Posted on 03/11/2020 2:12:07 PM PDT by Mariner
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is quickly unveiling a coronavirus aid package while President Donald Trump is considering a national disaster declaration and new travel advisories as Washington raced Wednesday to confront the outbreak that's moving dramatically across the country and disrupting the daily lives of Americans.
After days of trying to downplay the threat, Trump announced he would be delivering a prime-time Oval Office address to the nation Wednesday at 9 p.m. on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The swiftly mounting effort to contain the outbreak and financial fallout intensified on a grueling day as the number of confirmed cases of the infection topped 1,000 in the U.S. and the World Health Organization declared that the global crisis is now a pandemic. Communities nationwide canceled public events in the hopes of halting the spread of the infection.
Testifying on Capitol Hill, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that the outbreak in the U.S. is going to get worse.
"I can say we will see more cases, and things will get worse than they are right now," Fauci told the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Facing questions from lawmakers, Fauci explained, “It is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.” The hearing was abruptly paused as he and other high-level officials rushed back to the White House for meetings.
After days of mixed signals and partisan differences, Washington considered action.
“I am fully prepared to use the full power of the Federal Government to deal with our current challenge of the CoronaVirus!” Trump tweeted before a meeting with bankers in which he assured that "we are going to get the problem solved."
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Internal polls.
“Something has them concerned.”
“The hearing was abruptly paused as he and other high-level officials rushed back to the White House for meetings.” Plus, making all the briefings confidential.
They are REALLY concerned. I’d guess it might be the collapse of Northern Italy’s health care system where they have only half the beds and ventilators they need, and they are not treating anybody over 60 or under 60 with comorbid conditions. You are basically left to die or get better on your own.
Boy, just the excerpt you were able to post is one of the most DISHONEST, pasting together bits and pieces of various events taken out of context pieces of driveby journalism I’ve ever seen.
It’s the AP, what should we expect?
No more like military intelligence.
As soon as DC got hit we knew this would happen
Doctors, media and politicians are causing a world wide depression greater than the great depression. The world stopping is worse than a few million people dying. Lets say that again. The world stopping, is far worse than the virus. You can’t start the economy again once its stopped. Doctors don’t get this. Its like on of those cruise ships. You can’t just start and stop them. We are far better off, just getting the virus.
Will we step in to help Italy?
90% of the EU would love to see us die off. Italy may be different.
You first.
I can’t see how we can help Italy when we are going to face the same problem in 2 to 3 weeks. We need to marshal our resources for the upcoming healthcare crisis.
My thoughts too. But wish Italy and a few others in eastern Europe the best.
My daughter (now 34) studied in Carpi, Emilia-Romagna, Italy in high school. She really loves her “Italian Family” and is worried sick about them.
Don’t bother stating facts..the “it’s just a conspiracy to get Trump!” crowd here on FR isn’t particularly fond of that, and insists it’s just like the flu and everyone (oddly, worldwide) is over-reacting..(to “get Trump”, of course)..
BTW, I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said. Not locking travel down from ALL infected countries - not just countries we don’t like as much, like China and Iran, was one of the single dumbest things Trump has ever done. I’m sure he had a lot of people advising him both ways, but boy what a staggeringly bad call that turned out to be.
The other complete debacle of course was testing - we can’t stop it if we don’t know how “truly” widespread it is, or WHERE it is, and we conservatively lost 6 weeks due to bureaucratic bungling that should have never happened. Then, this morning, I read that even though “some” test kits have FINALLY shipped, we lack some of the chemicals (reagants) to actually initiate the tests. UTTER KLUSTER.
The genie is truly out of the bottle in a big way at this point, and odds are very high that we will look just like Italy within 2-3 weeks or so unless a miracle happens.
“Something has them concerned.”
The containment problem is why. Italy is the example. When hospitals are overloaded, there’s nothing you can do for so many infected.
That’s the problem when infections reach and exceed critical mass.
The reports from northern Italy show the overload and the resulting high mortality rates.
Stories suggest a battlefield triage situation. Anyone 60 or older is not treated as there is no resources to do so. People in their 40s are dying; not just elderly.
Their reaction has been anything but swift.
My take (not an expert virologist) is that the reactions by national leaders about this virus (that has killed far fewer than influenza) is a clue that something is horribly amiss. As to whether we suffer like Italy, I have to wonder. Why is Italy being hit so hard? Korea has had far few deaths, as has Taiwan.
I listened briefly to Rush today and heard him state that Italy engages in a great deal of commerce with China and there is a much back-and-forth travel between the two countries; and that might explain why the Wuhan Virus has affected Italy so terribly.
It’s sad people are only waking up now, when we have known all this since the second week of January.
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