Government Response to Coronavirus 4: The Reality Show From Hell

[GreyhoundFan]

Why am I not surprised? "Brett Giroir, Trump’s testing czar, was forced out of a job developing vaccine projects. Now he’s on the hot seat."

Spoiler

Brett Giroir, the federal official overseeing coronavirus testing efforts, says that his experience working on vaccine development projects at Texas A&M University helped prepare him for this historic moment. He once said that his vaccine effort was so vital that “the fate of 50 million people will rely on us getting this done.”

But after eight years of work on several vaccine projects, Giroir was told in 2015 he had 30 minutes to resign or he would be fired. His annual performance evaluation at Texas A&M, the local newspaper reported, said he was “more interested in promoting yourself” than the health science center where he worked. He got low marks on being a “team player.”

Now President Trump has given Giroir the crucial task of ending the massive shortfall of tests for the novel coronavirus. Some governors have blasted the lack of federal help on testing, which they say is necessary to enact Trump’s plan for reopening the economy.

That criticism has focused attention on Giroir and whether he can deliver results under pressure. His years as director of the Texas vaccine project illustrate his operating style, which includes sweeping statements about the impact of his work, not all of which turned out as some had hoped.

During two recent interviews with The Washington Post, Giroir blamed his ouster on internal politics at the university, not on any problems with the project.

“If you’re not familiar with academic politics, it makes politics in Washington look like a minor league scrimmage,” he said. He said he was “heartbroken” to leave the position before his work was done, but he said that the vaccine projects have proved valuable — and might contribute to the development of a coronavirus vaccine.

As for the evaluation, Giroir, 59, said, “I’m a team player. But not to people who act inappropriately, who are misogynistic and who are abusive to other people. I don’t have a loyalty to that. I have a loyalty to my faculty and my students. And that’s what I care about. . . . It’s better to be independent and stand your ethical ground.” Asked to explain his comment, he said, “I’ll just leave it at that.”

The combative response is classic Giroir, according to those who have worked with him over the years.

Robin Robinson, who as the director of the federal Biological Advanced Research and Development Authority oversaw a major grant for the Texas vaccine project, said in an interview that Giroir “over-promised and under-delivered.” He said, “I always had a good relationship with Brett. I know he has a temper and he sometimes has a very difficult time controlling it.”

Still, Robinson, like other former associates interviewed for this report, said that he has confidence in Giroir and praised Trump’s decision to pick Giroir for the job informally known as the nation’s virus testing czar.

“He does get things done,” Robinson said. “Sometimes it’s a little different than what one might expect. But I feel confident that he will do the job where he is right now.”

Giroir serves as the assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services, making him the top medical and science adviser to HHS Secretary Alex Azar. He oversees the U.S. Public Health Service Commission Corps, which has 6,200 members and is playing a major role in fighting covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

On March 13, a week after Trump said falsely that “anybody that wants a test can get a test,” Giroir was given the responsibility of coordinating the federal government’s widely criticized virus testing programs, which initially included a faulty product from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While he is not a formal member of the White House coronavirus task force, he is a regular presence at its meetings and often confers with Trump and Vice President Pence.

Although testing has increased since Giroir took over, some state officials continue to complain that the federal government lacks a coherent plan.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said on NPR last week that “the truth is that the federal government has really been more of a hindrance than a help in most of the testing issues. . . . We got very little help from the federal government.”

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said Wednesday on brother Chris Cuomo’s CNN show that he wasn’t familiar with Giroir. Asked by his brother about the man “in charge of the most important component” of dealing with the virus, the governor responded: “I'll take your word that he exists, but I wouldn't know otherwise.”

A Giroir spokeswoman said he has been on task-force calls to governors. A spokesman for the New York governor did not respond to a request for comment.

As for the complaints from some governors that they still lack testing capabilities, Giroir said in the interview that anyone who “needs a test” can get one.

“That does not mean at this point in time that anyone who wants a test gets a test,” Giroir said. “There may be tens of millions of people who want a test, but they really have no indication [of the virus] for that test.”

Giroir said testing must be increased to ensure that the virus does not resurge. He said the current capability of 3.5 million tests per month needs to increase to 6 million to 8 million for a “gradual reopening” of the economy to occur, and he said such capacity is growing quickly.

Separately, Giroir promised that “tens of millions” of serology tests will be available within a few weeks that enable people to determine whether they have had the virus.

Blunt advice

Publicly, Giroir has been in sync with Trump, appearing alongside him at briefings in the admiral’s uniform he is entitled to wear as director of the public health corps. In private, Giroir said, he has no hesitation about being blunt with the president.

“His scientific advisers, including me, provide him very frank advice every single day,” Giroir said. “Any thought that does not happen, or he does not listen, is blatantly false. . . . It’s one of the most productive working environments at a senior level I’ve been involved in.”

Giroir, born in Louisiana and educated at Harvard University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, began his career as a pediatrician and became chief medical officer at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas. He grew interested in how to develop new technologies, and in 2004 he joined the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where he oversaw efforts such as the development of a ventilator that could be carried onto battlefields.

He wanted to find new ways to fight deadly pandemics, whether a virus occurred naturally or as a weapon of war. He concluded that new technology was needed to quickly make massive amounts of vaccines. “I realized the challenges were not just biological but engineering,” Giroir said.

