4/6/20:
At this point, it seems
clear. U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome Adams warned Sunday that this
week would be bad. And he said it on Fox News, where Happy Talk regarding all
things Trump is the rule.
____________________
“This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11
moment, only it’s not going to be localized.”
U.S. Surgeon
General Vice Admiral Jerome Adams
____________________
“Well, it’s tragically fitting that we’re talking at the
beginning of Holy Week because this is going to be the hardest and the saddest
week of most Americans’ lives,” Adams explained. “This is going to be our
Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized.
It’s going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to
understand that.”
There were, however, encouraging
signs. Adams pointed to two states where Democratic governors had done a good job, flattening
the curve and getting control of the spread of the virus: Washington and
California.
And the Fox News host didn’t cut
him off!
Oh, wait…the host was Chris
Wallace…not one of the Trump shills.
*
THIS WEEKEND, if you couldn’t stand
to watch the president brag and attack others during his daily press conferences,
you missed Trump at his loose-cannon best. When asked Saturday about governors
complaining they were running low on supplies, the Narcissist-in-Chief insisted
health experts he talked with were “really thrilled to be where they are.”
The American Hospital Association, which
represents thousands of hospitals across the nation, made it abundantly clear on
Sunday. Member institutions were not thrilled. Not even a little.
“Not a day goes by where we don’t hear from
hospitals and health systems across the country that are concerned about
shortages of PPE [personal protective equipment] for their heroic front line
caregivers,” said a senior vice president for communications. “The AHA
continues to urge that all levers be used by both the government and private
sector [emphasis added unless otherwise noted] to ensure those on the front
lines have the resources and support they need to care for their patients and
communities.”
The president’s Sunday press
conference was no better. Asked again about governors’ complaints that states were
competing against each other and against the federal government for critical supplies
and equipment, you knew Trump wouldn’t take even a hint of criticism without lashing out.
So he did:
There is a governor, I hear him complaining all the time,
Pritzker. He is always complaining. I just said, “Give me a list of a couple of
the things we’ve done in Illinois.” We’re building a 2,500-bed hospital in
McCormick Place, that’s a big convention center in Chicago. We’re helping to
staff it and probably will end up staffing it because he’s not able to do what
he’s supposed to be able to do as the governor.
He has not performed well.
Jeremy Diamond, a reporter from
CNN, decided to ask Trump a question about a new drug cocktail he keeps touting – as if this
unproven treatment might be the secret to stopping the spread of COVID-19.
Trump said, as he has several
times, that he has a hunch hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, might be
the ticket to saving us all.
He spread his hands wide and poked them in the
reporter’s direction, a habitual gesture, as if to say, look, I’m being totally
honest here and I mean what I say. He said he thought the drug might work against the coronavirus, even though it has never been tested for such
use. “What have you got to lose,” he added rhetorically. “I’ve seen things that
I like,” the president added. “What do I know? I’m not a doctor. I’m not a
doctor, but I have common sense.”
Trump then proved that he doesn’t.
He suggested that doctors might sample the
drug, themselves, before treating infected persons.
In case you are interested (and you would think
the president would be) some side effects of this particular drug include
increased chance of cardiac arrest and possibly fatal toxicities if mixed with common drugs used to treat
diabetes. Hydroxychloroquine can cause
permanent eye damage, permanent hearing loss, unusual bleeding,
hair loss, rapid swelling of the skin, blue-black skin discoloring, suicidal
thoughts, and may be fatal to children if they swallow even a few pills.
(The president doesn’t have time to study
the situation because on April 4, he was busy tweeting 70 times.)
Diamond tried to follow up by asking Dr. Anthony Fauci what he thought of the drug. Dr. Fauci is, as you probably know, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He’s a key member of the administration’s fight against COVID.
“Would you also weigh in on this issue of hydroxychloroquine?” Diamond asked. “What do you think about this?”
“Didn’t you just ask that question…Fifteen times?” Trump snapped.
“He’s a doctor,” Diamond responded.
