This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Slightly off topicâŚ
Just more evidence for the Trump Pandemic TribunalsâŚ
Then along came Trump.
I started this obviously well researched and relevant article and after about 4 paragraphs realized I just donât want to know this right now.
Robert Redfield, head of CDC, was appointed in March 2018. Gee, which administration selected him?
Is he an âactingâ government official? If not, heâs one of the few people in charge of something in the Trump Administration.
Donât worry Trump and Hannity are rehearsing their questions and answers right now for tonightâs show.
No. Heâs permanent. His only acting job was when Katie Porter grilled him on his incompetence.
You donât actually think Hannity is going to ask him any reverent questions do you???
I see a lot of ass kissing coming up
Hmmm. If only the govât had a pandemic response team whose job it would be to coordinate the govâtâs response. What? You mean to tell me that the CDC and the Whitehouse both had pandemic response teams and that tRump eliminated them? What? Are you telling me that they were eliminated because they were established during the Obama admin and tRump thinks that everything from the Obama admin is bad and must be eliminated? Wow! Thatâs some fucked up shit.
âConfronting global outbreaks and protecting Americans is what we do,â Redfield wrote in the message. âMore and more, people are turning to us for guidance, and we respond consistently with evidence-based information and professionalism.â
He then added:
With 11 herbs and spices, we also do chicken right, here at CDC⌠Just kidding maybe
Internal Emails Show How Chaos at the CDC Slowed the Early Response to Coronavirus
Really not a big deal.
Itâs not as if this chaos was at the Centers for Disease Control.
âSurprise, surprise, surprise.â
â Gomer Pyle, 1962
This never gets old these days.
Note to self: Make a macro for that.
Robert Redfield needs to be replaced immediately. Even if the US is 10 weeks behind on testing, there is still a massive amount of testing ahead. A recent paper (not peer-reviewed yet) suggests multiple testing of every man, woman and child. It is the surest way to burn this virus out (R < 1.0).
As Bill Gates pointed out, rational preparations for this pandemic would have been orders of magnitude cheaper than the current approach, which is highly prone to abuse and panic.
The goal should be home-testing, like pregnancy kits. Trump was exactly wrong when he said we shouldnât test everybody. That is the gold standard.
We believe that a population-scale strategy has the potential to allow most individuals to return to work, and to buy precious time for a vaccine or an effective drug to be developed. A field test would also synergize with drug treatment, as many antivirals act more effectively when they are given at an early stage of the infection. Furthermore, development of field-applicable tests needed for rapid population-level screening will have great benefits in combating epidemics in countries with less developed healthcare systems, and would also help in responding to future epidemics, or variants of the current one. The costs of mobilization of scientific and industrial resources for rapid development of such a test are considerable; however, in our opinion, they are still orders of magnitude lower than the costs of the current suppression and mitigation strategies.
Not sure. Is Michael Brown available these days? We need brave administrators able to deflect blame with deftness.
Evidently somebody got the memo.
On March 3, Redfield wrote to his staff again, stressing the agencyâs readiness, despite the growing evidence that it wasnât. âWe anticipated and prepared for the possible spread of COVID-19 in communities across the United States,â he said in an email.
âThe agencyâs readinessâ = CYA talking points.
âAnticipated and prepared for the possible spread of COVID-19â = CYA talking points got distributed.
How about grab Trump and declareâŚ
âCitizens arrest, citizens arrestâ
Gomer Pyle
Andy Griffths Show 1961