Giroir returned to Texas in 2008 and eventually became vice chancellor at Texas A&M University, vowing to transform the region into one of the world’s hubs for vaccine development. He pushed the idea of creating mobile labs that could produce vaccines where they were most needed, and promoted a facility that would enable a pharmaceutical partner to quickly produce millions of doses of vaccine for a crisis such as an influenza pandemic.

“My job is to facilitate transformational projects that benefit lots of people,” Giroir said at the time. “I would like to be part of something that can save millions of lives worldwide.”

He told the Houston Chronicle in 2010 that “If this works, we'll have a billion-dose-per-month vaccine facility in Texas, which would be by far the largest and most capable center in the world.”

In 2012, Giroir played a major role in obtaining a federal grant that enabled the university to become one of several U.S. centers that would be prepared to quickly produce vaccines in a pandemic. “Once it's implemented, it really will solve the pandemic crisis,” he said at the time.

The university partnered with GlaxoSmithKline, a leading vaccine manufacturer. In a 2013 news release, Giroir said the company’s cell-based vaccine program was “the most promising near term influenza vaccine technology” to improve upon the traditional methodology of using eggs.

When there was fear of an outbreak of Ebola virus cases in Texas, then-Gov. Rick Perry (R) in 2014 appointed Giroir as chairman of a task force overseeing an effort to fight the disease.

Heartbroken

In mid-2015, a new president, Michael Young, arrived at Texas A&M. Young asked some senior officials at the university to resign, while offering to keep them in their jobs for at least a year, Giroir told The Post. Giroir said he refused to sign the letter.

Giroir was summoned to a meeting at which he said he was told he had 30 minutes to resign or he would be fired. Declaring himself “heartbroken” over having failed to complete his mission, he resigned. Young, who is still university president, declined to comment.

Giroir, in response to questions about his ouster, sent The Post an editorial published at the time in the local newspaper, the Bryan Eagle. The editorial chastised Young for having forced out Giroir, saying Giroir had increased federal research grants to the university’s Health Science Center by 65 percent and was “treated badly” by the school.

Separately, the Eagle reported that the university said in a statement, “It is inaccurate and disingenuous at best to attribute growth in this area solely to Dr. Giroir.” The Eagle, which obtained Giroir’s evaluation, said that while Giroir had a grade of 4 or 5 for his management and related skills, on a scale in which 5 is the highest mark, he had a 2 or 3 in areas of “loyalty/commitment” and “team player.”

The vaccine manufacturing center was completed after Giroir’s departure, but his prediction that it would enable GlaxoSmithKline to produce a groundbreaking vaccine did not pan out. The company said in a statement that the “research underpinning the Texas A&M project did not prove fruitful,” leading federal authorities to halt funding.

The facility was acquired by a U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese company, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, which has agreed to respond promptly if there is a federal request to develop a vaccine.

John White, who as chairman of the Board of Regents recruited Giroir to the university, said in an interview, “Brett was the architect of all these wonderful things we had put in place.” Asked to assess Giroir’s impact, he said, “It is just difficult to sum it up because the journey continues. . . . Do I wish everything would have gone faster with more tangible results? Sure, but I’m not disappointed at all where it’s been and where it’s going.”

Giroir defended the projects. He said the Fujifilm facility is available to rapidly produce a vaccine if one is requested by the federal government, just as originally envisioned, and he said his work has laid the foundation for such work, possibly including a vaccine for covid-19.

Of his vaccine work in Texas, he said, “It’s not entirely responsible for where we are by any means. But the work has really led to our ability to get a vaccine up to scale potentially in a year or a year and a half instead of five or seven years.”

Giroir also noted that a separate facility he helped develop, which uses plant-based technology to produce vaccines, is working on a possible product for the coronavirus. “It may work, it may not work,” he said. “But if you want a billion doses in a short time, plant-based is the only way to get it done.”

New role

Giroir, after being ousted from Texas A&M, took a variety of positions, including chairing a commission that reviewed the health-care system at Veterans Affairs. With Trump’s election, Giroir found a new opportunity.

Trump nominated him in 2017 to be assistant secretary for health at HHS. The nomination languished for months as some Democrats questioned Giroir’s commitment to women’s health issues, but he was confirmed.

Trump named Giroir as acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in late 2019, a position he held for two months while a new leader awaited confirmation.

Until now, some of Giroir’s most prominent work in the administration revolved around fetal stem cell tissue research, which some scientists think could be needed to find a treatment for the coronavirus. Some conservatives have urged a ban on the use of fetal tissue.

Giroir said during a 2018 meeting at the National Institutes of Health that an alternative must be as reliable as fetal tissue. But HHS later announced restrictions on the ability of some researchers to get federal funding for fetal tissue research, saying the importance of “promoting the dignity of life from conception to natural death is one of the very top priorities of President Trump’s administration.” The announcement pleased Trump’s political advisers but dismayed scientists. Giroir’s views on the issue appear to put him at odds with White House policy.

“I think it’s very clear that we don’t have models that completely recapitulate what the fetal tissue does,” Giroir told The Post. “And I just mean this honestly, what I advise the president, or what happens, that’s executive privilege. And I think it was widely reported that this was the president’s decision on the way to go. This was a presidential decision. And he’s the president; he gets to make those decisions.”

No wonder Twitler likes him, he over promises and under delivers.

