Dont Blame Trump, he inherited this mess

shootersa · May 7, 2020

Only a despicable would think of deaths as votes lost.

stumbler · May 7, 2020

I assure you its only a conservative lie that dead people vote.

shootersa · May 7, 2020

You miss the point.
Your rant was that President Trump is sacrificing lives - old fart lives- to restart the economy. And, those old farts are his voting block, so he's shooting himself in the foot.

And Shooters point is, only a despicable would think in terms of votes when talking about saving lives VS saving the economy.

Oh, wait.
You were being obtuse weren't you?

stumbler · May 7, 2020

I always liked and admired Susan Rice and for all the time she was in the Obama Administration her intelligence was never common place. But now? When she can sit there and so clearly and insightful speak about complex issues so you can understand. Rice really has become another one of my heroes.

Rice is tougher than Trump ever thought of being.

Susan Rice busts Trump’s blame of Obama for stockpile — and blames president’s gripe on ‘extraordinary insecurity’

Former national security adviser Susan Rice appeared on CNN’s Don Lemon Wednesday evening to discount President Donald Trump’s claim that the previous administration left him without anything necessary to fight the coronavirus.

Lemon began his segment alleging that Trump was blaming President Barack Obama for leaving him the keys to the car, driving it for three years, and then blaming Obama for the tank being empty.

“The fact of the matter is we did leave a full tank,” said Rice. “Independent journalists who visited the national strategic stockpile in late 2016 – validated that it was, indeed, fully stocked, and so that wasn’t the problem. Nor were tests. The problem is, of course, as everybody should understand, you can’t create a test for a virus that doesn’t exist. And this virus emerged in late 2019, early 2020, on Donald Trump’s watch. So, no prior president could have left a test that would have been appropriate for this particular virus. So this is all just throwing sand in the gears.”

“We didn’t just leave a playbook, we had understood clearly, as, frankly, did the Bush administration before us, that a pandemic was inevitable,” Rice continued. “President Obama gave a speech in 2014 as we were dealing with the Ebola epidemic warning of precisely this. I established an office at the national security council in the White House for precisely this sort of thing called the Office of Global Health Security and Biodefense. Its sole purpose was to prepare for this kind of event.”

She said that the administration also left a kind of “Pandemic for Dummies,” after the administration conducted a simulation of a pandemic hitting the United States. Rice explained that the simulation asked the questions, “do we have the supplies? Do we. have the surge capacity? Do we have the testing? All of the things that are standard in this kind of scenario.”

She went on to explain that they had CDC experts that were posted in China for the express purpose to be an early warning system of a virus, but the Trump administration removed those people and dismantled the office they established and threw the playbook out the window.

“They were not focused on the reality a pandemic was going to happen sometime, but could happen any time,” Rice continued. “That’s why they were so flat flatfooted. It didn’t accord with the president’s new trade deal with China, everything being honky dory, the stock market being high, et cetera. So they deflected and delays and didn’t take the months of January and February to prepare as they must. We have lost thousands of lives, and our economy is far worse off than it had otherwise been — had they been on this from day one.”

Lemon asked Rice why she thinks Trump uses Obama so frequently as a scapegoat.

“I can only assume and infer that President Trump has some extraordinary insecurity in relation to Barack Obama,” she replied. “Everything that Obama stood for, decency, family values, unity, a country that stood tall and proud, not by dividing but by uniting, is the antithesis of who Donald Trump is. And he’s clearly threatened by it. And he clearly likes to use Obama as a foil for all of these failures.”

Watch the interview below:
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https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/su...presidents-gripe-on-extraordinary-insecurity/

stumbler · May 7, 2020

Yes we can blame Trump and his administration for not believing in science and medicine.

