I think it is pretty clear that Obama would have handled it better - all we have to do is see the Ebola issue and how he handled it. "Here’s the bottom line. Patients can beat this disease. And we can beat this disease. But we have to stay vigilant. We have to work together at every level — federal, state and local. And we have to keep leading the global response, because the best way to stop this disease, the best way to keep Americans safe, is to stop it at its source — in West Africa." – President Obama, October 25, 2014 We have actual, historical fact of the difference between an administration that did not work to antagonize everyone that is not America, kept it's ear to the ground and thought about what to do before it became a disaster. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ebola-response I am going to invoke the "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me". If anyone votes for the buffoon in chief again - they are the problem.
Obama wouldn't have kept this virus from arriving here and spreading. If you want to claim he would have done things completely different, that's quite likely. Ebola wasn't airborne.....the comparison falls apart right there. https://www.kff.org/infographic/ebola-characteristics-and-comparisons-to-other-infectious-diseases/ If the public starts demanding the government actually plans for this in the future instead of having commissions write reports that nobody pays attention to then maybe this will have some benefit to us in the long run.
US and South Korea both had their first COVID-19 cases on the same day. In Korea, the outbreak is under control and life is returning to normal. In the US, unemployment at record levels, disease increasing exponentially, shortage of test kits and supplies. Leadership counts Reported today that Jared Kushner told Trump Governor Cuomo was exaggerating his state's need for supplies. Leadership counts.
I did not claim the virus would have been kept out. I claim that we would have been much better prepared and the tragedy would have been contained much better. I do not blame Trump for the virus or it being here. I blame him for botching the response and being the cause for thousands of people suffering or losing their life because of his inability to work with others, prepare, listen to experts, dispense truthful information or keeping trained people around for these eventualities. A president can not solve everything and there will be hard choices to make, some of them will end with tragedies. The quality of the leader determines how prepared and reasonable these decisions are. Trump is not competent for these situations. It's pretty clear. His serial company bankruptcies were proof enough for me before - but anyone that still supports him after seeing his dismal performance in this job - is frankly, out of their mind. There is a saying that people in the corporate world are usually promoted until they reach a position above their capability. Trump, unfortunately, have reached his peak as a reality TV host. It's a shame we did not get him to screw a city or state before we promoted him 5 levels too high.
I don't think that you're using a fair comparison. Ebola was a completely different type of threat. It killed about 50% of the people who got it, but it was spread almost entirely by contact with bodily fluids. It was not spread by breathing cough and sneeze droplets, so it was much easier to contain. People who got it were too sick too quickly to walk around their community spreading virus. Covid-19 is easily spread, many who get it are shedding virus days before they get sick, and for those reasons it spread worldwide in just a few short weeks. That was not true of Ebola. Trump worked to close borders pretty quickly, although ultimately ineffectively, and caught nothing but grief for it from the Dems. Former Obama VP, Biden, referred to him as xenophobic for blocking flights from China. The reason that South Korea was able to get a pretty quick handle on the covid-19 outbreak was quick and effective testing. The primary reason that the US didn't respond well was a mistake in the formulation of a new test at CDC and bureaucratic intransigence at FDA in failing to authorize private companies from developing and distributing their own test kits to fill the void. We're still screwing around with testing weeks later and we're paying the price in human suffering and death. You can say that Obama would have done a better job of dealing with the bureaucratic issues, but the roll-out mess of Obamacare would certainly not support that conclusion. My point is not that Trump is doing a good job. IMO, he's a dick and absolutely the worst person we could have as president at a time like this. I am not saying that Obama wouldn't be handling the aftermath of the initial testing mess and medical supply issues better than Trump either. I think he would. What I am saying is that the primary reasons that we're in the mess we are in were: an error by CDC, well-intended but ultimately harmful bureaucratic crap at FDA, and failure to plan for and store necessary supplies over the last several decades. We've known that a pandemic was inevitable. You can say that Trump has had 3.5 years to address those issues, but like every past president before him, his eyes have been on other things and it's always easy to ignore something that isn't a current problem.
Trump was alerted by both Democratic and Republican representatives in January and February that we could be facing a crisis...Trump chose not to investigate or act...and instead, wasted time by spending his days tweeting and playing golf.
I think you are completely missing my point. My point was not that he was not able to stop the disease from arriving here, but that his actions (not just since it started) has made the crisis a lot worse than it should have. 1. Obama worked with many countries together and got info and intel to work together and try to stop the problem even out of the country. In comparison - Trump has antagonized almost all international partners including the Chinese with his unnecessary trade war, his administration fired the CDC representative in China - so he did not have the intel nor the relations with China to get early intel. 2. Trump mislead the public - which directly made some people that should have not gone to work go, and some governors that should have restricted movement early not do that. 3. His travel restriction were ineffective because he somehow missed that the problem already existed in Italy and thus likely elsewhere in Europe - and he started with just Chinese travel restriction. 4. His inability to coordinate response on a national level that leads to states fighting with each other over supplies is a disgrace. 5. He wasted several years by ignoring the pandemic scenario that he inherited from the previous administration through attrition via his awful staff management, and a couple of months of preparations once he knew about the situation because he refused to believe the experts that were still around and downplayed the situation. So, no, it certainly could have, and would have been handled a lot better if we had competent leadership that can think long term. Just because this pandemic is more contagious than Ebola does not mean he gets a pass. He did an awful job, simple as that.
And, again, you've completely missed my point. I agree with you that Obama, or most any other president, would be managing the after effects of the virus better than Trump. I'm not giving him a pass on his bungling, innate stupidity, and belligerent nature. All I AM saying is that the underpinnings of the scope of the disaster that we're currently in were ultimately human error, bureaucracy, and failure to plan. Those things would exist no matter who is president. You can blame Trump for virtually everything that's happened with the response since the virus gained a toehold here and I'll probably be right there with you, but a different president wouldn't have made CDC avoid an error in test kit development, and likely wouldn't have made FDA move off its usual policy paths that delayed getting other private sector tests out to fill the void. Perhaps another more prescient president would have been more in tune with the need to reevaluate and beef up our preparations for a pandemic, but I sincerely doubt it. I challenge you to find one Democratic presidential candidate who listed preparations for a global pandemic as a pillar of their campaign platform. We were caught with our pants down because nobody was paying attention.
Perhaps, but Trump and his administration didn't even bother to investigate. I'm sure that when Schumer sounded the alarm in January, Trump simply rolled his eyes and then dismissed it as "the Dems latest hoax"..
Just finished my volunteer shift at work doing testing, this time facing patients. So many nurses and police getting exposure. STAY HOME!
The Trump administration declared a public health emergency and banned most travel from China on Jan. 31st, 5 days after Schumer made his statement.
One disagreement - if testing had been made a national priority, it seems plausible to me that the FDA would have reacted much more quickly. Bureaucracies can be moved by sufficient pressure. But in this case there was no pressure. barfo
We know for a fact that the Obama administration had a pandemic response plan that was not used because most of the people that were briefed on it when the transition happened are no longer working in the white house - so we know for a fact that there was better preparation in the previous administration - so I reject the entire premise that no president would have been better prepared. I have no doubts that we would still have a problem on our hand. I suspect however that we would have been an awful lot closer to countries like the Nordic states, UK, Germany than Italy or worse - which is where are heading. It will like be an order of a magnitude bigger tragedy than what it would have been with a more competent administration. That's the whole point.
This is pretty much my position. My only other point would be that some people go as far as saying: "not just any president would have done better, but literally ANYONE would have done better." Which is obviously false.
Yes, there are other sociopaths in the world, and some of them don't even speak English. They might very well have done even worse. barfo