[GreyhoundFan]

A good op-ed from Jennifer Rubin: "The lying liars vs. competent governors"

Spoiler

President Trump oversees the response to a pandemic that has killed about 40,000 Americans and looks likely to soon overtake the nearly 60,000 U.S. casualties in the Vietnam War. His erratic behavior includes inciting Americans to violate lifesaving stay-at-home orders, denying he had early warnings of the pandemic threat, and vacillating between pretensions of "total" power and expecting governors to lead the fight against covid-19. It is no mystery why he sows chaos: He lacks the capacity to do his job.

Two types of responses to his behavior have emerged. There is the fawning braying of Republicans in Congress and the White House and among right-wing media (and the closely aligned what-aboutism that seeks to put all blame on China) that is itself deceitful. And then there are public officials who tell it like it is.

Vice President Pence has a particularly cloying and unconvincing way of defending Trump’s lies. He insisted Sunday on “Meet the Press” that the states have everything they need to test on a widespread scale and that Trump’s call to “liberate” Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia was meant to support(!) Democratic governors’ safe reopening of their states. On its face, this is preposterous. Testing 150,000 people a day means next to nothing in a country of nearly 330 million people. And Trump’s fawning over protesters who risk creating hot spots by congregating without masks (while the president also urges Virginians to defend the Second Amendment) amounts to encouragement to spread a deadly virus. By going on national television to reinforce Trump’s false narrative, Pence encourages his boss to double down on nasty rhetoric and do nothing to solve the country’s very real problem.

Meanwhile, there are governors, both Democratic and Republican, dealing with the consequences of Trump’s inaction and falsehoods. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) called Pence and Trump “delusional” on the topic. Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, was delightfully candid on Sunday:

Both Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan made clear that without federal intervention, states cannot find the materials and reagents to expand their testing capacity:

Moreover, Trump’s nonsense does not seem to be working. In the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 58 percent of Americans expressed worry the economy will reopen too soon, and only 32 percent are concerned it will not be reopened fast enough. Notably, “Only 36 percent of respondents in the poll say they generally trust what Trump has said when it comes to the coronavirus, while 52 percent say they don’t trust him.” Americans meanwhile give their own governors a 66 percent approval rating. Only 34 percent think the federal government has done enough on testing or on making other medical supplies available.

Fortunately, the bill negotiated by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (the only people in the federal government who appear capable of hammering out essential legislation) is slated to include some $30 billion for testing precisely because states cannot do this on their own. Appearing on CNN, Schumer explained:

We proposed three basic things: Money to go into both manufacturing and supply chains, to bolster them quickly. We’ve proposed that we make free testing far more widespread. If people avoid testing because they can’t afford it, that’s not good for the country. And third, we propose contact tracing. What we need here is the $30 billion and we need the focus from the president. The governors of our two states who are most impacted say they need federal help, they can’t do the testing on their own.

You talk to the business community, when Republican and Democratic senators were on with the president a few days ago, the number one call was for more testing and more federal involvement in the testing. . . . One of the best experts says we only have about a third of the tests we need.

Unfortunately, until the federal government mobilizes under the Defense Production Act, states will continue to scramble and bid up the price of testing materials, just as they did for ventilators.

In sum, Trump, Pence and their sycophants in right-wing media are not nearly as successful in bamboozling the public as many might fear. (Mainstream media might stop overhyping Trump’s success in rallying support with his daily press harangues and Twitter; Americans have seen right through him.) Americans know that if we reopen the economy abruptly and without widespread testing we risk many more deaths, and they know the feds must do more. Trump and Pence saying the opposite simply shows that they are lying, incompetent or both.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, #MoscowMitch doesn't care about people, who would have thought so? /sarcasm

 

[Ali]

41 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Gee, #MoscowMitch doesn't care about people, who would have thought so? /sarcasm

 

This is disgusting! Grocery workers are putting their lives at risk and getting yelled at all day by customers. Many are making less than they would on unemployment.

[GreyhoundFan]

When you lose Piers Morgan...

"Trump’s old friend Piers Morgan watches briefings ‘with mounting horror,' urges president to stop ‘self-aggrandizing’"

Spoiler

Piers Morgan, the outspoken host of “Good Morning Britain,” issued a personal plea to his old friend on Sunday, asking the president to stop “playing petty politics” with the coronavirus pandemic and to “stop making it about yourself.”

Appearing on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” with host Brian Stelter, the longtime Trump ally said he had been watching Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings “with mounting horror.” Trump, he said, couldn’t seem to stop blaming governors or attacking Democrats, and kept wasting time quarreling with reporters.

The whirlwind news conferences were becoming “almost like a rally to him — almost like what’s more important is winning the election in November,” Morgan said.

“No it’s not, Donald Trump. What is more important right now is saving American lives,” he said.

The British tabloid fixture, whose brash commentary has courted a fair share of outcry over the years, made sure the president saw his critical CNN interview by reaching out directly to him on Twitter, where he likely has a better chance of catching the president’s attention than most people in the world. Morgan is one of the few 47 people, or Trump properties, that the president follows on Twitter.

“Mr President @realDonaldTrump, you won’t want to watch this, but I hope you do,” Morgan wrote. “Please drop your angry, petty, disingenuous, blame-gaming, self-aggrandising daily briefing antics & start being a proper wartime president.”

Morgan is the latest critic of Trump’s briefings, which sometimes last 90 minutes or longer as Trump’s top doctors and coronavirus task force members sit in chairs waiting for a turn to speak. He has often berated reporters if they ask questions he doesn’t appear to like, sometimes calling their questions “nasty.” He has interrupted Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, to block him from answering a medical question about a drug Trump had been touting. He has played misleading, propaganda-like videos that praise his coronavirus response or attack the media.

