Born alive but killed by Trump

BeamMeUpScotty wrote on 2020-09-26 1:09 PM:


The US is the Trump Virus capital of the world:



	Country,
Other 	Total
Cases 	New
Cases 	Total
Deaths 	New
Deaths 	Total
Recovered 	Active
Cases 	Serious,
Critical 	Tot Cases/
1M pop 	Deaths/
1M pop 	Total
Tests 	Tests/
1M pop 	Population
1 	USA <https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/> 
7,253,443 	+9,259 	208,652 	+212 	4,484,953 	2,559,838 	14,143 	21,883 
629 	102,674,486 	309,762 	331,462,797 
<https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/>





Trump is guilty of 208,652 counts of "criminal negligence causing 
death", and 7.2 million counts of "criminal negligence causing bodily 
harm" in the US due to mishandling of the COVID pandemic.

https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/09/experts-predicted-a-coronavirus-pandemic-as-far-back-as-2017-trump-ignored-them/


  Experts Predicted a Coronavirus Pandemic as Far Back as 2017. Trump
  Ignored Them.


    The Trump administration ignored warning signs, failed to adequately
    prepare for PPE shortages, botched the rollout of tests, and
    repeatedly downplayed the severity of the coronavirus.

The novel coronavirus outbreak didn’t become a full-fledged pandemic 
until March, but with each passing day, it’s become increasingly clear 
that President Trump and his administration failed to heed numerous 
warning signs and wasted two months of valuable time that could have 
been used to prepare for the devastation now being unleashed on the 
United States.

Here are some of the ways in which the Trump administration’s failures 
have affected the nation’s response to the pandemic.


      *Ignoring Warning Signs*

American intelligence officials issued a warning as far back as late 
November 
<https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources/story?id=70031273> 
that a contagion was spreading through China’s Wuhan region, ABC News 
reported on Wednesday. This warning, which was detailed in a November 
intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical 
Intelligence, was the result of analysis of wire and computer 
intercepts, along with satellite images.

Analysts determined that the emerging disease could lead to a 
“cataclysmic event,” and according to ABC News, the report was briefed 
“multiple times” to the White House and various federal agencies. 
President Trump reportedly even received a detailed explanation of the 
problem in his daily brief of intelligence matters in early January, 
weeks before the virus emerged in the U.S., but then spent the better 
part of January and February downplaying the severity of the virus.

On Monday, the New York Times also reported that Trump’s trade advisor, 
Peter Navarro, had written his own memo in late January warning the 
administration 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/navarro-warning-trump-coronavirus.html> 
that the coronavirus could cost the U.S. trillions of dollars and put 
millions of American lives at risk.

“The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would 
leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus 
outbreak on U.S. soil,” Navarro wrote in his Jan. 29 memo. “This lack of 
protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a 
full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”

Navarro’s warning appears to have gone unheeded, and President Donald 
Trump has denied 
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/07/trump-peter-navarro-coronavirus-memos-174237> 
he ever saw the January memo or a follow-up February memo from 
Navarro—even though that second memo was addressed to Trump directly 
through the offices of the National Security Council, Trump’s then-chief 
of staff Mick Mulvaney, and the White House coronavirus task force.


      RELATED: Officials Tried To Warn Trump A Pandemic Was Coming In
      January. He Didn’t Listen.
      <https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/03/20/officials-tried-to-warn-trump-a-pandemic-was-coming-in-january-he-didnt-listen/>

“I didn’t see them. I didn’t look for them,” Trump told reporters on 
Monday during a coronavirus task force news briefing.

The Trump administration also ignored the results 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-outbreak.html> 
of a 2019 simulated exercise imagining how a modern-day influenza 
pandemic would affect the United States. In the simulation, 110 million 
Americans were expected to become ill, leading 7.7 million people to be 
hospitalized and 586,000 Americans to die. The results of that scenario, 
reported by the New York Times in March, showed how underfunded, 
underprepared, and uncoordinated the federal government would be in 
fighting a novel pandemic.

The Pentagon also knew a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus was 
likely and warned the Trump administration of such a possibility in 
2017. According to exclusive documents obtained by The Nation, the 
Pentagon even predicted the shortages 
<https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/covid-military-shortage-pandemic/> 
of masks, hospital beds, and ventilators that American hospitals are 
currently experiencing. The documents 
<https://www.scribd.com/document/454422848/Pentagon-Influenza-Response>, 
which detail how the U.S. military could respond to such a pandemic, are 
eerily prescient.

