungle
Here is one of the New York Times updates from earlier today:
More limits on foreign travel are being weighed, but not domestic restrictions, Trump says.
President Trump said on Tuesday that he may further tighten limits on international travel in hopes of blocking the arrival of more visitors infected by coronavirus, but he ruled out for now any restrictions on domestic travel within the United States.
“We’re not looking at that at all. There’s only one hotspot,” he said. (emphasis added)
“But we’re looking at other countries and we’re being very stringent,” he told reporters before boarding his Marine One helicopter to fly to the National Institutes of Health for a visit.
The Trump administration has already imposed limits on travel from China, barred all travel to Iran and issued warnings to Americans not to travel to parts of Italy and South Korea.
During his later visit to the N.I.H., Mr. Trump added that he was not actively considering restrictions on travel to Mexico but expressed concern about Japan, which is hosting the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Mr. Trump said he would not make a recommendation about whether the games should be postponed, but noted that Japan had just constructed a new stadium for the competition.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do,” he said. “They have this fabulous facility.”
As for Mexico, he played down the prospect of travel limits. “We’re not looking at it very strongly,” he said. “We’re not seeing a lot of evidence in that area.”
Quick Fact Check and Comment
Here is the latest map on U.S. cases of COVID-19 from today. However, you might roughly define a “hot spot” for the total number of 115 confirmed U.S. cases, a number of 10 or more in one place would be a reasonable estimate.
credit: New York Times 03/02/2020
Simple inspection of the map shows there are four known such clusters in the U.S. tonight: Washington (30), California (38), Texas (11), and Nebraska (13). For argument’s sake, we might leave out Nebraska, since that group contains the repatriated Diamond Princess cruise ship passengers.
Still, Trump.45 is demonstrably wrong. He undercounted and misstated the number of hot spots by 70%. Just these three locations alone account for 79 of total US cases, or 69% of the entire national total.
Trump.45 mentally quite literally fell out of the boat and missed the water. His briefers include Dr Fauci, so Trump.45 is either hearing impaired, tone deaf, or just plain mendacious. If Trump.45 were mercifully a private citizen, his ignorance would be of no significant public concern, and would affect only his own family.
When he puts on his President hat, there are millions of Americans who still naively credit what he says about medical and science related matters.
Whether there should be targeted air travel restrictions within the United States is a problem that will have to be addressed in the days to come. What is clear however, is that Trump.45 presenting daily misinformation and Potemkin cheerleading will inevitably make the problem worse, and the resolution harder to achieve.
And let’s not even get into why he’s worried about Japan’s Summer Olympic sports facility. What on God’s Green Earth does that have to do with America First in the Coronavirus Age?