“A federal crackdown on professors’ undisclosed outside activities is achieving what China has long struggled to do: spur Chinese scientists to return home. In this crisis, it’s costing the U.S. intellectual firepower.”
Category: Heckuva job Trumpy
I always treated coronavirus very seriously, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia …
Amazing foresight from the Nostradamus of our time! Heckuva job, Trumpy!
Some examples of his incredible powers of prediction:
Jan. 22, asked on CNBC whether he was concerned about coronavirus becoming a global pandemic: “No, not at all. We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Jan. 30: “We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully.”
Feb. 19: “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.”
Feb 23: “Very much under control. We had 12, at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better.”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock market starting to look very good to me.”
February 26: “It’s going very substantially down, not up … 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
Also Feb 26: “We’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.”
Feb 27: Speaking of Democrats, Trump called his alleged mishandling of the coronavirus “their new hoax.”
March 2: “We’re talking about a much smaller range” of covid-19 deaths than from the flu.
March 4 to Hannity: “It’s very mild”
March 6: “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.”
March 9: “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, ‘The risk is low to the average American.'”
March 10: “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
but this seems idiotic to me.
This is crazy but then again FBI and FOIA is a disastrous combo
FBI will no longer accept FOIA requests electronically because of #coronavirus. Instead, the bureau wants requesters to leave their homes and mail the request in. pic.twitter.com/SFA6C1xdPP
— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) March 18, 2020
So, don’t use the internet. Instead handle a piece of paper and an envelope and a stamp, maybe licking things as needed, and send all that to us. Don’t forget to leave your home to get that mailed!
“The Trump administration says Americans returning from coronavirus hot spots are being screened for symptoms. Some travelers say that is not happening.”
Gee, I wonder how he chose the hospitality industry. I wonder if anyone famous is in the hotel business.
Asked what it was like to take the test, Trump says, "Not, not uh – something I want to do everyday…you know, it's a little bit of a — it's a little bit of — good doctors in the White House, but it's a test. It's a test. It's a medical test. Nothing pleasant about it."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 16, 2020
Google really is developing a nationwide site dedicate to coronavirus
UPDATE:
Google announced it “is partnering with the U.S. government in developing a nationwide website.” Google’s latest announcement says the site is in addition to what Verily is doing, which is much more limited, in that only people in the San Francisco Bay area would be able to do risk assessments and get scheduled for testing.
HOWEVER:
The site is not what President Trump described. It is not a screening site which will direct people to nearby testing if appropriate. It is just a general info site. Trump conflated the Verily site (which is intended to do what he claims, but was originally only intended for health care workers in the SF area) and the upcoming Google site (which is nationwide, but is just general info and helpful tips).
Trump:
“I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website, it’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.”
“We’re partnering with the U.S. government in developing a website dedicated to COVID-19 education, prevention, and local resources nationwide. This includes best practices on prevention, links to authoritative information from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and helpful tips and tools from Google for individuals, teachers and businesses. We’ll be rolling out an initial version of the website late Monday, March 16, and we’ll continue to enhance and update it with more resources on an ongoing basis.”
Having noted that, I’ll add that the imaginary thing Trump described is a very good idea and somebody SHOULD develop it – respond to a questionaire, and it tells you the next step to take in your zip code. Once the groundwork is laid, it could be used for future diseases as well.
PREVIOUS:
“Google’s not making a nationwide coronavirus testing website. And the company had no idea the president would say it was.”
As Google’s sister company, Verily, understood it, the site was to be designed primarily for health care workers, not the general public, and would work at first only in the San Francisco area.
“People will be looking for a site that tells them where to get tested; unless they live in a handful of zip codes, it will be useless to them for the foreseeable future.”
These guys lie when there’s no need to, and they can’t even make up believable lies.
Everything Trump said is on tape. Trump said, “These prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things as we get approval.” As he said that, stock futures were plummeting.
This was not a matter of people misinterpreting what he said. What he said was completely clear and people interpreted the meaning of his words correctly. The problem was that the cargo ban was never an accurate statement of his plan. There was no such plan, so the administration had to issue an immediate correction.
So what happened? What he said was not what was in his prepared speech. Trump is not a proficient reader. He simply fucked up and read the speech wrong. According to the Wall Street Journal, the draft of the speech said, the prohibitions “will not apply” to trade and cargo, rather than they “will not only apply.”
The crazy thing about this is that it’s a “who cares?” issue. Mnuchin could simply have told the truth and all would be soon forgotten. Because of the tweeted correction, we all knew that Trump must have misread the speech, so I would not be typing now if Mnuchin had told the truth, because it would not be news. Everyone makes mistakes. On the other hand, Mnuchin’s lie just causes us to focus on Trump’s mistake.
Furthermore, I think all of these guys need to re-read the story about the boy who cried “wolf.” If they just keep lying about everything, we’re not going to believe them when they decide to accurately convey something important.
“The acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, on Tuesday doubled down on proposed cuts to health services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), despite the coronavirus outbreak.”
Well, he has a point, but even within that obvious fact there are deceptions.
In the immortal and oft-misquoted words of Harry Truman, “The Buck Stops Somewhere Else.”
.@Yamiche: Why did you shut down the pandemic office in the White House
Trump first calls it a “nasty question.” Then says someone else shut it down. “I don’t know anything about it.”
— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) March 13, 2020
I don’t know why he would admit that he has no clue what his subordinates are doing, particularly because it’s not true:
Not true, @realDonaldTrump. I wrote to you more than 600 days ago demanding answers after you fired the entire White House pandemic team. https://t.co/ICbHOkyeyY pic.twitter.com/71OF9gKA3N
— Sherrod Brown (@SenSherrodBrown) March 13, 2020
Thanks to a good summary in The Atlantic, here is a quick recap of what the stable genius has done so far in response to Corona.
- He claimed that it was contained in America when it was actually spreading.
- He claimed that we had “shut it down” when we had not.
- He claimed that testing was available when it wasn’t.
- He claimed that the coronavirus will one day disappear “like a miracle.”
- He claimed that a vaccine would be available in months; Fauci says it will not be available for a year or more.
- He blamed the Obama administration for impeding coronavirus testing.
- He stated that the coronavirus first hit the United States later than it actually did. (He said that it was three weeks prior to the point at which he spoke; the actual figure was twice that.)
- He claimed that the number of cases in Italy was getting “much better” when it was getting much worse.
- In one of the more stunning statements an American president has ever made, Trump admitted that his preference was to keep a cruise ship off the California coast rather than allowing it to dock, because he wanted to keep the number of reported cases of the coronavirus artificially low. “I like the numbers,” Trump said. “I would rather have the numbers stay where they are. But if they want to take them off, they’ll take them off. But if that happens, all of a sudden your 240 [cases] is obviously going to be a much higher number, and probably the 11 [deaths] will be a higher number too.”
- He continues shaking hands and ignores the concept of “social distance.”
- He refuses to set an example by getting tested.
- In his Oval Office address that was meant to reassure the nation and the markets, he decided to ad-lib the teleprompter speech and misstated his administration’s own policies about incoming cargo, which had to be corrected. Investors heard that and, since they assumed a cessation of trade, stock futures plunged wildly while the president was still speaking.
- He called for Americans to “unify together as one nation and one family,” despite having referred to Washington Governor Jay Inslee as a “snake” days before the speech and attacking Democrats the morning after it.
And that’s only a partial list of his antics since the crisis began. It does not include the critical government entities he eliminated before the disease was a thing.
Coronavirus mapped and quantified: