Gary Mason writes that Donald Trump created the perfect storm that is now sweeping across the United States:
Luciana Borio, the president’s biodefense preparedness advisor, warned that a flu pandemic – not a 9/11 redux – was the country’s No. 1 health security threat. As the director of medical and biodefence preparedness at the National Security Council, Borio said the country wasn’t nearly ready to confront such a lethal outbreak if it was to occur.
What was the White House’s response? It dismantled the NSC’s global health security office shortly thereafter.
Dr. Borio, and other experts such as her, were soon out of jobs. And now, 327 million Americans have been left to suffer through a pandemic without a coherent strategy for dealing with it – even though their government saw it all coming.
Now Trump claims that he's going to put Americans back to work by completely ignoring the advice of all of his country's public health experts:
Now, he is musing about grossly inflaming a problem he had a chance to mitigate. Mr. Trump is threatening to ignore the advice of virtually every major public health officer in the U.S. – including his own White House adviser on infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci – and effectively allow for a “culling of the herd” that will result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans.
That poses a problem -- a really big problem for Canadians:
This intended course of action has already caught the attention of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, and to say there is worry there would a gross understatement. Canadians also have to be prepared for the fallout of Mr. Trump’s actions.
That means being prepared to tighten restrictions at the border even further. If the virus spreads because of a decision by the president to relax the rules around social distancing, it will undoubtedly mean that those U.S. workers coming into Canada now to transport goods will be at greater risk of carrying the disease.
In the words of the American revolutionary, Tom Paine: "These are the times that try men's souls."
10 comments:
An infectious disease specialist on CBC radio about a month ago said the biggest threat to Canada would come not from China, S. Korea, Iran or Italy, but from the US. He pointed out that the US was well behind other countries in testing and has millions of uninsured and underinsured who would not seek testing or treatment, An outbreak there would easily cross our borders because of our proximity and reliance on US food and other imports.
He was absolutely right. Our own disease testing is severely constrained by a shortage of swabs produced in the US. Our labs are too few and lack the staff and equipment to test at anything near the scale and speed that the E Asian countries demonstrated in containing the spread of Covid. Our hospitals have been cut to the bone by years of short-sighted political budget cuts, and lack the space and ventilators needed. In short, we are not prepared to handle the massive spread of Covid that is predicted in the US.
Cap
I agree, Cap. The years of neoliberal policies have left us unprepared to face this moment.
Every time I see Donald Trump giving a press conference, surrounding by his enablers, the following quote from Macbeth comes to my mind, Owen:
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
His unfitness is manifest.
I can only add this brief comment, Lorne:
"By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes."
and effectively allow for a “culling of the herd” that will result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans.
The American way!
Biggest problem is that they exported the attitude.
TB
My way or the highway, TB. The mantra of The Ugly American.
An interesting description:
So far, the president has claimed that the disease is just "a fantasy" and "a little flu", accused the media of fuelling hysteria by reporting on the death toll in Italy, encouraged - and even attended - a series of pro-government street demonstrations across the country and supported religious leaders who refused to close down churches and evangelical temples in response to the pandemic.
I know it sounds like trump buh it is his greatest fan, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil. Still it is chilling to read the parallels.
================================
As it became clear that Bolsonaro is more interested in protecting Brazil's long-ailing economy, and his political future than addressing the looming crisis, governors of several Brazilian states decided to take the matter into their own hands.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/bolsonaro-covid-19-denial-devastate-vulnerable-brazilians-200325123513207.html
Trump and Bolsonaro are birds of a feather, jerk. And stupidity is also a virus.
re oil and plagues...
in my arguments with friends who state
things are as they are
and will never change
my response is just
"lack of imagination is not an argument really"
in that light
re trucking
just swap trailers at the border
as it was during WWII with airplanes
pre pearl harbor
America brought them to the border
and we took them north
These times require outside the box thinking, lungta. But we've been living in boxes -- very small boxes.
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