Busy elsewhere
The Guardian lays out with excruciating clarity just how thoroughly Trump made sure that hundreds of thousands – or millions – of people would die of the virus.
January 20 – the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in the US, and in South Korea.
In the two months since that fateful day, the responses to coronavirus displayed by the US and South Korea have been polar opposites.
One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions.
South Korea shut it down. The US watched stupidly while it flourished.
Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea’s disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease.
We could have done that. There was no reason not to do it apart from the stupidity and narcissism of one poisonous man.
A week after that, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion article by two former top health policy officials within the Trump administration under the headline Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic. Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb laid out a menu of what had to be done instantly to avert a massive health disaster.
Top of their to-do list: work with private industry to develop an “easy-to-use, rapid diagnostic test” – in other words, just what South Korea was doing.
It was not until 29 February, more than a month after the Journal article and almost six weeks after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the country that the Trump administration put that advice into practice. Laboratories and hospitals would finally be allowed to conduct their own Covid-19 tests to speed up the process.
What were they busy with during those six weeks? Cleaning out the broom closet?
It’s a long and informative read.
This is going to keep the journalists at PBS Frontline busy for years and years.
(I may be 60 miles across Lake Ontario from the nearest US broadcast tower, but if I aim my antenna juuuuust so I can get PBS.)
“What were they busy with during those six weeks? Cleaning out the broom closet?”
They were still distracted by those mean Democrats and their impeachment “hoax.” That’s the GOP messaging this week. Never mind that impeachment was already over by then; I’m sure the lingering psychic pain was distracting. Never mind that Trump found time to attend countless rallies and rounds of golf (actually, people have counted them!) — those were no doubt to soothe the lingering pain.
Well, let’s be fair–they were also trying to spin a profit out of this, which is why originally Trump declined WHO’s tests in order to get an American company to make one, and then tried to pass the contract on to a couple companies who just happened to donate to his campaign, and then tried to secure the exclusive rights to that German company’s patent.
I mean, if it isn’t lining the Great Orange One’s pockets, is it really all that important?