Now @treco…
You DO know that is an article from one of the Fake News organizations, right?
Yes Sir.
I watch it every evening.
I don’t think you even read what you posted. It makes Trump look ineffectual:
“President Donald Trump restricted travel from China effective Feb. 2, which likely saved lives. But by the time the president acted, much of the damage had already been unleashed, and some 18,000 Americans returned home from China in February and March, after the restrictions were in place. It’s unclear how intensive, if at all, the screening was for the Americans coming home at that point.”
Note this part: 18,000 Americans returned home from China in February and March, after the restrictions were in place. AFTER the so called restrictions were put in place. Can we really call them restrictions?
To be fair, banning repatriation of citizens is not what the travel ban was designed for. Repatriation is a well established practice (and for good reason).
However the testing and screening procedures…well I’ve already given my thoughts before.
I don’t know.
It just seems like playing “the Blame Game” with this horrendous Pandemic will not sway anyone from decisions they have already made about who they want for President.
Yes. Maybe that’s true in general. But playing “The COVID-19 Card” as something to use against a candidate seems not only wrong, but futile.
We’ll see. He haven’t necessarily shown ourselves to be the smartest electorate.
@zecarlo
I actually quoted the same couple of sentences you did, but erased and just linked full article. My thought being the same as aragorn, but also with the thought of 800,000 iirc returnees prior to ban - mostly due to lack of warning from China or WHO,
Travel data of passengers arriving in the United States from China during the critical period in December, January and February, when the disease took hold in that country, shows a stunning 759,493 people entered the U.S.
and the greatest lethality come from the European strain to NY metro.
You want a grouse from me as far as shortcomings - l posted weeks ago that we should be testing millions a day as opposed to sending tiny checks to millions of 6 figure families, so we will quit flying blind.
Whose fault is this - state or federal?
I don’t know.
We agree on that 100%
I believe almost two full months ago Trump said anyone who wants a test can get a test.
And then Trump inventing the idea that we’re close to 5 million tests a day a “fact” like most of his he pulled directly from his ass.
I’m sure it’s a combination, but when this is the guy “in charge” at the federal level it’d be strange to question the amount of incompetence there. Not his fault though, no one understands viruses more, etc.
I don’t think anyone rational disagrees. I have no idea why exactly this part is taking so long. Waiting on the vaccine makes sense and is easy for me to understand. The testing clusterfuck after all this time? Not so much
Fair to whom? The travel ban should have been about the virus not nationality.
Exactly. Which gets back to the first point and my contention that restrictions that didn’t address the virus are not really restrictions.
I can’t argue with that. My point is Trump talking about how well he responded by banning travel from China (well, not Americans traveling from China) as if that was the single greatest thing done by him (he might have the single part right). His whole defense of his response is summed up by that one act. It’s all he refers to. The reality is that, again, people still entered from China and as you just posted, the real issue turned out to be travel from Europe. And even when he banned travel from Europe at first he made an exception for the UK.
Whose fault is it? When I look at the rest of the world and how they responded, we pretty much just look like them. They all were slow to react. Maybe it’s just a human thing. The warnings have been out there for years when it comes to being prepared for a serious pandemic. I don’t think we should be surprised we never had a plan in place because that’s not what we do anymore. Our culture is very in the moment. Our politicians don’t really think ahead and look at polls and only as far ahead as the next election.
So I don’t really blame Trump for how things unfolded. He just showed he was no smarter than other world leaders. My issues are more related to how he responded once things became real, and it was no longer just the flu. Talking about game changing meds he has no qualifications to speak on, when he has experts standing alongside him, or disinfectant and shining light inside the body (wtf?) are problems. Trying to cling to some travel ban from China, that didn’t keep the virus from entering from China, as a victory of sorts is a problem. As if that was a job well done when the real job was only beginning.
Actually, Trump’s biggest talking point is actually pretty damning for him.
Nassim Taleb and dr. Bar-Yam told in one of the interviews how in late January they managed to convince someone in the WH inner circle of the need to suspend all international flights.
Taleb, who’s pathologically anti-HRC and was pretty pro-Trump, actually bragged about it on Twitter.
Here’s the catch - their plan envisioned a suspension of all international flights and a strict screening procedure for incoming repatriation flights in order to prevent the spread of disease on US soil.
Of course, in typical WH fashion this got turned into a half-assed measure motivated solely by optics for his base - banning flights from Chay-nha (as Trump pronounces it) and virtually no screening - apparently, Covid-19 could not have been transmitted by US passport holders.
To those who are coherent. To his base, they let him control the narrative.
To say he has performed no better than the typical leader is a far stretch from saying how he has actively dropped the ball and made it exponentially worse for the US.
Besides if he either refused repatriation or set up isolation camps, you would scream racist dictator or interment camp 2.0.
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Are we grading on a curve? Is it possible that most leaders failed? That does not all mean they get a B. It means they get an F.
IMO, a president should do what he thinks is right for the country, not what is right for his polling.
BTW, I agree with you above statements about wanting more testing.
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I believe he has a mixed bag on grading.
Did implement flight stoppage from both China and Europe relatively quickly, however incompletely,
Did rush medical aid (ships, Javits center, other med facilities) and equipment into hot spots,
Has cautiously allowed top medical experts to enact distancing, while not knowing extent of infection/mortality rates,
Has begrudgingly allowed states to reopen their economies as they saw fit,
Pushed for economic infusions from personal to systemic level,
Jawed endlessly and at times incoherently, and sometimes in opposition to ‘experts’ or other governmental officials.
You may agree with some of these acts (I do), disagree with some (again I do). But since this has been relatively uncharted grounds, with a range of responses from lying about exposure to herd immunity to virtual lock down of entire populations - I have a difficult time saying he has made an F.
Your grading is, of course, your right.
Well grading in hindsight is going to produce lower grades in many cases. Almost all of the top people thought going to war after 911 was a good idea, myself as a 14 Y/O included. Many changed their minds later.
I’ll agree that the actual decisions would likely be similar with a lot of people. What I haven’t liked is more around his words than actual actions. Some misleading statements, some outright lies. It all appears to me to be antics used to please his base.
I would argue that adults making decisions that appeal to 14 year olds is a problem.
Who is you? And how would isolating AMERICANS be racist?
I guess my point is that many people on both sides agreed with the decision, then in hindsight realized it wasn’t as clear as it seemed, and changed positions.
Not that I was an expert at 14.