His behavior has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, some of whom particularly spoke out after Trump claimed during one briefing that the presidency gave him “total” authority over states, or that coronavirus testing was a local responsibility.

Other Republicans expressed concern in a New York Times story earlier this month that Trump was hurting himself by constantly taking center stage instead of his medical experts. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a close Trump confidant, said the president “sometimes drowns out his own message,” while Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) said they were “going off the rails a little bit.”

The criticism did not appear to have any effect, as the president returned to the same behavior in the days that followed, including on Sunday, when he told CBS reporter Weijia Jiang to “lower your voice” and “just relax” after she asked a question he disliked.

But Trump’s relationship with Morgan is different from Republican politicians in that it goes back to his days as a reality TV star. Their friendship began when Morgan, following stints as an “America’s Got Talent” judge, won the seventh season of Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” show in 2008. Morgan supported Trump throughout his campaign for president, becoming the president’s first international TV interview after he took office. He has criticized the president’s positions on various issues in the past, including gun control and the travel ban, issuing pleas to the president to change course like he did on Stelter’s show Sunday.

So far none of that past criticism has crumbled their friendship, or appeared to have had much of an effect. But Morgan told Stelter on Sunday he did not “really care about the niceties about whether Donald Trump is going to be offended by what I’m saying.”

“He has to put the country before himself. He has to put Americans before electioneering,” Morgan said. “He has to remind himself every day, what can I do today to prevent more lives being killed? Not how can I score more petty points, and stand here for two hours … and try to have arguments with the media.”

Morgan appeared on Stelter’s show after attracting attention for his relentless “Good Morning Britain” interviews with public health officials and members of parliament in the U.K., demanding answers about shortcomings with a style some described as almost “uncomfortable” to watch.

He told Stelter that he saw a key similarity between Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in that their talents as populist politicians have not translated well amid the greatest global crisis since World War II. Trump, he said, needed to show empathy for the pain so many thousands of families are enduring, needed to present accurate information and to be calm and decisive, but “on almost every level of that, Donald Trump at the moment is failing the American people.”

“Donald Trump’s approval ratings are falling, and the reason for that — he needs to understand this —they’re falling because people don’t trust him,” he said. “They think he’s turning these briefings into self-serving rallies, and they don’t understand why he can’t just do the basics of crisis leadership."

According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday, 51 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus response while 46 percent approve, although the poll results show the same approval-rating figures at the same time last month.

Morgan, speaking to Trump directly on CNN, told the president that if he were concerned about winning the election, he would have to worry about saving Americans’ lives first, warning, “you will lose the election in November if you continue to make it about yourself.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Not for lack of trying... "Even Trump’s best lackey can’t defend him"

Spoiler

When Donald Trump chose Mike Pence as his running mate in 2016, the obvious political benefit was that Pence, a former governor and House member who is famously Christian, could boost evangelical and conservative turnout to help Republicans up and down the ballot. But for the egomaniacal Trump, Pence had another key qualification: “He says nice things about me."

Since being named to the ticket, Pence has repeatedly put his obsequiousness on display: Few on Team Trump are better at deploying up-is-down reasoning to spin news to Trump’s benefit. But during the vice president’s appearances on NBC’s and Fox News’s Sunday morning talk shows, it was clear that even Pence could not bootlick his way out of the lurch the president’s actions leave the rest of us in.

On Friday, Trump spoke out in support of protests against stay-at-home orders imposed by Democratic governors in Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia. It’s disturbing enough that the president would undermine the fight against the pandemic. Worse was his provocative call on Twitter to “LIBERATE” those states — and, in Virginia’s case, “save your great 2nd Amendment” — which caught the attention of far-right extremists. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) rightly observed Friday, “The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies — even while his own administration says the virus is real.”

Naturally, hosts on both NBC and Fox asked the vice president to explain the president’s comments. After all, as Fox host Chris Wallace pointed out, “they’re protesting your own guidelines to stop the spread.” On Fox, Pence focused on bragging about the White House coronavirus task force. When pressed, he assured viewers that “no one in America wants to reopen this country more than President Donald Trump” — a line he repeated on NBC. In both interviews, he then turned to touting guidelines that Trump issued Thursday for reopening states. Pence omitted that the guidance leaves key decisions up to governors, who Trump has said should call the shots on reopening. Both are in keeping with this president’s refusal to take responsibility for the pandemic crisis or a national response.

Stay-at-home orders and other measures across the country are exacting terrible tolls on the economy and Americans’ mental health. But they are saving lives. And as Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) stated bluntly on “Meet the Press” a few minutes after Pence’s interview, the only way to reopen is to “do it very, very carefully so we don’t get a lot of people killed.” A responsible president would acknowledge the costs of preventing viral spread but stand firm and stress its necessity. As DeWine said, “The only thing that I’ve asked our protests to do is to observe social distancing. … They were protesting against me yesterday, and that’s just fine.” Meanwhile, the president is stoking unrest and undercutting public health measures, at a potentially deadly cost.

The simple truth is that Pence dodged because the president’s actions were indefensible. But Pence can’t say that, both because the protests are being cheered by Fox News and like-minded outlets and because Pence wants to stay in the good graces of a president who values loyalty to him above all else. So long as conservative media and egomania mean more to the president than Americans’ lives, the rest of the country suffers.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The Dems are fighting against this. Of course the Rs are all for big business.

