Read on Twitter
Here's a thread documenting the epic incompetence of the Trump administration + the GOP in dealing with the pandemic. Some Democratic politicos deserve severe critiques also (Cuomo and DeBlasio being the poster children there) but a national problem requires a national response.
Remember, that for pandemics as well as for climate change, "Speed trumps perfection". Stop obsessing about "optimality". There is nothing optimal about responding to a pandemic or to climate change, just move as fast as you can. https://twitter.com/JIMrichards1010/status/1239140710558969857?s=20
Hey look, the GOP (not Trump) hamstrung the Obama Administration's effort to build up strategic reserves to fight pandemics going as far back as 2011: https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/heres-how-gop-attacks-on-obama-left-the-national-emergency-medical-stockpile-unprepared-for-coronavirus/
Hey look, there was a pandemic response plan developed by national security officials in 2016, which Trump and the GOP ignored: https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1242966350357770242?s=20
Hey look, Trump and the GOP disbanded the pandemic response unit in 2018: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/
Hey look, @AtomicAnalyst called it on May 10, 2018: https://twitter.com/AtomicAnalyst/status/994696175575068672?s=20
Hey look, there was a ten-year old US pandemic early-response team ON THE GROUND IN CHINA. Trump fired them all two months before the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/newsletter/2020-04-03/pandemic-prediction-program-ended-newsletter-todays-headlines
Hey look, Trump and the GOP waited 8 weeks after the first confirmed case to do anything, squandering precious time: https://twitter.com/NathanLerner/status/1239683455077756929?s=20
Hey look, in January 2020, a US manufacturer said they could produce millions of N95 masks, they just needed a guaranteed order so they could get their factory going. The Trump Administration inexplicably refused. https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-response-trump/2020/5/10/21253689/covid-19-masks-trump-white-house-prestige-ameritech
Hey look, the Trump administration inexplicably nixed a plan to send out lots of masks for free to every US household. This would have saved tens of thousands of lives for sure. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-face-masks-free-usps-cdc-redfield-b485544.html
Hey look, the Trump administration repeatedly blocked efforts to require masks on airplanes, airports, and other transit modes. https://twitter.com/davidshepardson/status/1349805492139401222?s=20
Hey look, the US is #43 in the world in gene sequencing the virus. What? https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/23/us-leads-world-coronavirus-cases-ranks-43rd-sequencing-check-variants/
Hey look, here's a GOP governor criticizing Trump for failing to ramp up coronavirus testing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/16/larry-hogan-trump-coronavirus/?arc404=true
Hey look, from Day 1 the Trump administration hollowed out HHS, thereby sabotaging future pandemic response. https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1344637311179489282?s=20
Hey look, here's a Republican who did the right thing. @Schwarzenegger set up a supply reserve for pandemic supplies, which was stopped by Democrat Jerry Brown (bad move, Jerry). https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/31/schwarzenegger-shortsighted-for-california-to-defund-pandemic-stockpile-he-built-1269954
But of course, @Schwarzenegger is a different kind of Republican, of which there are very few, nowadays. https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1348249481284874240?s=20
Mike DeWine of Ohio started strong, but things have gone awry more recently, as they have in much of the country in the absence of a competent national response. https://twitter.com/jgkoomey/status/1245521143450095617?s=20
Hey look, in October 2020, documentation of 130,000 to 210,000 avoidable US deaths from COVID 19. https://ncdp.columbia.edu/custom-content/uploads/2020/10/Avoidable-COVID-19-Deaths-US-NCDP.pdf
Now we're up to more than half a million deaths in the US from COVID-19, most of them avoidable. https://twitter.com/jgkoomey/status/1349778589575749634?s=20
Please, please, please, don't "both sides" this. There have been notable failures by Democrats (Cuomo, DeBlasio, Jerry Brown) but the responsibility for the national failures is 100% with Trump and the GOP. https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1272098703273271300?s=20
An article in The BMJ (a journal owned by the British Medical Association) sums it up here: https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1643
Summary: The responsibility for the disastrous US national response to coronavirus is 100% with Trump and the GOP./fin
