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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (156758)	3/20/2020 11:04:00 PM
From: Wharf Rat	1 Recommendation Recommended By bentway Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 356544

"The first CV case in the US was Jan. 21." By a strange coincidence, that was also the date of the first case in SK. COVID-19 hit South Korea and the U.S. on the same day ... Here's what Korea did right. March 19, 2020 Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images The U.S. and South Korea both confirmed their first cases of new coronavirus on Jan. 21. South Korea's epidemic seems to have already peaked, while the U.S. is girding for public health, financial, and social crises. The key to South Korea's relative success is testing, and South Korea's aggressive testing regime — "South Korea as of Tuesday was testing up to 20,000 patients a day, more than half the total of U.S. patients who have been tested since the outbreak began," The Wall Street Journal notes — was not an accident. On Jan. 27, with four confirmed cases in the country, "South Korean health officials summoned representatives from more than 20 medical companies from their lunar New Year celebrations to a conference room tucked inside Seoul's busy train station," where a top infectious disease official "delivered an urgent message: South Korea needed an effective test immediately to detect the novel coronavirus," Reuters reports. "He promised the companies swift regulatory approval." A week later, South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approved one company's diagnostic test and gave the green light to another company's test on Feb. 12. South Korea has tested more than 290,000 people; the U.S., with about 321 million more people, has tested just 71,000, according to the COVID Tracking Project. "South Korea took a risk, releasing briskly vetted tests, then circling back later to spot check their effectiveness," Reuters reports. "With many more tests in hand, health officials were well armed to attack a fast-moving virus and aggressively track down people who may have been exposed. This testing-backed offensive helped South Korea reduce the number of new cases over a matter of weeks, serving as a model for other countries grappling with the pandemic." In the U.S., the CDC had the only tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration until the FDA loosened its criteria on Feb. 29, and the CDC's first test was faulty. The FDA is now considering approving the South Korean tests as the U.S. struggles to meet demand. South Korea's response is a testament to leadership and foresight, but it was hard-won. South Korea was hit badly by MERS in 2015 — 186 cases, more than anywhere outside the Middle East — and the government was criticized for its slow, secretive response. "We can’t ever forget the incident," Lee Sang-won at South Korea's CDC told Reuters. "It is engraved in our mind." Peter Weber

To: Katelew who wrote (156758)	3/20/2020 11:23:19 PM
From: combjelly	7 Recommendations Recommended By bentway Brumar89 CentralParkRanger John Koligman Lane3 and 2 more members Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 356544

Fine. Although one can argue with what Trump did, let's give him full credit for the travel ban/restrictions. What did the action(s) do? It/they bought time. What did Trump do with the time he bought? He claimed victory and went home. He downplayed the seriousness of it in public and did nothing tangible behind the scenes. He claimed the cases were at 15 going to zero. He called the Democrats warning about the seriousness of the situation a "hoax" to bring hm down. He denied entry to a cruise ship because "he liked the numbers where they are". He obsessed over the stock market, which responded by plunging. he played a lot of golf. TL/DR; he didn't do squat. He frittered away any time he might have bought. Not only that, he made things even worse by trivializing the seriousness of the situation. Trump's jump in a couple of polls is because people are frantic and see his minimal attempts at dealing with the situation as him being presidential. A huge problem is that his gamble that things would get better by themselves so sweeping everything under the rug would work out, didn't. Things are starting to get real bad, real quick. His mendacity and incompetence is going to catch up with him and soon. The chickens are flocking to the roost and his goose is going to be cooked very soon... To hopelessly mix metaphors.