Rest of thread under spoiler:

Spoiler

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[clueliss]

We have protests in KC.  You read that right.  "several"  

 

[Maggie Mae]

43 minutes ago, clueliss said:

We have protests in KC.  You read that right.  "several"  

 

We have several ones as well. One is something about homeless people - the people protesting clearly don't understand what homeless means. One in Homer (where that show about jewel's family is filmed), so probably not too big of a turnout, and various popups around Anchorage that fizzle out like every protest ever. No one wants to be angry if it's nice out, and if it's cold, very few people want to be outside. Probably a benefit of living in a place that was basically already social distancing before Covid-19. 

If it goes through Memorial Day, though, people are gonna flip. Most of the summer events are cancelled or postponed, but memorial day is the day when everyone goes in groups to stand around fires outside. Usually 2-3 feet apart. 

[clueliss]

Oh and the reason it is several downtown in because there's another bunch further south at the country club plaza.  So they can't even protest in one bigger mob.  

[Maggie Mae]

I honestly think that these are just Trump rallies in disguise. There is some evidence that they are being influenced by Russia, as well. 

[Ozlsn]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The Dems are fighting against this. Of course the Rs are all for big business.

Rest of thread under spoiler:

  Hide contents

 

I still cannot believe that no eligibility criteria were attached to the program. 

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Yeah those three aren't going to work with the peasants or put themselves at risk. Unlike a large part of the European royalty they haven't grown up having a sense of duty and service instilled in them. 

2 hours ago, clueliss said:

Oh and the reason it is several downtown in because there's another bunch further south at the country club plaza.  So they can't even protest in one bigger mob.  

Ok, I'll be honest - in the unlikely event I protest something like this I'll be at the one nearest the bar.

[Smee]

Here in NSW, Australia, it was announced today that students will start to return to schools from May 11, beginning with a rostered attendance system where they go one day a week (I.e. different kids on different days). There will also be a meeting today to discuss lifting the ban on elective surgery. The government is paying close attention to what’s happening in Singapore and trying to avoid that, obviously, but it’s a balancing act to figure out the whats and whens.

Yesterday, Australia saw the lowest number of new cases confirmed since early March, with 13. Today we’re up at 19 again, spread across 3 states, with the 5 remaining states and territories all reporting 0. No new deaths, and 415 new recoveries.

So we’re ready to consider a slow and careful approach to re-opening. America is not.

[GreyhoundFan]

Why we need more women in charge: "Female world leaders hailed as voices of reason amid the coronavirus chaos"

Spoiler

Silveria Jacobs is not messing around.

When coronavirus cases started increasing in the Caribbean nation of Sint Maarten, the 51-year-old prime minister delivered blunt instructions.

“Simply. Stop. Moving,” Jacobs said in a video address. “If you do not have the type of bread you like in your house, eat crackers. If you do not have bread, eat cereal, eat oats, sardines.”

The April 1 speech, in which Jacobs advised citizens to prepare as though a hurricane were on its way but not to hoard toilet paper, went viral, propelling the previously little-known leader to Internet stardom over her no-nonsense approach to the crisis.

Jacobs is one of several female world leaders who have won recognition as voices of reason amid the coronavirus pandemic. They have attracted praise for effective messaging and decisive action, in stark contrast to the bombastic approaches of several of the world’s most prominent male leaders — including some who face criticism for early fumbles that fueled the spread of the virus.

“We might think of this as a halo effect on some women leaders,” said Jennifer Curtin, director of the Public Policy Institute at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Many women leaders have indeed been successful in controlling the spread of the coronavirus while also maintaining calm. Their successes have been amplified in part “because we see … a couple of hyper masculine leaders responding in a very aggressive way,” Curtin said.

Here are examples of how elected female leaders around the globe have responded to outbreaks of the coronavirus in their countries.

New Zealand

When it comes to saving lives and flattening the curve, few world leaders have attracted as much positive attention as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who took office in October 2017.

Ardern has a history of bold responses to tragedy. Last year, when New Zealand was rocked by attacks on two mosques in Christchurch that claimed 51 lives, Ardern pledged to cover funeral costs for victims of the country’s worst terrorist attack, launched outreach to the Muslim community and pushed through changes to the country’s gun laws.

Barely a year later, facing the threat of covid-19, Ardern shut the country’s borders swiftly and prepared citizens for protracted measures.

Her messaging left no room for confusion. “To be absolutely clear, we are now asking all New Zealanders who are outside essential services to stay at home and to stop all interaction with others outside of those in your household,” she said.

Ardern’s clampdown appears to be working, with fewer than 1,500 confirmed cases and 12 confirmed deaths reported in the country. She has held regular news briefings alongside top health officials but also pursued a relatable approach, streaming videos of herself at home on social media and telling children that she counts the tooth fairy and Easter Bunny as “essential workers.” Last week, Ardern announced she and her cabinet would take 20 percent pay cuts for six months.

She often emphasizes empathy in her public remarks, demonstrating, Curtin said, one “can actually lead with both resolve and kindness.”

Norway

After weeks of lockdown, Norway’s infection rate has slowed so much the country has introduced plans to loosen restrictions on certain businesses and school closures.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Sweden, where fewer restrictions were put in place, cases spiked.

In an interview with CNN, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg credited an early lockdown and extensive monitoring for her country’s relative success. She said she is allowing scientists to take the lead on the medical response.