White House ‘Spikes Expert Report’ on How to Safely Reopen the Nation

As President Trump becomes impatient to reopen the nation during a still-raging pandemic, you’d think it would be a good idea to issue some advice on how to do that as safely as possible. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prepared a set of detailed documents designed to do exactly that—but its publication has reportedly been blocked by the White House. The Associated Press reported the nation’s top infectious-disease investigators wrote a 17-page report to help faith leaders, business owners, educators, and state and local officials as they gradually reopen. It was slated to be published last week, but a CDC official told AP that the agency’s scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day.” A person close to the White House’s coronavirus task force told AP that White House officials didn’t want to provide detailed guidance for how specific sectors can reopen, preferring general guidance for all.

Read it at AP
Click to expand...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white...t-on-how-to-safely-reopen-the-nation?ref=home

Distant Lover · May 7, 2020

stumbler said: ↑

Yes we can blame Trump and his administration for not believing in science and medicine.

White House ‘Spikes Expert Report’ on How to Safely Reopen the Nation

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white...t-on-how-to-safely-reopen-the-nation?ref=home
Click to expand...

As Republican states reopen their economy we will have an interesting test of the Republican assertion that the danger of COBID-19 is overestimated.

thinskin · May 7, 2020

stumbler said: ↑

I assure you its only a conservative lie that dead people vote.
Click to expand...

The voting dead.......sounds like an hbo series!

Thinskin

thinskin · May 7, 2020

stumbler said: ↑

Yes we can blame Trump and his administration for not believing in science and medicine.

White House ‘Spikes Expert Report’ on How to Safely Reopen the Nation

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white...t-on-how-to-safely-reopen-the-nation?ref=home
Click to expand...

This is unbelievably irresponsible.....we are suffering a viral pandemic that we know very little about and instruction for opening up safely is being denied!

Is that constitutionally compatible or will the dead be confined to non-trust fundholders?

Thinskin

stumbler · May 7, 2020

thinskin said: ↑

This is unbelievably irresponsible.....we are suffering a viral pandemic that we know very little about and instruction for opening up safely is being denied!

Is that constitutionally compatible or will the dead be confined to non-trust fundholders?

Thinskin
Click to expand...

Here is the real problem. Our Constitution and institutions anticipated a mad king dictator like Trump but what the did not envision is an entire political party turning traitor against the United States of America. They built in safe guards and naively assumed that there would be honorable peo0ple to use them. But instead the Republicans gladly jumped on Trump's train to dictatorship. So there is little we can do to force Trump to use science over his own delusions because the Republicans and his supporters enable him.

And let's take a look at some of those supporters and how far they are willing to go.

Woman who accused Fauci of sex assault now says Trump supporters paid her to lie

A woman who had accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of sexual assault now claims she was paid to lie about the public health expert by a pair of President Donald Trump’s supporters.

The woman says right-wing provocateur Jacob Wohl and his frequent accomplice Jack Burkman persuaded her to cast Fauci as the assailant using details from an actual sexual assault she survived just after high school, and they paid her to do it, reported Reason.

“The reality is that I’ve known Jacob since 2018 and that he charmed me into taking money to do this (see attached picture of us together),” said Diana Andrade in an email to the website. “[They also] had me do something like this…back in January.”

Andrade said she decided to abandon her claims and try to record incriminating evidence against the pair after Wohl asked her to find another woman to accuse Fauci of sexual assault — as they’ve done to former special counsel Robert Mueller and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

“Let me tell you something, Diana,” says Burkman on the nine-minute, 35-second call. “This guy shut the country down. He put 40 million people out of work. In a situation like that, you have to make up whatever you have to make up to stop that train and that’s the way life works, okay? That’s the way it goes.”

Andrade reminds the pair that COVID-19 was dangerous, and asked them to take the outbreak seriously — but Burkman seemed excited about mass deaths.

“Mother Nature has to clean the barn every so often,” Burkman says. “How real is it? Who knows? So what if 1 percent of the population goes? So what if you lose 400,000 people? 200,000 were elderly, the other 200,000 are the bottom of society. You got to clean out the barn. If it’s real, it’s a positive thing, for God’s sake.”

