Tag: Trump botched COVID-19 response killed over 200000 Americans

Scoop: CDC director overruled on cruise ship ban

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Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was overruled when he pushed to extend a “no-sail order” on passenger cruises into next year, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the conversation today in the White House Situation Room.

Why it matters: Cruise ships were the sites of some of the most severe early coronavirus outbreaks, before the industry shut down in March. And their future is just the latest disagreement between Redfield and members of President Trump’s team.

The undermining of Redfield has been the source of much consternation among public health officials inside the administration, who argue that a politically motivated White House is ignoring the science and pushing too aggressively to reopen the economy and encourage large gatherings. Continue reading.

‘Sick of him’: Trump’s support is drying up among critical GOP voting bloc in Florida

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Florida senior residents have been reliable Republican voters for decades, but it looks like their political impact could shift in the upcoming 2020 election.

As Election Day approaches, Florida is becoming a major focal point. President Donald Trump is facing more of an uphill battle with maintaining the support of senior voters due to his handling of critical issues over the last several months. Several seniors, including some who voted for Trump in 2016, have explained why he will not receive their support in the November election.

“He just lies about everything,” said Joy Solomon, a 65-year-old Boca Raton resident who voted for Trump in 2016 largely because her husband supported him. Now, they’ve both distanced from the embattled president. Continue reading.

Behind the White House Effort to Pressure the C.D.C. on School Openings

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Documents and interviews show how senior officials sought to play down the risks of sending children back to the classroom, alarming public health experts.

WASHINGTON — Top White House officials pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this summer to play down the risk of sending children back to school, a strikingly political intervention in one of the most sensitive public health debates of the pandemic, according to documents and interviews with current and former government officials.

As part of their behind-the-scenes effort, White House officials also tried to circumvent the C.D.C. in a search for alternate data showing that the pandemic was weakening and posed little danger to children.

The documents and interviews show how the White House spent weeks trying to press public health professionals to fall in line with President Trump’s election-year agenda of pushing to reopen schools and the economy as quickly as possible. The president and his team have remained defiant in their demand for schools to get back to normal, even as coronavirus cases have once again ticked up, in some cases linked to school and college reopenings. Continue reading.

The code: How genetic science helped expose a secret coronavirus outbreak

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POSTVILLE, Iowa — It wasn’t until their colleagues began to disappear that workers at Agri Star Meat and Poultry realized there was a killer in their midst.

First came the rumors that rabbis at the kosher plant had been quarantined. Then a man who worked in the poultry department fell ill. They heard whispers about friends of friends who had been stricken with scorching fevers and unbearable chills — characteristic symptoms of the novel coronavirus.

Where was the contagion coming from? Continue reading.

Rising coronavirus cases spark fears of harsh winter

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After surpassing another grim milestone — 200,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths — the U.S. is bracing for an increase in lives lost this fall and winter as the pandemic collides with flu season.

Temperatures are beginning to dip across the country and case counts are subsequently starting to rise again, putting the country on the wrong path as colder weather approaches.

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, had hoped daily new cases would be around 10,000 by the fall, but the seven-day average is 42,000 and heading upward. Continue reading.

Fauci finally loses his patience with Rand Paul

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Whenever Sen. Rand Paul and Anthony S. Fauci appear at the same hearing together, they are bound to clash. In May, they tangled over children’s susceptibility to the coronavirus. In June, Paul attacked Fauci for not being more optimistic about the coronavirus, saying that Fauci wasn’t the “end-all” and that he should be more humble about what he didn’t know.

Through it all, Fauci has been characteristically diplomatic. But on Wednesday, he seemed to reach his breaking point.

Paul (R-Ky.), as he often has, questioned the strict mitigation measures that states across the country had undertaken. He accused Fauci of being too laudatory of New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), noting that Cuomo’s state experienced one of the worst outbreaks in the world. Continue reading.

POLITICO-Harvard poll: Pandemic fallout, racial reckoning are deeply personal to 2020 voters

A rapid approval of a coronavirus vaccine would do little to boost Trump’s political fortunes, the poll also indicates.

It’s the economy, again. But it’s also the coronavirus pandemic, the upheaval it’s brought to kids’ education and a nationwide reckoning on racial discrimination that’s top of mind for likely voters, according to a new POLITICO-Harvard poll gauging their attitudes heading into the presidential election.

While the economy is typically a top voter issue in presidential elections, it’s taken on new urgency with millions out of work because of the pandemic. The new poll shows that unlike some past elections, issues that are deeply personal to Americans’ everyday lives, rather than policy debates that can be more abstract, rank among the most important priorities that will influence voters.

“Issues which are broader and further away from people’s lives may not have the same impact as they would have at another time when you didn’t have an epidemic and a recession,” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who designed the poll. Continue reading.

We’ve reached 200,000 deaths. Our response has gotten even worse than it was at 100,000.

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The United States has reached the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths from covid-19. We are in a much worse place than we were when we crossed the 100,000-death threshold in May.

Why? Start with the numbers. In late May, we had about 20,000 new infections per day. Now we are at double that, with around 40,000 new daily infections. This is a high baseline to have entering the fall and winter, when the combination of quarantine fatigue and cold weather could drive people to congregate indoors and substantially increase transmission.

In addition, restrictions keep getting lifted, even in states with surging infections. The nearly 2 million students returning for in-person instruction will surely lead to more outbreaks, as some college towns are already emerging as new coronavirus hot spots. In 27 states, the number of infections this week is higher than it was last week. In 14, the test positivity rate is in the double digits, which means the true infection rate is much higher. Continue reading.

‘You’re not listening’: Dr. Fauci schools Rand Paul live during heated Senate COVID-19 hearing

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, became embroiled in a heated exchange with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), defending his professional expertise and his public health agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Fauci testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) on Wednesday where his expertise was challenged by the Republican senator. Paul, an ophthalmologist, criticized the infectious disease expert for applauding New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) for his handling of the coronavirus. Emphasizing that New York still has the highest state death toll in the United States, Paul insisted Cuomo had not done a great job mitigating the spread of the coronavirus in his state.

“You’ve been a big fan of Cuomo and the shutdown in New York,” Paul pushed back. “You’ve lauded New York for their policy. New York has had the highest death rate in the world. How can be jumping up and down saying Cuomo did a great job?” Continue reading.

Trump May Reject Tougher F.D.A. Vaccine Standards, Calling Them ‘Political’

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In suggesting he might reject tougher guidelines, President Trump once again undermined efforts by government scientists to bolster public confidence in their work.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that the White House “may or may not” approve new Food and Drug Administration guidelines that would toughen the process for approving a coronavirus vaccine, and suggested the plan “sounds like a political move.”

The pronouncement once again undercut government scientists who had spent the day trying to bolster public faith in the promised vaccine. Just hours earlier, four senior physicians leading the federal coronavirus response strongly endorsed the tighter safety procedures, which would involve getting outside expert approval before a vaccine could be declared safe and effective by the F.D.A.

The president’s comments, to reporters in the White House briefing room, came after the doctors told a Senate panel that they had complete faith in the F.D.A., and that science and data — not politics — were guiding its decisions. Last week, Mr. Trump used the same setting to declare that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had “made a mistake” when he said most Americans would not complete the vaccination process until next summer and that masks were at least as important as a vaccine to control the virus’s spread. Continue reading.