She has received praise for a style of communication that extends beyond her scientific approach. In two news conferences in the past month, she shared messages meant for young people.

“It’s okay to be scared,” she said soon after schools shut down. She said she missed hugging her friends.

“We think children should feel they are taken seriously in a crisis like this,” Solberg told CNN.

Iceland

Around the world, testing shortages have left sick patients in limbo and disrupted official responses to the coronavirus outbreak, making it more difficult for health workers to identify and isolate infected people. But in Iceland, anyone who wants a test can get one.

The unusual approach is the result of a collaboration between the government, led by Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, and deCODE Genetics, a Reykjavik-based biotechnology company offering free tests. People interested in being tested do not need to demonstrate that they have been exposed to a known case of the virus or have symptoms. The joint initiative has allowed nearly 43,000 people to be tested — or roughly 11.7 percent of the island’s population.

Iceland also launched an intensive contact tracing initiative that helped quickly isolate people who may have been exposed to the virus. Although social distancing restrictions have been put in place, the widespread testing and early containment measures provided Icelandic officials with key data that has allowed them to keep restrictions somewhat looser than leaders in some other countries. Officials announced last week restrictions will be lifted incrementally beginning May 4.

Germany

Last month, as the coronavirus spread rapidly across Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a rare televised speech in which she warned Germans that the outbreak poses the largest challenge since the Second World War.

“I’m absolutely sure we will overcome this crisis,” she said. “But how many casualties will there be? How many loved ones will we lose?”

Constanze Stelzenmuller, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Merkel’s remarks were unlike other public addresses she had given during her more than 14-year tenure as chancellor. “It was very direct, it was very straightforward, down to earth, empathetic and personal,” she said.

Every death, Merkel said, is “a father or grandfather, a mother or grandmother, a partner.

“It’s people,” she said. “And we are a community in which every life and every person counts.”

The address marked a turning point in Merkel’s leadership role in the crisis after early critiques that she hadn’t acted quickly enough. Germany has confirmed more than 145,000 cases of the virus and around 4,642 deaths — far fewer than the number of deaths confirmed in Italy and Spain. Experts say widespread testing has helped officials track suspected cases more easily than in other countries.

Merkel extended the country’s lockdown this month but also eased some restrictions on certain businesses and said schools will largely reopen in May.

Merkel, who has said she will not seek reelection next year, typically takes a more stoic tone. But many welcomed her change of pace in the face of such an unusual crisis.

“She was appealing to people’s sense of responsibility and their ability as citizens to assess the risk and then do the right thing,” Stelzenmuller said. “It seems clear to me that she decided that this was an exceptional emergency and therefore required a different approach.”

Taiwan

As the coronavirus spread rapidly in China’s Hubei province, the initial epicenter of the pandemic, early this year, the self-governing island of Taiwan recognized the risk the looming pandemic could pose. Travel to the island from China is common, with million of people traveling between the two each year.

The Taiwanese government, led by President Tsai Ing-wen and her vice president, Chen Chien-Jen, an epidemiologist, took assertive early measures to try to limit the spread of the virus, restricting many visitors and implementing new mandatory health checks.

Months later, the island of around 23 million people is reaping the benefits — reporting fewer than 500 confirmed cases and six deaths.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Chen credited lessons learned from the 2003 SARS outbreak in helping the island prepare for and limit its exposure to this year’s outbreak.

Taiwan’s response to the coronavirus has not been without controversy. Taiwan has repeatedly criticized China’s response, and earlier this month, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused Taiwan of participating in a racist smear campaign against him. Taiwan demanded an apology and called the accusations baseless.

 

[Howl]

5 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

I honestly think that these are just Trump rallies in disguise. There is some evidence that they are being influenced by Russia, as well. 

Astroturfing.  

 

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, Smee said:

Here in NSW, Australia, it was announced today that students will start to return to schools from May 11,

OMG please let that happen here too!! And not just because I start full time again on that day, and I really don't think I am going to manage the necessary concentration if I'm trying to do distance ed at the same time! 

2 hours ago, Smee said:

So we’re ready to consider a slow and careful approach to re-opening. America is not.

Slow and careful being the key words here. We will undoubtedly have a second wave, but it should be smaller and more manageable (touch wood). 

Exposing America's faultlines - a really angry article from The Atlantic looking at what the pandemic has shown about the divisions in the US.

"The virus should have united Americans against a common threat. With different leadership, it might have. Instead, even as it spread from blue to red areas, attitudes broke down along familiar partisan lines. The virus also should have been a great leveler. You don’t have to be in the military or in debt to be a target—you just have to be human."

[Ozlsn]

Australian (ABC) followed New York paramedics on Good Friday.

It's A good look at the frontline, and the pressures they're under.

[GreyhoundFan]

Stephen Miller rears his ugly head again: "Trump says he will issue order to suspend immigration during coronavirus crisis, closing off the United States to a new extreme"

Spoiler

President Trump announced in a tweet late Monday night that he plans to suspend immigration to the United States, a move he said is needed to safeguard American jobs and defend the country from coronavirus pandemic, which he called “the Invisible Enemy.”

“In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!,” the president wrote, announcing the plan at 10:06 p.m.

Trump, who is running for reelection on his immigration record and his effort to build a wall on the Mexico border, has long been frustrated with the limits on his ability to seal off the United States by decree. An executive order suspending all immigration to the country would take the president’s impulses to an untested extreme.