Andrade sounded horrified by his “survival of the fittest” argument, and then Wohl begged her to keep her mouth shut and stick with her story.

“What could be wrong, Diana?” Wohl asks. “You did a good job, you got paid. What’s the problem? What seems to be the issue? You’re freaking out. You’re texting me late at night. What’s the issue?”

Andrade asks whether a man who hand-delivered five figures to her in Los Angeles was actually a lawyer, as the pair claimed, and Wohl boasts that the attorney has White House connections.

“Yeah, he’s a real lawyer,” Wohl says. “He’s a good lawyer.”

Shortly after the call ended, Andrade decided to send the recording to Reason and expose the pair’s nefarious scheme.

“I don’t know how they do all these things and why they do all these things,” Andrade said. “Also, he tried to frame Mueller … I’m like, how is he not in jail?”
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https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/wo...lt-now-says-trump-supporters-paid-her-to-lie/

thinskin · May 7, 2020

stumbler said: ↑

Yes we can blame Trump and his administration for not believing in science and medicine.

White House ‘Spikes Expert Report’ on How to Safely Reopen the Nation

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white...t-on-how-to-safely-reopen-the-nation?ref=home
Click to expand...

Only in the states would intructions to open up the economy have to include......do not shoot anybody just because the MacDonalds restaurant is not open and only drive through is available!

As happened yesterday in Oklahoma City!

Thinskin

stumbler · May 8, 2020

Coronavirus Cases at Iowa Meat Plant Double to 1,000+ on Same Day It Reopens

The number of workers who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus at an Iowa meat plant doubled on the same day that the facility reopened following a two-week closure, the Des Moines Register reports. More than 1,000 employees at the Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo have now tested positive for the disease, public officials confirmed Thursday, a day after Gov. Kim Reynolds said there had been just under 500 cases. “It’s high. It’s really high. It’s surprising to hear those numbers on the same day they're reopening the plant,” said Chris Schwartz, a Black Hawk County supervisor. Schwartz added that Tyson officials should have acted sooner to protect its employees, calling the slow action of company bosses “incredibly shameful.” Tyson reportedly said it’s now requiring all returning workers to be tested for COVID-19, and those who haven’t been tested won’t be allowed to return to work.

Read it at Des Moines Register
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/coron...ouble-to-1000-on-same-day-it-reopens?ref=home

stumbler · May 8, 2020

The mad king dictator has to keep changing his story about how many Americans he's going to kill.

Trump Once Again Ups Projected Death Toll, Now Predicts 100,000-110,000

President Donald Trump has again revised the projected coronavirus death toll upwards, now saying that 110,000 people or more people could be lost due to the pandemic.

Appearing on Fox & Friends Friday morning, the president forecasted that the death toll, which now stands slightly in excess of 75,000 according to Johns Hopkins, would grow by another 25,000-35,000.

“We’ll be at 100,000, 110. The lower level of what was projected if we did the shutdown,” Trump said, referencing a March 31 forecast which predicted 100,000-240,000 deaths.

However, on April 10, Trump said that the number would come in “substantially under” 100,000. On April 20, the president projected 50,000-60,000. On April 29, he put the figure at 60,000-70,000. And this past Monday, Trump estimated a range of 75,000-100,000.

“You’re talking about, I’d say, two Yankee Stadiums of people,” Trump said of the new projection. “It’s unacceptable. It’s unacceptable.”

Watch above, via Fox News.
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https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-once-again-ups-projected-death-toll-now-predicts-100000-110000/

stumbler · May 9, 2020

Yes Trump is to blame.

WATCH: Trump Admin Whistleblower Gets Choked Up Over Slow Response to Pandemic: ‘We Could Have Done Something and We Didn’t’

The Trump administration whistleblower who was abruptly removed from his job got choked up while sharply criticizing the White House over its missed opportunities in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

During a short preview of her 60 Minutes interview that will broadcast in full on May 17, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell interviewed the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Dr. Rick Bright, about his whistleblower complaint. Bright claims he was demoted from his position in late April after raising objections of “cronyism” and misguided emphasis on hydroxycholorquine, the unproven drug that President Donald Trump had pushed as a possible “game changer” in treating the virus. Both the FDA and NIH have recommended against treating patients with the drug outside of highly controlledcliental trials.

