NCFisher
"White folx tiring me with Caudacity..."
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2012
- Messages
- 5,651
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- 8,401
On the first point: Trump's timeline is entirely accurate. That the CDC kit failed in the field after identifying the first U.S. patient on Jan 21, is no secret. The CDC attempted to fix the issues through the entire month; here are Messonnier's statements during that time:
Feb. 12, Messonnier said “rapid development of a diagnostic and rapid deployment to the states” is “clearly a success.”
Feb. 14, she said: “We can be proud. … We moved quickly.”
Feb. 21, Messonnier acknowledged problems with the testing kits, but described the issues as “normal.”
Throughout this period, CDC continued promising state labs they would be shipping replacement kits right into March, kits that never came.
Again, this is no secret and Politico posing this as a "gotcha" instance is laughable. Trump had every reason to throw CDC and FDA under the bus for their handling, but not once did he do so. Instead, he has taken all the arrows for their failure, and preserved public trust in the two agencies. That's an example of leadership that magically! did not make its way into the Politico tale.
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On the second point: China Monitoring.
The U.S. - and the rest of the world - had been trying to get a team into China since JANUARY 6, and were denied three times by China. Unless you and Politico propose we invade them, that's the score.
Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, previously told CNN that he and CDC director Robert Redfield had made an official offer to put a CDC team into China during the first week of January 2020, but that they did not get permission to do so.
“Dr. Redfield and I made the offer on January 6th - 36 days ago, 60,000 cases and 1,300 deaths ago,” Azar said to the news organization on February 14. “We made the offer to send the CDC experts in to assist their Chinese colleagues to get to the bottom of key scientific questions like, how transmissible is this disease? What is the severity? What is the incubation period and can there be asymptomatic transmission?”
A team was allowed to go in on February 16, after the World Health Organization got them permission to do so. That team had two U.S. experts aboard. However, by that mid-February date, China had over 75,000 cases.
Because of all that, the CDC maintains that staffing decisions weren't the cause of the U.S.'s inability to learn about the virus prior to its worldwide outbreak.
Dr. George Conway, who is a medical epidemiologist who served as a resident advisor for three years and knows Quick, said that the position's funding was often debated because U.S. officials believed China should be funding their own training programs.
U.S. Reportedly Cut CDC Expert's Job in China Months Before Coronavirus Outbreak
In short, the implication that the CDC staff reduction mattered one iota is false. I give Politico 4 Pinocchios.
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Regarding Trump "downplaying"...this is such a vapid meme that I have documented ad nauseum on the forum, that Trump's comment mirrored those of the "experts" all the way into March when the WHO declared a global pandemic. We have Fauci repeatedly telling us there is no to very little danger to Americans, go about your business and worry about the flu instead. If you really need me to beat you over the head and post these public statements by the experts again, just ask.
Ditto for the last couple points. Just let me know which stick you want to be clubbed with.