Two White House officials said an executive order is being drafted and that Trump could sign it as soon as Tuesday. The order, which was discussed among senior staff members Monday, would suspend nearly all immigration under the rationale of preventing the spread of infection by foreigners arriving from abroad.

The United States currently has more confirmed coronavirus cases, by far, than any other country, with more than 775,000; the next highest country is Spain, with 200,000 cases. The United States also has far more confirmed virus-related deaths — more than 42,000 — than any other nation; Italy has more than 24,000 deaths and Spain just fewer than 21,000.

It remains unclear what exceptions Trump could include in such a sweeping immigration order, or if would-be immigrants could reach the United States by demonstrating they are free of the virus. The White House officials said they thought the order would not be in place long-term.

The president’s announcement caught some senior Department of Homeland Security officials off guard, and the agency did not respond to questions and requests to explain Trump’s plan late Monday.

The United States already has placed broad restrictions on travel from Europe, China and other pandemic hot spots, while implementing strict controls at the country’s land borders. International air travel has plummeted.

Halting immigration to the United States could affect hundreds of thousands of visa holders and other would-be green card recipients who are planning and preparing to come to the United States at any given time. Most of them are the family members of Americans.

For Trump’s executive order to work, it would have to direct the State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to immediately stop the issuance of immigration visas. Such a move appears to have no modern precedent and would potentially leave the fiancees, children and other close relatives of U.S. citizens in limbo.

The State Department issued about 460,000 immigration visas last year, and USCIS processed nearly 580,000 green card approvals for foreigners who applied for permanent residency, the latest U.S. statistics show.

Alex Nowrasteh, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said that the president likely does have the authority to issue such an order during a time of crisis.

Nowrasteh said there are at least two legal justifications for Trump to close the border to all immigration: Title 42 of the U.S. Code enables the president to halt immigration for health reasons, while a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding his travel ban gives him legal precedent.

If such an order were in fact signed, it would be unprecedented in American history, Nowrasteh said. During the height of the 1918 flu pandemic, the United States allowed more than 110,000 immigrants to enter the country.

And during World War II, the United States accepted more than 170,000 immigrants with green cards and more than 227,000 temporary agricultural workers, mostly from Mexico, on the bracero guest worker visa program.

The president already has largely halted most forms of immigration into the United States, Nowrasteh said. This latest move continues his restrictionist immigration policies and takes them to a new level, using the pandemic as the reasoning.

On March 18, the State Department canceled most routine immigrant and nonimmigrant visa appointments at its offices overseas, effectively shutting down almost all new kinds of travel into the United States. The State Department also stopped all processing for refugee resettlement.

Later that week, however, authorities resumed processing H-2A visas for seasonal guest workers. The country's agricultural laborers have been officially declared “essential workers,” including hundreds of thousands of people who enter the country under that temporary visa.

Nowrasteh said he was surprised that it took Trump so long to use the pandemic and the cause of public health as justification to achieve one of his highest policy priorities.

“The president has been opposed to legal immigration for his entire administration,” he said. “This is an opportunity to close it down entirely, and this is about as legitimate as you can get in terms of a broad justification for doing so.”

Trump already has cited the health emergency to enact the kind of enforcement measures at the U.S. border with Mexico he has long extolled, moves that have essentially closed the border to asylum seekers and waved off anti-trafficking protections for underage migrants. During the past few weeks of the coronavirus crisis, U.S. border authorities have expelled 10,000 border crossers in an average of just a little more than an hour and a half each, which has effectively emptied out U.S. Border Patrol holding facilities of detainees.

U.S. border authorities say the measures are in place to help federal agents, health-care workers and the public by preventing potentially infected migrants from crossing into the United States, while minimizing the population of detainees in U.S. immigration jails.

I think it's despicable to use a pandemic as an excuse to push forward a policy that is just a dog whistle to the alt-right.

[GreyhoundFan]

Governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) has ordered 500K tests from South Korea. Not surprisingly, Twitler got his panties in a bunch. "Trump targets Hogan in attempt to flip testing criticism back on governors"

Spoiler

President Donald Trump sought to turn criticism about federal coronavirus testing availability back on governors Monday evening, claiming some didn’t “understand” what they were being told by administration officials and assuring that there was plenty of capacity ready to be used.

The move came after Vice President Mike Pence led a multi-hour call with the governors earlier in the day to address the building frustration over the availability of testing kits and processing capacity. On the call, Pence outlined testing capacity and provided each state’s governor with a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of labs with additional testing capacity.

Where Pence sought to reassure, Trump once again sought to deflect blame.

During his daily press briefing, the President took swipes at two governors — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat.

He said Pritzker “did not understand his capacity (to test), not simply ask the federal government to provide unlimited support.”

Trump also said Hogan “didn’t understand too much about what was going on,” later asserting that the governor did not need to secure coronavirus tests from South Korea. Hogan had touted the 500,000 tests he succeeded in procuring in part thanks to his wife’s South Korean roots at his own news conference earlier Monday.

But Trump told reporters: “The governor of Maryland could have called Mike Pence, could have saved a lot of money … I don’t think he needed to go to South Korea. I think he needed to get a little knowledge would’ve been helpful.”

Hogan responded to Trump’s Monday evening comment, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room”: “I’m not sure what the President is referring to. I have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on and I appreciated the information that was provided by his team.”

“I don’t want to get into criticizing back and forth, Wolf. The President was not on the call,” Hogan added.