“He says he was removed from his job for putting science over politics and he filed a whistleblower complaint earlier this week,” O’Donnell noted in her introduction. “Today, a federal agency found ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that the administration was retaliating against Bright. Well, tonight, a preview of our wide-ranging conversation.”

“The president called you a disgruntled employee,” O’Donnell pointed out, referencing an unsubstantiated charge Trump leveled at Bright on Wednesday.

“I am not disgruntled,” Bright replied. “I am frustrated at a lack of leadership. I am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head start on developing life-saving tools for Americans. I’m frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. Those things frustrate me.”

The CBS anchor then pointed to Bright emails from January, where he was raising red flags about the outbreak and warning that the administration lacked the necessary personal protective equipment to fight the virus’ spread.

“We see too many doctors and nurses now dying. And I was thinking that we could have done more to get those masks and those supplies to them sooner,” an emotional Bright said, his voice cracking. “And if we had, would they still be alive today? That’s a horrible thought to think about the time that passed where we could have done something and we didn’t.”

O’Donnell recounts Bright claiming that his persistent pushback rankled the leadership in the Department of Health and Human Services.

“You believe you were retaliated against because you raised concerns about hydroxychloroquine,” she said, which he affirmed. She then asked why he chose not to accept the reassignment to the NIH, where he was charged with improved testing platforms.

“That’s an important initiative,” Bright acknowledged, but challenged the logic and timing of the decision. “I’m the director of Barda. To take me out of our organization focused on drugs and vaccines and diagnostics in the middle of a pandemic, the worst public health crisis that our country has faced in a century, and decapitate the Barda organization, to move me over to a very small focused project of any scale, of any level of importance is not responsible, didn’t make sense.”

“A spokesperson for HHS says this is a personnel matter under review,” O’Donnell added at the end of the segment. “But that they strongly disagree with the allegations and characterizations in Bright’s whistleblower complaint.”

Watch the video above, via CBS News.
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https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch...ic-we-could-have-done-something-and-we-didnt/

stumbler · May 10, 2020

‘Criminal negligence’: Trump officials ignored offer of 7 million N95 masks per month in early days of pandemic

Progressives on Saturday denounced an “infuriating” report which detailed the Department of Health and Human Services’ refusal to take an American company up on its offer to supply millions of N95 respirators to the government early on in the coronavirus pandemic.

The Washington Post reported that federal scientist Rick Bright, who filed a whistleblower complaint last week over his demotion following his criticism of the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, detailed communications with Prestige Ameritech in January in which HHS ignored the medical supply company’s offer to produce masks.

The head of the Ft. Worth-based company, Michael Bowen, wrote to HHS on January 23, two days after the U.S. confirmed its first case of Covid-19.

Bowen offered to use four dormant production lines to produce as many as seven million N95 masks per month, but was told by Laura Wolf, director of the Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection at HHS, “I don’t believe we as a government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet.”

“We are the last major domestic mask company,” replied Bowen, who at the time was fulfilling orders for masks from all over the world. “My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad.”

In Bright’s whistleblower complaint, he described how he tried to direct Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Robert Kadlec’s attention to Bowen’s offer in late January. Bowen wrote to Bright in late January following his communications with Wolf that “U.S. mask supply is at imminent risk,” adding a blunt warning, “Rick, I think we’re in deep shit.”

Bright demanded to know from Kadlec why Bowen’s offer had fallen “on deaf ears.”

“We have been watching and receiving warnings on this for over a week,” the scientist wrote.