“You don’t have to answer the question,” Trump, the man with the hunch, told the man with the medical expertise. “I answered that question 15 times.”
Stupidly, all fifteen times.
*
MONDAY MORNING, when the blogger set
to work updating his posts, the bad news was already piling up like bodies in a
morgue. A quick check of the Johns Hopkins University website showed: 337,971
confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the United States. By evening, a
second check of the Worldometers website indicated that the virus was still
spreading widely. That site gave the following totals: 366,906 Americans infected, 10,868
dead.
The following graph, from earlier
in the day, was also of interest:
That tiny sliver of red, to the lower
left of the orange band representing Portugal, is the percentage of cases,
outside of China, in South Korea (0.82), where the government ramped up testing
from the start.
Again, we keep pointing this out.
On March 17, South Korea had 8,320 confirmed cases, more than the U.S.A.
The South Koreans were serious
about efforts to control the disease, whereas Trump was busy tweeting, holding
big rallies and farting around.
As of this evening, states hardest hit:
New York 131,900 cases
New Jersey 41,100
Michigan 17,200
California 16,000
Louisiana 14,900
Massachusetts 13,800
Florida 13,600
Pennsylvania 13,100
Illinois 12,300
(South Korea: 10,331)
Washington 8,300
Texas 8,100
Georgia 7,300
Connecticut 6,900
To understand the threat we face,
we should remember that when March began Louisiana hadn’t identified a single
case of the virus. Mardi Gras went on as planned. Now 512 people have died and the governor is
warning that New Orleans could run out of ventilators. Even rural areas may be unsafe.
The county with the most cases per 100,000 residents (outlined in red, below) is
Blaine in Idaho, with 410 cases in a population of 22,000.
“Widespread
shortages of PPE put staff and patients at risk.”
President Trump, of course, wants
us all to believe he’s doing a fantastic job. But Monday morning the Inspector General for the Department of Health
and Human Services dropped a flaming bag of dog poop on the White House porch, rang the doorbell,
and ran. In a survey of 323 hospitals, carried out March 23-27, the IG found
that “severe shortages of testing supplies,” delays of up to seven days in getting
test results, and “widespread shortages of PPE put staff and patients at risk.”
“The level of anxiety among staff is like
nothing I’ve ever seen,” a hospital administrator explained.
“Hospitals often stated that they were in
competition with other providers for limited supplies,” the IG found, “and that
government intervention and coordination could help reconcile this problem at
the national level [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] to provide
equitable distribution of supplies throughout the country.”
Even basics, the report found, were running low:
Hospitals
reported needing items that support a patient room, such as intravenous therapy
(IV) poles, medical gas, linens, toilet paper, and food. Others reported
shortages of no-touch infrared thermometers, disinfectants, and cleaning
supplies. Isolated and smaller hospitals faced special challenges maintaining
the supplies they needed and restocking quickly when they ran out of supplies.
*
NOR HAD THE TRUMP ADIMINSTRATION been quick to grasp the danger or take action. According to a detailed examination of purchasing orders, the Associated Press has concluded,
After the first alarms sounded
in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might
ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly
two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical
supplies and equipment.
A review of federal purchasing
contracts…shows federal agencies largely 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.
Naturally, when asked about the delays, Trump responded angrily, “FEMA, the military, what they’ve done is a miracle. What they’ve done is a miracle in getting all of this stuff. What they have done for states is incredible.”
His feelings bruised, Trump ended the briefing, left the podium, and disappeared out the side door.
*
HE WAS ASKED again about the report on Monday. This time, he blasted several reporters in sequence for bringing it up.
Then he insinuated that the IG was a holdover from the Obama administration and couldn’t be trusted any farther than Trump could throw a box of N95 masks – assuming he could find one.
The Associated Press had also discovered in examining records, that in January, Team Trump had only 13 million N95’s, critical for hospital staff and first responders who need to protect themselves from infection. Not till March 4 did Health and Human Services wake up and announce it would order an additional 500 million.
And who did Trump blame for the delay?
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