Trump did praise Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo regarding New York’s testing capacity during the press briefing, noting that Cuomo will be traveling to Washington on Tuesday for an Oval Office meeting.

Pence’s call

The vice president’s call with the country’s governors, included several officials on the White House coronavirus task forces and focused testing, according to multiple sources familiar with the call. One state official said it was the first time the testing issue had been laid out in such detail from a top official. The state official said the administration’s message was that they were working to get the states what they need — and that “it’s a partnership” between the federal and state governments.

At the same time, Trump, who was not on the call, insisted that the responsibility for coronavirus testing belonged primarily to the states.

“Last month all you heard from the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats was, ‘Ventilators, Ventilators, Ventilators.’ They screamed it loud & clear, & thought they had us cold, even though it was the State’s task. But everyone got their V’s, with many to spare. Now they scream (…) ‘Testing, Testing, Testing,’ again playing a very dangerous political game,” Trump tweeted while the call was happening.

Maryland’s Hogan had said Sunday that a lack of testing is the No. 1 problem in America and “has been since the beginning of the crisis.”

“The administration, I think, is trying to ramp up testing. They are doing some things with respect to private labs,” Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But to try and push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing — somehow we aren’t doing our job — is just absolutely false.”

According to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, the challenge many state leaders on the call expressed was getting “increased testing capacity.” Pennsylvania needs the reagents and test kits, and requests for similar testing supplies, he said, was the “general cry” from the other governors.

“We all expressed that hope today that we could move toward that and the vice president assured us that the federal government was moving as quickly as possible toward that end,” he added.

Pence said Monday’s call with governors was “very productive.”

“We heard again, not only the fact that we are making progress in slowing the spread. We’re seeing very encouraging signs even in hotspots around the country their cases are leveling and in some cases going down,” Pence said Monday afternoon at FEMA Headquarters following the call.

Questions remain

Though the call was not described by sources as contentious, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, did bring up recent protests in her state and asked for a stronger response from the federal government.

According to Whitmer’s office, she “called on the federal government to reiterate the need to stay home after a growing number of protests in states with Republican and Democratic governors threatened to spread the virus even further.”

Governors have been pleading for federal testing help for more than a month, as a shortage of testing supplies and a backlog in private labs made it nearly impossible for the states to reach the level of testing needed to reduce social distancing guidelines. Last week, Trump grew frustrated after a slew of phone calls on reopening the economy grew repetitive, with business leaders, governors and lawmakers all stressing the need for more testing to reopen the economy.

This week, White House aides, under the direction of the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are trying to determine the best way to deal with the testing supply chain to get the needed elements to the states, according to a source familiar with the issue.

One hurdle has been figuring out how to accelerate the production of the testing supplies. The administration recently said it would employ the Defense Production Act to provide federal funding to a company to produce more testing swabs. But accelerating production for the reagents used for tests may pose a new challenge, given that they’re often manufactured overseas and are therefore not subject to the act.

While the President attempted to paint states’ requests for help with testing as a partisan issue, it hasn’t just been Democrats who have asked for federal assistance with testing. Governors on both sides of the aisle have said that without greater testing capabilities, businesses in their states will not be able to reopen.

In addition to Maryland’s Hogan, GOP Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, also underscored the importance of increased coronavirus testing, tweeting after Monday’s call: “This morning, I spoke with @VP and our nation’s governors regarding expanded testing capacity & Tennessee’s aggressive push to test outside of traditional COVID-19 symptoms. Ramping up our testing & health care capacity is a critical step to get Tennesseans back to work safely.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is insane. A hospital was forced to hide PPE so the feds wouldn't take it forcibly:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

It's disgusting how much Twitler shows the love to FL. If he didn't need FL to win re-election, DeSantis wouldn't get his prizes:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a great tweet from Larry Hogan and I'm sure it won't un-bunch Twitler's panties.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't stand Barr.

So many of these repugs are all about state's rights until the states do something that their lord and master, King Dumbass of Orange, doesn't like.

[GreyhoundFan]

Middleburg is a small town about 30 minutes from me. "Middleburg purchases thousands of restaurant vouchers for residents"

Spoiler

Middleburg purchased thousands of restaurant vouchers from town restaurants and has distributed them to residents to spend as the Virginia town deals with the coronavirus pandemic.

Middleburg bought 500 vouchers, worth $20 each, from each of the 13 restaurants participating. They are good to use through the end of April.

The vouchers will provide each restaurant with up to $10,000.

Those restaurants meet certain criteria, including serving at least two meal periods a day —breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner — must be open at least four days a week and remain open through April 30.

Both businesses and residents in Middleburg are getting a break on utilities as well.

The town extended a grace period on utility bill payments for up to 60 days, and is providing a $200 credit on that utility bill for every business and residential customer.

The cost to the town of Middleburg for both the restaurant vouchers and the utility credits is $182,000.

“We’ve worked hard over the last several years to build a substantial rainy-day fund in Middleburg,” Mayor Trowbridge Littleton said.

“The goal with this fund was that, in a time of true hardship, we would be in a position to help our residents and businesses in a meaningful way, which is exactly what we are now doing.”

Middleburg is using town funds to support other retail businesses through a program to reimburse participating businesses for 50% of any discount off the retail price of merchandise or services sold to customers. The limit on the cash reimbursement is $3,750 per business.

The economic stimulus is significant for Middleburg, which has an annual municipal budget of just $3 million.