The agency’s refusal to take Bowen up on his offer early on helped lead to a crisis weeks later, as healthcare workers across the country reported severe shortages of N95 masks as well as other personal protective equipment needed to stop the spread of Covid-19 in healthcare settings. As the Trump administration denied several times that it was responsible for making sure states had the supplies they needed, states were forced in bidding wars with one another over equipment orders that they placed directly with manufacturers.

The details Bright offered in his whistleblower complaint painted a picture of “criminal negligence,” wrote New York Times editorial board member Brent Staples.

Brent Staples ✔ @BrentNYT

Criminal negligence: The U.S. government turned down a Texas company’s offer to provide millions of N95 protective masks https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-days-of-the-pandemic-the-us-government-turned-down-an-offer-to-manufacture-millions-of-n95-masks-in-america/2020/05/09/f76a821e-908a-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html …

In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government turned down an offer to manufacture millions...
On Jan. 22, weeks before the crisis sent the government scrambling for masks, Texas manufacturer Prestige Ameritech offered to restart four mothballed production lines. Federal officials did not take...

washingtonpost.com

36
3:33 PM - May 9, 2020

Andy Richter ✔ @AndyRichter

When incompetence becomes cruelty. We have to fire them all.

Prestige Ameritech offered to make millions of N95 masks in Texas. The government turned him down.. - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-days-of-the-pandemic-the-us-government-turned-down-an-offer-to-manufacture-millions-of-n95-masks-in-america/2020/05/09/f76a821e-908a-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html …

In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government turned down an offer to manufacture millions...
On Jan. 22, weeks before the crisis sent the government scrambling for masks, Texas manufacturer Prestige Ameritech offered to restart four mothballed production lines. Federal officials did not take...

washingtonpost.com

599
10:54 AM - May 9, 2020

Michael Birnbaum ✔ @michaelbirnbaum

This is horrifying: in the early days of the pandemic, the US government turned down the chance to manufacture millions of N95 masks in America. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-days-of-the-pandemic-the-us-government-turned-down-an-offer-to-manufacture-millions-of-n95-masks-in-america/2020/05/09/f76a821e-908a-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html …

In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government turned down an offer to manufacture millions...
On Jan. 22, weeks before the crisis sent the government scrambling for masks, Texas manufacturer Prestige Ameritech offered to restart four mothballed production lines. Federal officials did not take...

washingtonpost.com

589
2:06 PM - May 9, 2020

“I don’t even have words to describe how poorly ⁦Donald Trump has handled this crisis,” wrote Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) in response to the story.

In addition to pressing HHS officials on Bowen’s offer, Bright was critical of President Donald Trump’s promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19. The scientist had also clashed with Kadlec earlier in Trump’s term, when Kadlec urged Bright to transfer $40 million from BARDA to the Strategic National Stockpile in 2018 to purchase a drug made by manufacturer Alvogen, the client of a lobbyist who had connections to the Trump administration.

On Friday, a federal probe found that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that the Trump administration unlawfully retaliated against Bright by demoting him.
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https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/cr...95-masks-per-month-in-early-days-of-pandemic/

stumbler · May 10, 2020

Yes Trump is to blame.

Trump ‘exploded about the economic fallout’ and put a stop to CDC’s February mitigation plan: report

President Donald Trump reportedly cancelled a CDC proposal to move forward with mitigation efforts in late February, weeks before Americans were told they would have to shelter ini their homes due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a column for Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson names four men who he says are most to blame for a multitude of testing failures in the United States.

Dickinson writes:

The government leaders who failed to safeguard the nation are CDC Director Redfield; FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn; Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar; and of course, President Trump. Together, these men had the power to change the direction of this pandemic, to lessen its impact on the economy, and constrain the death toll from COVID-19. Each failed, in a series of errors and mismanagement that grew into a singular catastrophe — or as Jared Kushner described it on Fox & Friends, “a great success story.”

The column goes on to reveal how Trump had thwarted mitigation efforts early on.

