Tag: Trump mishandled pandemic response

Mike Pence slammed for claiming Trump never ‘belittled’ COVID-19 threat: ‘Stop lying to our faces!’

AlterNet logoVice President Mike Pence on Wednesday defended President Donald Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic by falsely claiming that the president had never sought to belittle the threat the virus posed.

“I don’t believe the president has ever belittled the threat of the coronavirus,” Pence said.

A massive trail of evidence shows otherwise, however.

“Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low,” Trump said on February 26th. “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” Continue reading.

Trump’s Racist Immigration Policy May Leave Food To ‘Rot In The Fields’

Early signs show that the systems that get fresh fruit and vegetables to American homes is strained and may experience major failures. The Trump administration is only making matters worse, allowing his racism against Mexicans to inflict damage on American farms that depend on legal labor from south of the border.

In Florida, winter crops are rotting in the fields because the prime products like blemish-free squash, spinach and lettuce—sold to restaurants—lack buyers, according to the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association. It offers members extensive advice on how to stay in business during the pandemic.

“Nearly all of our fruits and vegetables are not automated and you need a strong labor force to handpick those crops,” John Walt Boatright of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation told the Palm Beach Post.  “We are hearing a lot of concerns from the blueberry industry and other labor-intensive crops, and working to find a solution.” Continue reading.

Behind Trump’s Reversal on Reopening the Country: 2 Sets of Numbers

New York Times logoAn estimate of the number of possible deaths and polling that showed a cautious public changed, for now, the president’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic.

WASHINGTON — The numbers the health officials showed President Trump were overwhelming. With the peak of the coronavirus pandemic still weeks away, he was told, hundreds of thousands of Americans could face death if the country reopened too soon.

But there was another set of numbers that also helped persuade Mr. Trump to shift gears on Sunday and abandon his goal of restoring normal life by Easter. Political advisers described for him polling that showed that voters overwhelmingly preferred to keep containment measures in place over sending people back to work prematurely.

Those two realities — the dire threat to the country and the caution of the American public — proved decisive at a critical juncture in the response to the pandemic, his advisers said. The first of those two realities, the deadly arc of the virus, has been known for weeks even if disregarded by the president when he set his Easter target. But the second of the two upended Mr. Trump’s assumptions about the politics of the situation and restrained, for a moment at least, his eagerness to get back to business as usual. Continue reading.

CDC considering recommending general public wear face coverings in public

Washington Post logoShould we all be wearing masks? That simple question is under review by officials in the U.S. government and has sparked a grass-roots pro-mask movement. But there’s still no consensus on whether widespread use of facial coverings would make a significant difference, and some infectious disease experts worry that masks could lull people into a false sense of security and make them less disciplined about social distancing.

In recent days, more people have taken to covering their faces, although it remains a scattershot strategy driven by personal choice. The government does not recommend it.

That may change. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering altering the official guidance to encourage people to take measures to cover their faces amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it is an ongoing matter of internal discussion and nothing has been finalized. Continue reading. Free article.

Trump Hands Coronavirus Briefing To MyPillow Exec Who Tells Americans To Read Bible

The president again paraded corporate executives at the White House briefing meant to inform Americans about the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Donald Trump used Monday’s White House daily briefing on coronavirus to again parade out private company executives — including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who used the platform to praise Trump and tell Americans amid a global pandemic to “read our Bibles.”

During the briefing — meant to inform Americans about COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus — Trump handed the podium to several CEO’s of private sector companies to tout their efforts to produce sanitizer, masks and other gear for workers amid the pandemic.

MyPillow CEO Lindell said his bedding company would be dedicating 75% of its manufacturing to producing cotton face masks, aiming to get up to 50,000 a day by end of this week. He then said he would read something he wrote “off the cuff.” Continue reading.