The Trump Pandemic

[Sean Hayden]

More important I think for those of us looking to really understand things is the absence of any relevant explanatory context for these decisions purported to be a cause of our current situation.

It's easy to imagine that it's missing because it's better for those selling this narrative that I already know the rationale behind any poor decision. But honestly, it's probably just because they're presuming what they'd like to imagine they've demonstrated.

Maybe I lack imagination, but I have difficulty coming up with an explanatory context for these decisions that doesn't boil down to 'why the fuck should we be paying for this?' followed by studiously ignoring and dismissing the explanation of the value of a given program.

No, I'm not talking about Trump necessarily. He's populated his administration with conspicuously venal 'bottom line' types who can be depended upon to pursue the gummint bad agenda, and who have little use for pointy-headed scientists and their globalist perspective. Trump is a poster boy for militant ignorance, but he's by no means the only example of it.

We all lack imagination, it's something we can always count on failing at some point. Thankfully we may not have to rely on it in these circumstances. We can ask the people involved or look at the record. Apparently many people writing these pieces haven't bothered and it makes it harder to understand what's going on, at a glance anyway. Obviously we can put in the work ourselves but how realistic is that?

--//--

To help you out here though I think the program was what, 200 million? The DOD has toilets worth more than that don't they?

Some 7,000 scientists had been trained. How many were they originally looking to train? Is that a factor? What goals had been met exactly?

That's just a few things to think about asking that I believe are relevant. Someone else's imagination can come up with more.

[L'Emmerdeur]

To help you out here though I think the program was what, 200 million? The DOD has toilets worth more than that don't they?

Some 7,000 scientists had been trained. How many were they originally looking to train? Is that a factor? What goals had been met exactly?

That's just a few things to think about asking that I believe are relevant. Someone else's imagination can come up with more.

From what I've read, the goal was to identify and track pathogens with potential to emerge as human diseases. For such an initiative, saying, 'Welp, we've completed that task' isn't a realistic approach.

The person who directed it during existence had this to say, back in October of last year (NY Times link--they limit the articles you may view before their paywall goes up):

Dennis Carroll, the former director of USAID’s emerging threats division who helped design Predict, oversaw it for a decade and retired when it was shut down. The surveillance project is closing because of “the ascension of risk-averse bureaucrats,” he said.

Because USAID’s chief mission is economic aid, he added, some federal officials felt uncomfortable funding cutting-edge science like tracking exotic pathogens.

Congress, along with the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, were “enormously supportive,” said Dr. Carroll, who is now a fellow at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service.

“But things got complicated in the last two years, and by January, Predict was essentially collapsed into hibernation.”

To me, that doesn't sound like somebody who believes 'Fair enough, we've done our job and it's time to move on.'

For a more comprehensive examination of this administration's (and the previous Republican-controlled Congress's) efforts in this regard, should you choose to subject yourself to it:

'Trump’s botched coronavirus response has been 3 years in the making'

Here's a list of items from there:

700 vacancies at the CDC

Senior epidemic-response positions left unfilled

Global health security teams disbanded

Unprecedented National Security Council turnover

CDC forced to downsize epidemic prevention

Reducing uniformed public health professionals

Collapse of zoonotic virus detection program [that's the one we're talking about at the moment]

War on science decimates ranks and sends morale plummeting

Repeated budget cuts to health-related programs every year [this is Trump trying to defund health agencies]

Continuous attacks on healthcare at home [ongoing, in fact]

[Sean Hayden]

From what I've read, the goal was to identify and track pathogens with potential to emerge as human diseases. For such an initiative, saying, 'Welp, we've completed that task' isn't a realistic approach.

That is a goal, but training scientists to do it everywhere seems to have been the means to accomplishing it. So, you wouldn't be saying, "hey, we've found some viruses so let's stop". You'd be saying, "hey, we've trained guys to find viruses so let's let them do it in their countries within frameworks they understand." Isn't a lot of government spending designed to work like that?

Keep in mind that the people who identified this virus were trained by the program, a program that had already been shutdown but whose mission had apparently been successful in this regard.

In real life the training worked. (I'm not saying that was their reasoning. I still don't know.)

As for the former director's view of why he was shutdown, okay, we can take that into consideration. But we still want to know the reasoning of the people responsible for actually doing it.

[L'Emmerdeur]

As for the former director's view of why he was shutdown, okay, we can take that into consideration. But we still want to know the reasoning of the people responsible for actually doing it.

Yes, let's reserve judgement. Wait till the administration provides the greatest explanation ever. It would be pointless to look at the context of the decision (perhaps provided by the second article I linked) and recurrent themes surrounding it because then we'd just be NPCs shouting 'orange man bad!'

[pErvinalia]

The reasoning is obvious - small government. It's always been this way with conservatives (at least the last 40 years).

[Sean Hayden]

As for the former director's view of why he was shutdown, okay, we can take that into consideration. But we still want to know the reasoning of the people responsible for actually doing it.

Yes, let's reserve judgement. Wait till the administration provides the greatest explanation ever. It would be pointless to look at the context of the decision (perhaps provided by the second article I linked) and recurrent themes surrounding it because then we'd just be NPCs shouting 'orange man bad!'

I'm not sure why that bothered you. There are many reasons he may not be the best person to ask.

The administration may never give an adequate explanation. But as of now I haven't seen any at all.

The point about recurrent themes is a good one, and something that will obviously color any interpretation of an explanation provided by the administration.

--//--

You did warn that your link would be subjecting me to something unpleasant. So, I haven't looked at it yet. Does it give the reasoning of those responsible for shutting down the program?

[L'Emmerdeur]

The thing is, I already agreed with you that President Trump is not the only person responsible for the US failure here. I think that he does bear a very significant part of the blame. Not only for his enabling of the dismantling of governmental efforts to get ahead of epidemics, but also for his "hey, it's not a problem/hey, it's not my problem' stance, as well as putting useless stuffed shirts Pence and Kushner in overall charge of the US response.

Trump has plenty of company. As pErvinalia points out, it's been the Republican playbook for some time--the federal government needs to be throttled back, so let's do our best to 'cut the fat' ('fat' being things that don't help the US economy--read: large corporations--or that they're too short-sighted and/or ignorant to comprehend the value of). Then when the government fails to produce acceptable results, it's not evidence of the folly of their ideology, but of the supposedly inherent incapability of government to do anything right.

Maybe it's actually Democratic politicians who were responsible for letting Predict die off (I've seen no indications of that, but I agree that we don't know enough about what happened). If so, then they should be raked over the coals. There's plenty of shit hitting the fan, and if Democrats were behind that one aspect of the defecation then they should get a face full of it. Trump's very expensive suit should get most of it though.

[Animavore]

Not content with mishandling the US with regards a global pandemic, President Fuckwit wants to mess up other countries too.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 1585940178

[Brian Peacock]

...
The WHO recommended not wearing masks, and has repeated regularly information agreeable to China.
...

Your premisses are biased, as, perhaps, are your sources.

[rainbow]

Nearly a third of a million Americans infected. This could've been avoided with proper leadership.

[Cunt]

Nearly a third of a million Americans infected. This could've been avoided with proper leadership.

Agreed.

If the Wuhan victims of this virus had proper leadership, they wouldn't have fled to the four corners of the earth, infecting everyone else.


Unless you want to blame another world leader, who fucked it up after China did...

[Tero]

Tomi Lahren LOL
https://mobile.twitter.com/NEAnalytica/ ... 3526895617

[Sean Hayden]

Hurricane season...

[Tero]

There will be death. But we should play...

[Tero]

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