“The Coronavirus Task Force had resolved to present the president with a plan for mitigation efforts, like school and business closures, on February 24th, but reportedly reversed course after Trump exploded about the economic fallout,” Dickinson reveals.

Two days later, Vice President Mike Pence was named as leader of the White House coronavirus task force.

It wasn’t until two weeks later that the White House issued “15 days to slow the spread” social distancing guidelines that limited gatherings to 10 or fewer people.

Read the entire Rolling Stone piece here.
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https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/tr...stop-to-cdcs-february-mitigation-plan-report/

stumbler · May 11, 2020

Trump’s White House knew the coronavirus was coming — and yet failed five critical tests: analysis

The arrival of COVID-19 has provided a nuclear-level stress test to the American health care system, and our grade isn’t pretty: at least 73,000 dead, 1.2 million infected and 30 millionunemployed; nursing homes, prisons and meatpacking plants that have become hotbeds of infection. The actual numbers are certainly far higher, since there still hasn’t been enough testing to identify all those who have died or have been infected.

By all accounts, a number of other countries have responded — and fared — far better.

In some ways, COVID-19 seemed the biological equivalent of 9/11 — unthinkable until it happened. Who would have thought individuals would fly jets filled with people into skyscrapers filled with workers? Likewise, who would have predicted the onslaught of a new virus that was stealthy, easily transmissible and also often perilous?

Actually, many public health specialists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, did. And yet, our system failed in its response. Heroic health care providers were left to jury-rig last-minute solutions to ensure that the toll wasn’t even worse.

But the saddest part is that most of the failings and vulnerabilities that the pandemic has revealed were predictable — a direct outgrowth of the kind of market-based system that Americans generally rely on for health care.

Our system requires every player — from insurers to hospitals to the pharmaceutical industry to doctors — be financially self-sustaining, to have a profitable business model. As such, it excels at expensive specialty care. But there’s no return on investment in being primed and positioned for the possibility of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

Combine that with an administration unwilling to intervene to force businesses to act en masse to resolve a public health crisis like this, and you get what we got: a messy, uncoordinated under-response, defined by shortages and finger-pointing.

No institutional players — not hospitals, not manufacturers of ventilators, masks, tests or drugs — saw it as their place to address the COVID-19 train coming down the tracks. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, loath to deploythe Defense Production Act, did so only sparingly and slowly, mostly relying on backchannel arm-twisting and “incentives” like forgiving liability to get business buy-in. That’s because, in the current iteration of American health care, tens of thousands of people dying is not incentive enough.

Let’s look at the failures.

1. Ventilators.As images of overwhelmed Italian hospitals flashed across screens, American hospitals projected they might not have enough ventilators for their mounting caseload. They turned to government, which didn’t have enough either. President Donald Trump castigated the states and hospitals for not being prepared.

But, operated as businesses, hospitals have zero incentive to stockpile. Like hotels, they aim to keep their beds full, or nearly so, with well-paying customers, such as those in need of artificial-joint or heart procedures. Supply-chain management dictates they stock for those needs. A vast storeroom in the basement filled with ventilators that might be needed once in a generation or never?

Long ago, before hospitals had lucrative revenue streams from billing and insurance, they relied on philanthropy to meet urgent health needs. The March of Dimes helped finance the treatment of polio victimsand the development of improved iron lungs. Today, hospitals instead solicit donations for more glamorous projects — cancer centers, new wings, genomics research — with donors’ names affixed.

Indeed, in a 2017 paper, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the country needed a better strategy for stockpiling ventilators, highlighting a “practical problem”: “Hospitals must accept responsibility for the costs and resources needed to manage and maintain an excess of ventilators that are likely to be unused in the absence of pandemic-related surges in demand.”

They are unlikely to do so unless government requires them. We’ve long required ocean liners to have lifeboats and life preservers even though their operators hope to never hit an iceberg.