“The most likely and significant threat is a novel respiratory disease, 
particularly a novel influenza disease,” the military plan states. 
COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and 
the document specifically cites coronaviruses on several occasions, in 
one instance saying, “Coronavirus infections [are] common around the world.”

Despite all these warnings, Trump has repeatedly insisted that no one 
could have seen the coronavirus coming.

“Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion. 
Nobody has ever seen anything like this before,” Trump said on March 19, 
contradicting the reality that his own Department of Health and Human 
Services oversaw the simulation.


      *PPE Shortages*

American hospitals are facing “severe” and “widespread shortages” 
<https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/07/trump-doesnt-think-theres-a-medical-supply-shortage-these-hospitals-beg-to-differ/> 
of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as N95 masks and surgical 
masks, as well as shortages of medical equipment, such as ventilators 
according to a new watchdog report from the Department of Health and 
Human Services Office of Inspector General.

Doctors and nurses from across the country have spoken out about the PPE 
shortage 
<https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/07/trump-doesnt-think-theres-a-medical-supply-shortage-these-hospitals-beg-to-differ/> 
and how it puts their lives—and their patients’ lives—at risk. Many 
doctors and nurses are breaking protocol and reusing masks, while others 
have been forced to use swim goggles, bandanas, and trash bags 
<https://www.propublica.org/article/medical-workers-treating-coronavirus-are-resorting-to-homemade-masks> 
to protect themselves. Some nurses have even quit their jobs 
<https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/02/im-a-hospice-nurse-heres-why-i-chose-to-step-away-from-the-job-i-love-during-coronavirus/> 
over the lack of protections.


      RELATED: Trump Doesn’t Think There’s A Medical Supply Shortage.
      These Hospitals Beg to Differ.
      <https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/07/trump-doesnt-think-theres-a-medical-supply-shortage-these-hospitals-beg-to-differ/>

That the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, failed to 
prepare enough supplies to deal with the coronavirus has become 
something of a scandal, especially because a 69-page National Security 
Council playbook on fighting pandemics 
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285> 
includes guidance on when and how to start obtaining PPE.

The Trump administration ignored that playbook, which says the 
government should have begun efforts to obtain personal protective 
equipment such as masks, gloves, and gowns in mid to late January. 
Instead, as the Associated Press reported this week, the Trump 
administration squandered nearly two months 
<https://apnews.com/090600c299a8cf07f5b44d92534856bc> that could have 
been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical 
supplies and equipment.

Federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of 
N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators, and other equipment needed 
by front-line health care workers. By that time, hospitals in several 
states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate 
equipment and pleading for shipments from the Strategic National 
Stockpile. That federal cache of supplies was created more than 20 years 
ago to help bridge gaps in the medical and pharmaceutical supply chains 
during a national emergency.

Now, three months into the crisis, that stockpile is nearly drained just 
as the number of patients needing critical care is surging. Some state 
and local officials report receiving broken ventilators and decade-old 
dry-rotted masks.

“We basically wasted two months,” Kathleen Sebelius, health and human 
services secretary during the Obama administration, told the AP.

Rather than do everything he can to help states deal with the PPE crisis 
now, Trump has instead called the federal government a “backup,” 
<https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/02/trump-passes-the-buck-to-states-on-giving-nurses-and-doctors-what-they-need/> 
told states to find supplies on their own 
<https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/03/30/trump-seems-to-be-playing-politics-with-medical-equipment-thats-risking-lives/>, 
interfered with their efforts to do just that 
<https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/03/28/trumps-personal-grudge-with-whitmer-may-have-led-to-supply-slowdown-to-state/>, 
and accused governors of lying about their needs 
<https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm8w5/trump-says-states-are-lying-about-how-many-ventilators-they-need-to-fight-coronavirus>. 



      *Testing Kits*

The national shortage of COVID-19 tests has been well-documented, but 
the highlights bear repeating: After deciding not to adopt the test used 
by the World Health organization, the CDC botched 
<https://apnews.com/c335958b1f8f6a37b19b421bc7759722> the development of 
its first coronavirus test, which dramatically slowed the roll-out of 
tests and caused a devastating delay.

