Posted on 04/09/2020 7:23:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
For three years, critics of President Donald Trump have claimed that he arrogantly refuses to listen to his experts and that his exaggerated sense of self prevents him from accepting his limitations. Applying that narrative to Trump's initial failure to appreciate the gravity of the coronavirus, NBC host Chuck Todd recently asked former Vice President Joe Biden, "Do you think there is blood on the president's hands, considering the slow response? Or is that too harsh of a criticism?" Even Biden called the criticism a "little too harsh."
"A little too harsh?" Trump, neither a doctor nor a scientist, merely followed the advice given him from his medical experts. The problem is that a lot of the advice was vague, inconsistent, contradictory or flat-out wrong.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, and a member of Trump's coronavirus task force, has become a respected voice in explaining the coronavirus, what to expect from it and how we can fight it. Democrats and Republicans praise him and his dedicated service under six presidents, both Republicans and Democrats.
But his advice has been well short of perfect. On Wednesday, March 11, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a "pandemic." Before this declaration, what did Fauci say?
This is from a Jan. 21, 2020 interview with Newsmax:
Host: "Bottom line, we don't have to worry about this one, right?"
Fauci: "Well, you know, obviously, you need to take it seriously and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing. But this is not a major threat (emphasis added) for the people of the United States, and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about."
On Feb. 3, 2020, Fauci told CNBC: "It's still an evolving situation. We don't know exactly where it's going to go, what the pattern is. But clearly right now at least the number of cases are accelerating." And in late March 2020, William Haseltine, Ph.D., former professor at Harvard Medical School and distinguished researcher in biophysics and biomedicine, admitted: "Well, we know it's highly infectious, and as the days go by, we're learning it's more infectious than we thought it was, say, a month ago, even two weeks ago."
The medical experts' advice has also been inconsistent on whether nonmedical personnel with no symptoms should wear face masks in public. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently issued a directive to do so: "Out of an abundance of caution, this is what I'm saying to all New Yorkers: Take a scarf, take a bandanna, just anything you have at home, just cover your face if you're going to be in close contact with people who are not your own family under your own roof." The mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, issued a similar directive.
But just days earlier, on March 26, the World Health Organization tweeted: "If you do not have any respiratory symptoms, such as fever, cough, or runny nose, you do not need to wear a medical mask. When used alone, masks can give you a false feeling of protection and can even be a source of infection when not used correctly." An April 7 Guardian article writes: "Prof David Heymann, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who chaired the WHO's scientific and technical advisory group for infectious hazards, said that unless people were working in healthcare settings, masks are 'only for the protection of others, not for the protection of oneself.'"
Now, the WHO tweet referred to medical masks. But Howard Zucker, New York State's health commissioner, said there was "no clear evidence" that covering one's face in public would slow down the rate at which the disease spreads.
Similarly, the advice on whether one should wear gloves while grocery shopping has also been inconsistent. Some say it reduces the chance of transferring the virus from surface to humans. But Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel warned: "Gloves accumulate germs; gloves will accumulate viruses. You're going to not even realize when you touch something, then you have it on the gloves, then you transfer it to your face, then you can get infected. ... You can't change them frequently enough to make a difference, so I vote no on that one. Yes, on the continued hand-washing."
Bottom line, many medical experts were caught flat-footed or were slow to recognize the seriousness of this pandemic. China's repeated denials and outright lies about the likely origin of the coronavirus did not help. A study by the University of Southampton estimates that 95% of the cases in China could have been avoided had China begun early detection, isolation of cases, travel restrictions and sanitary cordoning three weeks earlier.
The fact that all of this translates to Trump having "blood on his hands" is yet another symptom -- not of the coronavirus but of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
If Trump doesn’t follow the advice of the experts, he has blood on his hands.
If Trump does follow the advice of the experts, he still has blood on his hands.
For propaganda purposes, this is like Bush and the WMD. Quite apart from anything we might say in 2020 about the reality of the WMD, at the time of Bush’s decision, all of the intelligence experts in the US and in foreign countries said that Saddam Hussein had WMD. So Bush acted accordingly. But the press marked that down as a “lie” when the WMD were not revealed by our military.
If you listen to experts, they call you a “liar”. There is no winning here.
Wasn’t Dr. Anthony Fauci the guy who pretty much said that the gay lifestyle had nothing to do with the spread of HIV and that everyone was equally at risk for it?
Less than 48 hours ago Brit Hume reported that Dr. Birx admitted that “Anyone in U.S. who dies with Covid 19, regardless of what else may be wrong, is now being recorded as a Covid 19 death.”
This virus is very contagious and can kill. Other than those two obvious things, what can we actually trust? I trust the President to listen to the experts and to respond to what they tell him. The experts? Not sure I trust them.
Fauci has major credibility problems.
In January he was saying this virus was not a problem
In February he was saying it would be a miniscule problem.
By March he was urging Trump to shut the country down.
He’s been searching for an AIDS vaccine for 30 years, without success. Yet he struts to the microphones each day so cock-sure that he’s going to have a COVID-19 vaccine in 18 months or less.
In the 80’s he predicted AIDS would spread rapidly into the heterosexual community.
He reminds me of that Star Trek character, Doctor Noonien “Often Wrong” Soong.
Genocidal maniacs have replaced the World Health Organization. Any medical professional that refers to a deadly disease as a symptom should not be the head of the UN org.
As the responsible health minister in Ethiopia, Tedros diagnosed Cholera as watery diarrhea.
We should not be giving any money to the United Nations.
#IbelieveInREALscience
The so-called ‘experts’ have been all over the map. It’s nothing new for them because its’s the Liberal default to cover all the bases... that way, their ‘pronouncements’ are a crap shoot constantly giving them a 50/50% chance at being right.
Taking responsibility and coming down one way or another takes WAY too much spine for Liberals. No way do any of them want their fingerprints on a decision or a conclusion that is ever challenged.
They demand acres of uncontested wiggle-room….otherwise they will simply marble mouth their usual BS, by way of an actual answer.
Don’t forget... ‘We need to pass the bill to see what’s in it.’
It’s wholly impossible to BE more irresolute and disingenuous!
Experts? are that what they are. So far the most wrong answers have come from “experts”. And if you want to get magnitudes off, look no further than the computer models. They are really far off, like 2.2 million deaths in the US. But for the most vile bad answers we have to hand that title to the WHO and the Chinese CSC who misinformed the world at a point when this thing could have been contained.
The whole culture of the Washington bureaucrat is to AVOID taking any responsibility for anything that happens, and manipulating statistics so that, no matter what happens, you come out looking golden and have an argument for why your funding needs to be increased.
The Left is certainly using this CRISIS to shut down our freedoms and our way of life. Why is a ‘rive-in Easter Service’ being shut down? Simply because the Democrats can do it. I fear too many people will become comfortable with the Nanny Government way of life. Our American Can-Do approach to life is in serious peril.
Once you are old enough to have heard and dealt with experts galore in many fields, you will come to realize that it’s all just a game.
I think the virus went across the country before the CDC decided to test someone....
What explains so few cases,..
Did they just say it was the flu
Study investigates if COVID-19 came to Calif. in fall 2019
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3833193/posts
Look at Orlando FL with 75 million tourist..like 6 million a month
Thing do not add up??
So true. And Rush is feeding the anti Trump frenzy. I bet Trump feels stupid for giving Rush the medal......
One of Larry Elder’s better pieces IMHO.
The big problem with Bush going into Iraq was his lack of preparation of what to do when we took over the nation! Trump isn’t falling into that trap, he as a plan to recover from this debacle.
Read later.
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