2. Testinghas proved the persistent Achilles’ heel in the U.S. response. Even in “hot zones,” because of a shortage of tests, they were often rationed to the very ill or essential workers. That makes it difficult to guide treatment and nearly impossible to reopen society. In January, fearing that the virus would hit the United States, researchers at university labs — notably the University of Washington — jumped in and developed a test. But the commercial and hospital labs that deal with the actual bloodwork and viral analysis in this country did not. Why would they? There was no market.

At that time, it wasn’t clear that the coronavirus would produce a pandemic, and there was no billing code for a test and no sense of the price it could garner. With requirements for Food and Drug Administration approval expensive and cumbersome, developing a test was a business non-starter. Indeed, months later, after the billing code was created and the Medicare price was set at $51, labs complained that it didn’t cover costs and wasn’t attractive enough to motivate adequate response. The price was doubled. (Even that most likely seemed somewhat paltry for labs that often charge $200 for basic blood tests.)

On March 16, the Trump administration set aside the FDA approval requirement, bringing a host of new players into the fray. But in our market-driven, decentralized system it’s every provider for himself, and there is no efficient way to connect the new supply with demand. Despite the fact that the administration appointed a national coordinator, by mid-April newly able labs were taking to Twitter to plead for business, like this onein Ann Arbor, Michigan: “We have restructured our lab to help with testing. The problem has become finding samples! Can’t get in touch w/ anyone who needs us.”

In contrast, South Korea, with its national health system, engaged its private test manufacturers with a planin January, promising them quick approval for a coronavirus test and the widespread use of it in nationally organized and financed testing. With a guaranteed market, 10,000 tests a day were availablewithin weeks, allowing the country to avert a shutdown. The federal government or the CDC might have played that role in the United States, but did not.

3. Testing components and PPE.The Trump administration insists that there are plenty of tests that states are not using. Governors say they can’t do nearly enough tests and need help. That’s partly because conducting tests involves access to a number of components — kits, chemical reagents, swabs, personal protective equipment, known as PPE, and sometimes custom cartridges for machines. Miss any one of those things and testing becomes impossible. It’s like trying to make bread with all the ingredients except yeast.

Just as we patients pay item by item — the blood test, the X-ray, the acetaminophen pill — hospitals and doctors’ offices also order item by item, with different sources for each component, as they search for the best deals. And medical manufacturers, which make dozens of products — some very profitable and some not — have no “incentive” to produce low-margin items in excess of usual needs. In recent years, this has increasingly led to intermittent shortages during which hospitals find themselves competing to procure IV fluids, cheap old anti-nausea meds and some cancer drugs. So it is no surprise that a similar phenomenon is handicapping a coronavirus response that has required a huge increase in simple accessories like masks.

“The private sector can directly purchase” personal protective equipment “from manufacturers and distributors, as they normally do,” a press officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said in late March, explaining why the president chose not to use the Defense Production Act even as states like New York were begging for help, facing over 5,000 new cases and nearly 100 deathsa day.

Initially they could not find enough of that equipment, and when they did, it came at a price — as market forces would dictate: When demand for the items exceeded supply, prices rose and bidding wars began. In our market, you get companies to ramp up production of low-margin items by offering ever higher prices. So $1 masks cost $6.Without a national system for such purchases in a crisis, we are essentially forcing hospitals and states to negotiate the price of water during a drought. (Alternatively, we could require all hospitals to have a 90-day supplyof essential response items on hand, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has now done.)

4. Hospitals did not coordinate.Early on, New York’s elite hospitals — staring down a crisis themselves — did not jump in to set up outpatient testing centers. That task was left largely to the public hospitals, resulting in crowded lines, which may have risked more infection spread. The elite hospitals also generally did not share precious protective gear with those harder hit.

In our market-based system, hospitals are primed to compete, not coordinate. They compete for patients who need lucrative procedures and for ratings in magazines like U.S. News & World Report. While legally they have to treat anyone who turns up in the emergency room, they are not eager to treat infectious diseases like COVID-19, which disproportionately hits people with poor insurance and carries a stigma. “No. 1 in COVID-19 Treatment!” is bad for the brand. The lack of coordination likewise meant that in California, one hospital had the beds and protective equipment to continue doing elective procedures, while another — 75 miles away — was overwhelmed by COVID-19. In a national or nationally coordinated health system they would have been obligated to help each other.