The federal government was also slow to engage the private sector and 
academic labs in testing; the Food and Drug administration waited until 
Feb. 29 
<https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-issues-new-policy-help-expedite-availability-diagnostics> 
to engage private labs in the testing space. These delays and shortages 
caused the government to issue strict, inconsistent, and ever-evolving 
guidelines on who could be tested for COVID-19. The Trump 
administration’s testing failures were so severe that in February, as 
more people across the U.S. became sick, government labs processed only 
352 COVID-19 tests, an average of only 12 per day 
<https://apnews.com/c335958b1f8f6a37b19b421bc7759722> in a nation of 
more than 300 million people, according to an AP analysis of CDC data.

While testing has since ramped up, issues remain. The shortage of tests 
remains substantial 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/us/politics/trump-governors-coronavirus-testing.html>, 
patients have reported waits of up to two weeks to receive test results 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/health/coronavirus-testing-us.html>, 
and many labs are now short on the swabs and chemicals 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-test-shortages-face-masks-swabs.html> 
needed to run the test.

As Bloomberg wrote 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-07/coronavirus-testing-accuracy-and-availability-shortages-remain> 
on Tuesday, “Coronavirus testing has become a massive logistical 
failure, one that’s made it impossible to know how much the virus has 
truly spread.”

The U.S. has by far the most known cases of COVID-19 in the world, with 
more than 430,000 confirmed cases 
<https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html>. Nearly 15,000 Americans have 
died as of Wednesday evening. While the U.S. has now completed two 
million tests <https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily> according to the 
COVID Tracking Project, the country continues to lag behind many other 
countries 
<https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/02/826368789/fact-check-trump-claims-u-s-testing-for-coronavirus-most-per-capita-its-not> 
in testing per capita. In short, the surge in tests came entirely too late.

“Many local communities are flying blind, making decisions in the 
absence of full information largely due to the failure of the federal 
government to provide sufficient testing capacity,” Chrissie Juliano, 
executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, told 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-test-shortages-face-masks-swabs.html> 
the New York Times. “This testing shortage, and lack of available 
information about the actual burden of the virus, has set our country’s 
response back by an order of magnitude we will never know.”


      *Downplaying the Coronavirus*

Despite the various warnings the administration received about the 
coronavirus, President Trump has repeatedly downplayed the dangers of 
the virus 
<https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/01/pence-says-trump-never-downplayed-coronavirus-19-times-he-did/>. 
Since late January, Trump has said “We have it totally under control,” 
declared that the virus would “go away in April,” said the number of 
cases would soon be “down close to zero,” called it a democratic “hoax,” 
and compared it to the flu.

Trump has minimized the risks of the coronavirus dozens of times, doing 
so as recently as late March, after his own administration had already 
issued stringent “social distancing” guidelines.

    Mike Pence says Trump never “belittled” the threat of coronavirus.

    We did some digging and here's a bunch of times he did just that.
    pic.twitter.com/bMoNEWPk3O <https://t.co/bMoNEWPk3O>

    — COURIER (@CourierNewsroom) April 2, 2020
    <https://twitter.com/CourierNewsroom/status/1245843762506543104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

The president has also refused to take any responsibility 
<https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2020/03/2020-time-capsule-3-i-dont-take-responsibility-at-all/608005/> 
for the administration’s missteps, and has instead tried to deflect 
blame onto Democrats, former President Obama, China, the media, and the 
World Health Organization. He has also said 
<https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/animals/trump-im-a-cheerleader-for-the-country/vp-BB11Z6ej> 
that he made his previous comments minimizing the severity of the virus 
because he regards himself as America’s cheerleader.

He does not appear to be succeeding, either as cheerleader or president. 
A new CNN poll 
<http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/04/08/rel4a.-.coronavirus.pdf> 
released Wednesday found that 55% of Americans think the federal 
government has done a “poor job” of preventing the spread of COVID-19, 
while only 41% think it has done a good job. Similarly, 52% said they 
disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak and 55% said 
they think he could be doing more to fight the pandemic.

Only 43% of Americans think Trump is doing everything he can.


https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/04/09/experts-predicted-a-coronavirus-pandemic-as-far-back-as-2017-trump-ignored-them/