It has been exactly 11 months since the first COVID-19 case appeared in the United States on January 20. While wang envied the normal life of his friends in China, he experienced the peak of the third wave of the epidemic in the United States. On December 18th the number of confirmed cases reached 251,000 in America and 17.6m in the country.
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As the world’s largest superpower with the most advanced medical hardware and resources, the sparsely populated US has been fighting against COVID-19 for 11 months, but the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths is still soaring. The Washington Post published a special report today that interviewed 48 senior officials, government medical experts, outside presidential advisers and others. Finally, a glimpse into the Trump administration’s internal decision-making on the COVID-19 response. It turned out that Trump had been warned in March that he might lose the presidency because of the new crown, and that The Us cotton-garment manufacturers were preparing to produce 650 million face masks and distribute them to all Americans in March, only to miss an action that would have saved the country.
Trump was warned in March that he might lose the election because of the new crown
On His Return to Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, March 7, Trump had a guest to visit him: Fox host Tucker Carlson, who had come not to gossip but with an urgent task: to convey to Trump the seriousness of the irus threat from novel Coronavirus.
Carlson (far right) at Mar-a-Lago
Carson warned Trump: “Novel Coronavirus is true, sooner or later those we know around us will get infected, and America may have missed the point of controlling a new crown. It could be really bad! You could lose an election because of this virus.” But Trump’s answer: Novel Coronavirus is not as deadly as it has been written.
On the day Carlson met Trump, a new crown was looming. On the night of March 7, Trump hosted a dinner for visiting Brazilian President Bolsonaro at Mar-a-Lago.
During the dinner, a number of people tested positive for the coronavirus. The first was Fabio Wajngarten, bolsonaro’s spokesman, the second was Nestor Forster, Brazil’s interim representative to the United States, and the mayor of Miami, who was in contact with the Brazilian delegation, was also infected.
Fabio Wajngarten a right
Trump’s biggest mistake
On January 29, I still remember, the routine coronavebriefings at the U.S. Department of health and the CENTERS for Disease Control and Prevention were interrupted when Trump announced the formation of a coronave12 team headed by Vice President Mike Pence, and all of the departments’ speeches had to be coordinated with the White House. That means less say for Health Secretary Azar and CDC Director Rod Field. A senior administration official said that, in retrospect, the creation of the new White House team was Trump’s biggest political miscalculation. If the fight fails, the White House will have to shoulder all the responsibilities that would otherwise be reserved for the Department of Health and related agencies.
Since then, the COVID-19 press conference has moved from the Health department to the White House, where Pence brings all the COVID-19 team’s top officials to the press conference every evening at 5 or 6 p.m.
Pence will begin his press conference by updating everyone with daily data, and then fauci and other health officials will explain the response. But a few days later, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Mart Short, advised him not to go into such detail about the number of infections and deaths, though Mr. Pence insisted that he had an obligation to share the facts with the public.
But a few weeks later, Mr. Trump directly replaced Mr. Pence, conducting his own daily press conference. One is that the epidemic is getting worse in the US, and the other is that Mr Trump finds it helpful to boost his approval ratings.
Trump’s press conference lasted more than a month, with the shortest time being more than an hour and the longest more than two hours. While the press conference gave Trump more exposure, it also brought annoyance as the media began to accuse him of repeatedly releasing false or exaggerated information, and the networks on CNN and MSNBC simply cut off the live broadcast. On April 24, Trump broke the record for the shortest press conference: 25 minutes. The next day it was cancelled.
Trump tweeted to explain why there was no press conference that day: The White House press conference is not worth his time and energy! Because the incompetent media will only ask hostile questions and then refuse to report the truth and accurate facts. They get ratings, but the American people get nothing but fake news.
But here’s what Mr. Trump’s critics say: He held a lengthy news conference and then spoke for an hour or two about the exact opposite of what other U.S. government officials said that day.
The US missed out on “everyone wearing a mask”
Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, made decisions based not on how to mitigate the epidemic but on how to limit the political damage to Mr. Pence. Short’s decision directly contributed to the outbreak’s worsening in the United States.
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Robert Kadlec, the U.S. Department of Health’s assistant secretary for disaster response, called Jerry Cook, an executive at quilt-clothing giant Hanes, March 13 to discuss making enough cotton masks for all American families. Mr Cook then convened other underwear manufacturers to discuss how to shift the focus of their business and produce 650m three-layer cotton masks, with a packet of five for each household, designed with the US Department of Health’s logo and accompanied by fungicides.
A FEMA command team from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) unanimously approved the plan. But when Kadleck’s boss, U.S. Health Secretary Azar, made the proposal at a White House working group meeting in March, there was strong opposition. First, because the new champions league team officials card lake is a lack of confidence, don’t think he guaranteed the mask of logistics, and officials complained that the mask looks like underwear, even in all are the topic of hot debate, burns’s chief of staff came to a sudden halt discussion, and told Mr. Burns the idea also not ready, then go away.
So frustrated was Mr Kadleck that he decided to step down as assistant health minister for disaster response and instead focus on vaccine development.
Skepticism about masks has been with the Trump administration, and on April 3, when the CENTERS for Disease Control finally recommended masks for the nation, Mr. Trump publicly said he would not wear them because he could not imagine wearing them while talking to foreign leaders at the “forte table” in the Oval Office.
Since Mr Trump does not wear it, Neither does Mr Pence. When Pence visited a hospital in Minnesota on April 28, he sparked online outrage for not wearing a mask. The hospital later issued a statement saying it was its policy to wear masks. That led chief of staff Short to lash out directly at the head of the hospital.