5. The hospital rescue.Hospitals will receive tens of billions of dollars as part of coronavirus relief packages passed since late March. This is partly because they have delivered extraordinary treatment of COVID-19 (which doesn’t pay well) but also because they’ve had to cancel high-profit procedures like joint replacements and sophisticated scans to make room for this low-profit-margin illness.

In the past quarter-century, we have evolved a reimbursement system that showers cash on elective and specialty care and discourages hospitals from serving the health needs of society. That is true even though two-thirds of our hospitals are tax-exempt because they — in theory — perform community benefit. In a functioning health system, pandemic preparedness and response would be part of the expected job. In the 1980s when HIV/AIDS was overwhelming hospitals in New York, treating those patients was simply part of each system’s obligation — though some did so far better than others.

All this doesn’t necessarily mean that we need a government-run health system or should eliminate all market influence in health care. In fact, “Medicare for All” would not by itself solve the above problems, since it’s mostly a payment system that largely relies on providers to come through with services when needed.

But the COVID-19 stress test has laid bare a market that is broken, lacking the ability to attend to the public health at a time of desperate need and with a government unwilling — in some ways unable — to force it to do so. This time around, thousands of medical professionals have stoically answered the call to treat the ill, doing their best to plug the long-standing holes and vulnerabilities that the pandemic has revealed.

Whether regulated or run by the government, or motivated by new incentives, we need a system that responds more to illness and less to profits.

Kaiser Health News(KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundationwhich is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/tr...-and-yet-failed-five-critical-tests-analysis/

stumbler · May 12, 2020

Dr. Tony Fauci to warn of ‘needless suffering and death’ during Senate testimony

The head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will warn the U.S. Senate of needless death from COVID-19 during Tuesday testimony.

Dr. Tony Fauci is set to testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions via videoconferencing as he is currently on modified quarantine after potential exposure.

“Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a central figure in the government’s response to the coronavirus, intends to warn the Senate on Tuesday that Americans would experience “needless suffering and death” if the country opens up too quickly,” The New York Times reported Monday evening.

Fauci sent an email to a reporter laying out his message.

“The major message that I wish to convey to the Senate HLP committee tomorrow is the danger of trying to open the country prematurely,” he wrote. “If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to: ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”
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https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/dr...-suffering-and-death-during-senate-testimony/

Barry D · May 12, 2020

I find it interesting that most of the sources noted are established spinners of fiction as fact and facts as unreliable, not to mention the numerous "unnamed sources" they have used over the past three years. One fact is there have been more deaths due to the "seasonal flu" so far then covid-19 and this year’s flu was a mild form, I wonder what an aggressive form would do.

thinskin · May 12, 2020

Barry D said: ↑

I find it interesting that most of the sources noted are established spinners of fiction as fact and facts as unreliable, not to mention the numerous "unnamed sources" they have used over the past three years. One fact is there have been more deaths due to the "seasonal flu" so far then covid-19 and this year’s flu was a mild form, I wonder what an aggressive form would do.
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The flu season is over genius, does it look like the covid-19 season is over?

If the States had a larger take up of the flu vaccine instead of insisting it make a profit then less people would die of the flu!

If healthcare is so profitable in the US then why are so many dying.........perhaps the healthcare is not available to all?

Thinskin

Barry D · May 12, 2020

thinskin said: ↑

The flu season is over genius, does it look like the covid-19 season is over?

If the States had a larger take up of the flu vaccine instead of insisting it make a profit then less people would die of the flu!

If healthcare is so profitable in the US then why are so many dying.........perhaps the healthcare is not available to all?

Thinskin
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I'm going to take a stab at this, you don't live here do you?

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