FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn was hesitant to say whether President’s Trump’s idea to reopen the economy next month is feasible during Sunday morning interviews.
We’re having the wrong discussion. It has to be how the economy reopens. I would watch Denmark this week to see how things go. Day cares and elementary schools go first. It may well be that people over 70 don’t escape quarantine until the end of summer unless we get some protections in place so they can e.g. shop, exercise, move about in public without being exposed to excessive risk.
A lot of hemming and hawing today from Trump’s own experts this morning about the May 1 date. I’d appreciate a President who lived in the real world instead of crazy land aka “optimism”.
The world is watching. No, the world really is watching.
Call it the Trump double-whammy. Diplomatically speaking, the US is on life support.
“The Trump administration’s self-centred, haphazard, and tone-deaf response [to Covid-19] will end up costing Americans trillions of dollars and thousands of otherwise preventable deaths,” wrote Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard.
To a watching world, the absence of a fair, affordable US healthcare system, the cut-throat contest between American states for scarce medical supplies, the disproportionate death toll among ethnic minorities, chaotic social distancing rules, and a lack of centralised coordination are reminiscent of a poor, developing country, not the most powerful, influential nation on earth.
That’s a title the US appears on course to lose – a fall from grace that may prove irreversible. The domestic debacle unleashed by the pandemic, and global perceptions of American selfishness and incompetence, could change everything. According to Walt, Trump has presided over “a failure of character unparalleled in US history”.
Dr, Hahn was obviously torn between responding under his Hippocratic Oath, or the Hypocritical Oath he had to swear to Donnie…
“Hahn acknowledged that there have been “really good and vigorous debates” on reopening the economy.”
No, Trump wants to reopen the economy whatever the costs in deaths and everyone else knows better. There is no debate–you have a maniac shouting at the top of his lungs and almost everyone else saying no, we can’t go there yet.
The CDC, FDA, NIH, HHS, AMA and everyone else with disease expertise have absolutely nothing to do or say about when stay in place, quarantines, social distancing, etc are lifted. Those decisions will be made by Trump, various Fox News people, the most extreme members of the House and Senate, especially those most dismissive of science. If experts in the medical field think their opinions matter they’re seriously deluded.
Wow. Just saw the video. Fauci throws Trump under the bus, and the ad writes itself.
But he’s got “political savvy”
The veteran cancer researcher came to Capitol Hill in 2009 to take responsibility for years of botched care by a doctor under his supervision. Ninety-two U.S. military veterans had been implanted with radioactive “seeds,” meant to fight prostate cancer, at the wrong dose — or in the wrong organ entirely.
It was the first of multiple controversies that have dogged Hahn, who worked then as the chair of radiation oncology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, throughout his career. This year, regulators found MD Anderson Cancer Center, where Hahn works as chief medical executive, in such stark violation of federal rules that the transgressions “substantially limit your hospital’s capacity to render adequate care.” And this spring, Hahn came under fire from MD Anderson employees who saw the dismissals of ethnically Chinese researchers under investigation for unduly influencing U.S. research as racially motivated.
Hang on - the American people along with governors and local authorities should get credit for doing the right things. We haven’t been selfish overall - some of us have been but so have Europeans.
It’s all Trump and the GOP. Not America.
Hahn: “the public safety and the welfare of the American people has to come first” and “it’s too early” to determine a date. Sounds like a resignation letter.
I wrote about this yesterday. Yes, other countries are watching and absolutely aghast at what they’re witnessing. Even if we elect Biden, the self-inflicted damage is immense, and probably unrecoverable. We are diminished, perhaps permanently, and Trump represents the end of the American era.
I doubt other countries can forgive the American people (I know, 45% of us) for electing this monster.
Oh, I know, but try explaining the electoral college to the average German on the street. They were pissed at the PPE “piracy”. As Dr. F. says: “It is what it is.”
O come on - like other countries haven’t elected shitty leaders? And they’ve been forgiven.
Hitler, Mussolini, Orban, Boisonaro, and on and on and on. Give me a break please.
“FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn was hesitant to say whether President’s Trump’s idea to reopen the economy next month is feasible during Sunday morning interviews.”
Mr Hahn on walking the plank this morning on the Sunday talks " It ain’t me".
Well so are we pissed. But Germany of all places should get that bad leaders get into office once in awhile.
Regrettably, the world’s not going to see it that way. They see a country that allows it’s citizens to die based on who they voted for, a country trying to steal a vaccine for itself at the expense of other nations, stealing ventilators and PPEs from other countries, a country that can’t even keep its own citizens safe. And this is just the icing on a three plus year cake of playing footsies with Putin, abandoning long-standing allies and defense agreements, holding vital aid to countries hostage for personal political gain. And I could go on and on. Seriously, I’m an American and I’m thoroughly disgusted and angry. Imagine how they must feel.
Except he’s not an optimist. He’s just scared the economy crashing will harm his numbers. If he were really an optimist, we wouldn’t have been hearing what a hellscape this country would be without him defending the borders against brown people. He’s never been an optimist. He’s just rock stupid protected by money.
I don’t really think that is going to be the case because I think the world is more sophisticated than this.
I think they rather feel sorry for the country. All of the shit you are talking about is about Trump - not Americans.
Trump will wear this as a badge of honor. Remember, his whole raison d’etre is to make America great again, superior over any other nation in the world. This is his wet-dream-generating outcome. He’s succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, to the dishonor and disappointment from the world and from us.
It’s not like he cares. He’s winning. That’s all that matters.
And that we’re still talking about him. Which we need to stop, post-haste.
