Donald Trump wasting time spreading "wishfulness": End supidity! Impeach him again!

"dearth of testing, dire shortages of critical medical supplies at hospitals and the absence of a coherent national strategy mean" 

https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/opinions/columnists-opinions/marvin-ott/lethal-incompetence/

“I didn’t know people died from the flu," said Donald Trump.Lethal incompetence - echo opinion published in the Maine newspaper The Ellsworth American by Marvin Ott.

Donald Trump is the bumbling example of the saying "stupid is as stupid does".

Every schoolchild in America knew that the flu killed people. But Donald Trump did not know — even though his own grandfather died of the virus. But never mind. The president is a “genius” — “a very stable genius.” He has reminded us of this several times.

The current pandemic is as predictable as it is frightening. Disease is the eternal scourge of humankind — a constant reminder that life is vulnerable and contingent. We live in an era of globalization with ever closer contact at ever higher speeds between nations and continents. In another time a disease outbreak might have remained confined to a particular region or population thanks to their relative isolation. No more. Huge concentrations of people in megacities (like Wuhan) can turn a fire into a conflagration. Countless viruses lie hidden and dormant in natural environments such as permafrost and tropical jungles. As humans and climate change disrupt those redoubts hitherto unknown contagions are set loose. We have had ample recent experience with epidemics featuring new pathogens including HIV/AIDS, SARS, MERS, Ebola — to name a few. Lest we forget, only a century ago a global flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States.

"the White House pandemic office was effectively disbanded" 

Today we are far better equipped to cope with such a global pandemic. In 1918, medical professionals did not know that viruses existed. Today we can take pictures of a new virus with electron microscopes, identify its key characteristics and sequence its genome all in a matter of days. We have extraordinary research facilities designed to create new vaccines and antiviral drugs. The federal government is home to agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) charged with research and development of therapies and their application. Responding to its experience with the Ebola epidemic, the Obama administration created a White House office of global pandemic preparedness.

The Trump administration has shown a singular disregard for all of this. Administration budget requests have called for deep cuts in funding for the CDC. Meanwhile, the White House pandemic office was effectively disbanded — while scientists and medical experts at all levels of the federal government were dismissed. Just for good measure the administration also moved to decrease nursing home oversight and infection control regulations. These actions tracked closely with the President’s response to reports of a new, dangerous viral outbreak in China. While U.S. intelligence agencies were providing analysis that identified the new virus as a potential global pandemic that could engulf the United States, Trump announced that the virus carried a “very, very low risk” for Americans. A day after the first U.S. case of the virus surfaced, Trump was asked if he was worried. His response: “No, not at all … we have it totally under control.” At a campaign rally on Feb. 10, he dismissed any concerns: “By April— when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” [The pandemic had already spread to tropical climates like Singapore].

As the expert medical community expressed growing alarm in late February and early March, Trump dismissed it all as “another hoax” — a view loudly echoed by Sean Hannity and Fox News. In a Feb. 26 news conference, Trump declared the virus was “like regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we will have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.” Dr. Tony Fauci, head of infectious diseases at NIH, estimated a vaccine was 12 to 18 months away and that the coronavirus was 10 times more lethal than the normal flu. Meanwhile, last week with the disease rapidly spreading in the United States, the White House budget director testified before Congress in support of funding cuts for the CDC. [And in case you missed it, two Republican senators with access to government data reportedly dumped their stock holdings in the travel and hospitality industries just before the markets tanked.]

This history of missed opportunities and self-delusion has consequences. The dearth of testing, dire shortages of critical medical supplies at hospitals and the absence of a coherent national strategy mean that a great many of us will get infected and many of us will die. That is not speculation; that is fact.

The past cannot be rewritten. The focus now has to be on the near future. Important and positive things have happened over the last week or two. The White House has declared a national emergency and states and localities have implemented far-reaching — even draconian — measures to slow “community spread.” People across the country have taken “social distancing” to heart. The broad citizen response has been remarkable and heartening. Even Fox News has discovered the virus. Tony Fauci has emerged as a trusted voice — a national treasure along with infectious disease experts and epidemiologists. Research centers are working flat out to develop entirely new therapies. This will have huge consequences beyond the current pandemic – we will be much better prepared for the next one.

America got through the Great Depression, World War II and the Soviet threat to Europe with steady, even inspired, presidential leadership from FDR to Truman to Eisenhower. We have no such luxury now. Bereft of his political rallies, Trump has discovered the White House news conference as a (horrible) substitute. We are now being treated to a kind of daily reality TV show — with some actual news and a large admixture of bombast, half-truths, exaggerations and insults.

We will have to look to the rest of America — to each other — to pull through this time.