2020.0628.0008...

Click on headline to read entire, somewhat long, article.

Admittedly, you might notice that I cherry-pick the text that makes this administration and its lying, fat-ass loser, fearless leader look bad...

With Trump leading the way, America’s coronavirus failures exposed by record surge in new infections

Five months after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the United States, a record surge in new cases is the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus — exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils.

President Trump — who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures — now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public health calamity in a century. The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires precision, focus and steady leadership, according to public health experts, administration officials and lawmakers from both parties.

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“They’re creating a cognitive dissonance in the country,” one former senior administration official said. “It’s more than them being asleep at the wheel. They’re confusing people at this point when we need to be united.”

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Some states are still struggling to procure testing kits and supplies for the kits, including swabs, and have pleaded for the federal government to play a larger role in coordinating purchases, resolving supply shortages and distributing the tests. Doctors and health-care facilities are still grappling with shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), including private doctors’ offices that cannot perform routine procedures safely because they do not have the necessary equipment, according to the American Medical Association.

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The White House has played a central role in undermining the kind of clear and consistent messaging experts say is necessary to mount a successful public health response to a viral outbreak, current and former administration officials said.

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Others without a background in public health, including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have played an outsized role in guiding the federal response. Just last month, Kushner told others involved in the response that the virus was essentially under control and that there would be no second wave, a former administration official said.

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Publicly, GOP lawmakers remain largely supportive of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, declining to put any blame on him or the federal response for the upward trend in infections. They generally say the decision-making responsibility now lies with state governments, and that individual citizens bear the onus for responsible behavior to hold down infections.

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Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s top health officer, told residents recently to be prepared for a lack of a hospital bed if they crash their cars or a lack of ventilators if they suffer a heart attack.

“If we’re not careful,” he said, “Mississippi will look like New York.”

Click on headline to read entire article...

In a week that saw the worst day on record for new cases, Trump shrugs as experts warn Americans not to follow his lead

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Unbelievable accurately describes America today. The country is on the brink of a huge surge of Covid-19, as the virus tears through the heartlands while the president praises himself for having done “a great job” and blithely predicts the scourge will “fade away”.

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“It’s getting worse, not better,” said Frieden, who now heads the global health initiative Resolve to Save Lives. “The contrast with other countries is striking. South Korea had 30 cases a day and they flipped out. The US now has 30,000 cases a day and there are people shrugging and saying ‘It’s no big deal’.”

Trump is shrugger-in-chief. When the president lured thousands of non-mask wearing supporters to a viral incubation party – he called it a rally – in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last Saturday, he told them that in his view testing for coronavirus was a “double-edged sword… When you do testing you are going to find more cases. So I told my people, slow the testing down.”

Despite White House efforts to pass the comment off as a joke, it encapsulates the Trump administration’s approach towards this devastating crisis. Early on, Trump failed to marshal the full weight of the most powerful government on Earth against the virus. He lost six critical weeks.

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The most worrying aspect of the tone being set by Trump is that it is starting to shift the mindset of ordinary Americans. Everywhere you look there are anecdotal signs of people falling in line with the president – shrugging and saying it’s no big deal.

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On social media, people rant about masks as “muzzles” and “badges of submission”. “People get really angry about it, resisting even their doctors asking them to wear it,” Harper said. “They don’t see a protective device, as something that can save the people around you, they see it as an instrument of control.”

All across the country, similar acts of personal rebellion are playing out. Residents of Palm Beach, Florida, erupted in anger against a mandatory mask order, calling it the “devil’s law” and an affront to “God’s breathing system”.

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The good news is that scientists are very clear about what needs to be done. Frieden calls it the three Ws –

Wear a mask, Wash your hands, Watch your distance

– combined with aggressive testing, contact tracing and isolation of the sick.

If such measures can be introduced concertedly and quickly, both at federal and state level, public health experts are confident that all is not lost. The contagion could be contained and the economy slowly and relatively safely rebooted.

But time is running out for America.

“This is a long war and we are losing a lot of battles right now, because we are not fighting them,” Frieden said. “We are going to be paying for the mistakes we make today for months, or even years, to come.”