Mr Trump had a rare outburst against his son-in-law
After Pence was named head of the COVID-19 team, Short turned to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for help in making the delivery of COVID-19 medical supplies more efficient. So Kushner recruited a group of young advisers from the private sector to volunteer in what outsiders call the “slim Suit” group.
‘What Kushner did was like recruiting a bunch of Mbas and thinking you can just analyze the data and solve the problem,’ a senior official said. But soon, the team’s flaws began to show. Because they are volunteers and don’t have government computers or email addresses, it’s hard to trust them when they use Their Gmail accounts to contact and buy protection. The volunteers did not even know that the protective equipment they were purchasing had to meet FOOD and Drug Administration standards.
One of the volunteers was a member of the powerful Kennedy family, Max Kennedy Jr., Robert Kennedy’s grandson and a senior associate at a private equity firm. When he joined Kushner’s volunteer team, he was so shocked by what he saw that he submitted an anonymous tip-off. The complaints included volunteer teams giving priority to VIPs when distributing medical supplies, such as a hospital supported by Fox’s host, Jeanine Pirro, that received 100,000 face masks. But there was no evidence that the hospital specifically needed personal protective equipment.
27 years old Max Kennedy
Kennedy Jr. also said that Kushner’s friend Smith, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, asked him and another volunteer to create a 2020 Novel Coronavirus model that would predict a low mortality rate. Kennedy, who said he had no education in epidemiology, did not model the virus, and Smith told him that, like financial models, other models made by health experts were just too disastrous.
Smith also gave clearer indications that 250,000 deaths were too high, and he wanted the model to show that in the worst case fewer than 100,000 would die. Of course, Smith later denied to the Washington Post that he had ever made such a request. He said he wanted a model to predict what medical supplies would be needed by July 2020.
And the bigger problem lies ahead: Kushner ignored the logistics and lack of supply when he tried to set up COVID-19 testing sites at pharmacies across the country, such as CVS and Target, a large supermarket in the early days of the outbreak. Remember, in March, the United States was so short of medical supplies that emergency room nurses even used garbage bags as protective clothing and wore an N95 mask for a week.
To meet kushner’s test, 30 percent of the U.S. stockpile of emergency medical supplies was allocated to kushner. But when Kushner promised to build thousands of test sites across the United States, only 78 were available. By summer, Trump was unusually angry at his son-in-law for failing to keep up with the crown test, current and former officials confirmed.
Kushner is not without credit, as there are now more than 6,000 test sites in the US. But experts say the biggest mistake the United States made with the outbreak was a lag in testing and a lack of a central leadership strategy to coordinate. And even some critics praise Kushner for effectively cutting red tape and making sure every state finally gets the ventilator it needs. Officials who work with Mr. Kushner say he is so forceful that he can give clear instructions within minutes via text message or phone call.
Fauci and Grandma Scarf are marginalized
Scott Atlas, a former Stanford university professor and neuro-radiologist and a frequent television guest, was recruited as a special government employee by Mr. Trump’s advisers, Kushner and Hope Hicks, in August. He quickly acquired the White House’s most exclusive blue badge and worked in Kushner’s suite of offices.
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Atlas is a proponent of “herd immunity” (historical articles about herd immunity, please stamp ? trump government internal E-mail: let the children infected with the new champions league! Scientific advisers have lobbied hard for “herd immunity”.) Atlas is well regarded by Mr Trump, despite his poor relations with other medical experts. Atlas appealed to Trump not only because he had the title of doctor, but more importantly because his advice was from the MAGA point of view.
‘If you want to spread confusing information and license people who don’t want to comply with any public health measures, you can,’ Mr. Fauci once complained. But these people are going to say, well, you see that Stanford professor that Trump likes said yes, so why should we listen to Fauci? I think he’s sabotaging what Burkes and I are doing.
The addition of Atlas marginalizes Not only Fauci, but Also Burkes, a former Favorite of Trump. The early controversy between Atlas and Burkes was over the coronavirus test, and the two even quarreled directly in the Oval Office. Atlas recommends no more large-scale testing, but testing in vulnerable populations; Burrs and C.D.C. chief Roderfeld are in favor of large-scale testing. But standards released in August by America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention showed Atlas winning.
At another COVID-19 working group meeting, Atlas argued that efforts to prevent the spread of the disease should be reduced, with mass immunization and a focus on protecting the elderly. McGowan, a former chief of staff at America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, thundered that Atlas was letting more people die by telling them that wearing masks was useless and building herd immunity.
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With Atlas, Burkes lost his voice completely. So she chose to visit dozens of states in the United States to talk directly with local governors and officials. At the time, burkes continued to send daily COVID-19 reports to the COVID-19 team, and in many cases no one responded to her emails, people familiar with the matter recall. At one point, for example, she asked how long until we had a massive Shortage of Redditway? There was silence as the mail went out. But Fauci and his student, Burkes, and other doctors still meet at least once a week.
Most Americans have common sense. Mr Trump’s advisers showed him some internal polling data showing that in a crisis, responsible and compassionate leaders are more likely to help him win re-election. In key states, 70 percent of voters favor wearing masks at least in indoor public places. While Republicans are not keen on making masks mandatory, they are not opposed to wearing them indoors and in public. But that hasn’t changed Trump’s position that he wants to downplay COVID-19.
The number of COVID-19 infections and deaths has been soaring since the US election. But for Mr. Trump, the last thing he wanted to talk about was the epidemic, and his few COVID-19 speeches were about breakthroughs in vaccines. Before the election, Trump said: You wait, the election is over, nobody is going to talk about the new crown! The truth is that the US election is over and people have to talk about the new crown and have to face the new crown.
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