Good move. Approval seems bipartisan, but I can't help thinking,the more people he delegates to run this task force, when things go south he will point fingers and not own any responsibility.

Notanewbie wrote: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/coronavirus-flu-epidemic-diseases/ You’ve probably read about the outbreak. But you may not know how badly prepared the United States is to counter a pandemic, as a result of bipartisan neglect of our public health infrastructure. The highlights: In 2012, the Obama administration reallocated billions of dollars away from the Prevention and Public Health Fund to make up for cuts to Medicare’s physician payments. In 2018, Congress cut the PPHF by another $1 billion, and the Trump administration then diverted additional millions away from the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response, the CDC cut its global epidemic prevention efforts by 80 percent, radically downsizing its operations in 39 of the 49 countries it had a presence in, including China and Congo, currently the epicenter of Ebola. Last year, Trump proposed slashing the DHS budget by another 12 percent and the CDC budget by 10 percent. The result of this dangerous downsizing: As the world stands on the verge of a new epidemic, the United States has 50,000 fewer local public-health employees than it did in 2008. Instead of stopping an outbreak early, America’s now reduced to taking the temperature of travelers at major airports.

You've skipped over that this Administration saw fit to terminate the entire Pandemic Response chain of command. All experts in their field.

Why don't you stop before you embarrass yourself ,I take that back,you already have.

Alex Azar on now. Not saying much, but at least he was brief. Most of what he said was sensible at least.

Found an article here about Trump's criticism of Obama's handling of the Ebola outbreak.

Here's a few of his tweets:

Ebola patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days - now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent. KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE! (August 1, 2014)

The U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our "borders." Act fast! (August 2, 2014)

I am starting to think that there is something seriously wrong with President Obama's mental health. Why won't he stop the flights. Psycho! (October 16, 2014)

A single Ebola carrier infects 2 others at a minimum. STOP THE FLIGHTS! NO VISAS FROM EBOLA STRICKEN COUNTRIES! (Nov 10, 2014)

To be fair to Trump the Ebola virus did have a much higher death rate, but he sure seems to have a short memory.

Link to Independent Newspaper article:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-obama-ebola-tweet-coronavirus-cdc-outbreak-pandemic-a9359456.html

Let's see if the orange faced clown ,

You socialist little thing. Feel the Bern

Now let's see what he says in 30 min. I just hope he does not stick his foot in his mouth which he has a tendency to do...LOL.

Yes carbon20. And we're the ones who will pay for it.

The Post reports that White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow has been trying to dismiss drops in the market, saying investors should take advantage of opportunities, however points out: “The rosy sheen that Trump, Kudlow and other White House officials have tried to express about the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak has now collided with reality: The coronavirus is spreading, quickly, to more countries. The death toll is rising, and the outbreak is wreaking havoc on global supply chains.”

With that in mind, the president is reportedly furious with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over briefings given to the public and the resultant drop in the market due to panicking investors.

Noting, “Trump is highly concerned about the market and has encouraged aides not to give predictions that might cause further tremors,” the report adds, “Now, White House officials’ efforts to contain the economic fallout from the coronavirus have created new political hazards, as they publicly play down the threat while other federal officials with a background in health and diseases are warning of more severe consequences for inaction. The administration also risks creating new health hazards, should the pressure to assure investors of economic stability undercut its public health message about the mounting threat.”

Responding to reports about chaos in the administration on coronavirus messaging, White House spokesman Judd Deere stated, ““Unfortunately what we are seeing today is a political effort by the Left and some in the media to distract and disturb the American people with fearful rhetoric and palace intrigue. The United States economy is the strongest in the world thanks to the leadership and policies of President Trump. The virus remains low risk domestically because of the containment actions taken by this Administration since the first of the year.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/trump-silencing-white-house-officials-from-talking-about-coronavirus-to-keep-stock-market-up-report/

At the end of January, at a time when the coronavirus outbreak that began in China was dominating international headlines, The White House announced it was forming a new task force to address the growing crisis, one headed by the secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar. Standing up the task force was made easier, the administration said, because of the work it had already put into the National Biodefense Strategy, the government-wide plan from 2018 aimed at protecting the country against threats like disease epidemics and biological terrorism. There’s a problem with that claim however. After a year-and-half of implementation, experts say the government has little to show for the strategy.

“It’s our understanding that it sort of ground to a halt during the assessment phase,” Asha George, the executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, said of the strategy. (George is also a member of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board.) Seconding George’s assessment is Dan Gerstein, a RAND researcher who has tracked the biodefense strategy: “I stay pretty close on these issues. I haven’t seen a lot come out.”

The strategy sets out to organize the government’s myriad activities intended to defend against biothreats; it’s the “first-ever holistic look across the government to see where are we acting, and where might there be any gaps in light of our awareness of threats, our preparedness needs, and our ability to respond,” Azar told the press in 2018. Under the strategy, officials from various federal agencies are supposed to decide on a joint plan for how to allocate federal resources. It’s in those very areas—joint decision-making and resource-sharing–that government officials are struggling to make progress, a new US Government Accountability Office report published last week found. Many officials “expressed reluctance” to use their resources to support common goals, the report said, and there are “no clear processes, roles, or responsibilities for joint decision-making.”

Experts point to the big cuts the Trump administration has proposed to public health initiatives as a sign that the country, if anything, is becoming more vulnerable to threats like disease outbreaks. For instance, while the strategy calls for a strong surveillance system to monitor for biological threats, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Preparedness and Response Program, which puts the agency’s laboratories and expertise in public health surveillance and epidemiology to work, is in line for a $25 million cut in the budget year beginning this fall. The Health and Human Services Department’s Hospital Preparedness Program funds the Ebola treatment centers that were set up to handle domestic cases of the disease that was ravaging West African countries in 2014. The program could see an $18 million haircut this fall. The administration’s budget proposal would provide $58 million to the World Health Organization, less than half what the United States gave last year. The organization is the lead international agency guiding the global response to the coronavirus outbreak. “All those things suggest that they are saying one thing and doing another,” Gerstein said.

Public health funding has repeatedly fallen under the Trump administration’s budget axe, although Congress has bucked the administration and restored some funding in the past. The coronavirus response is straining the government’s resources, and the Health and Human Services Department has already told Congress it may need to shift funds around to pay for it. With cases of COVID-19 (as the coronavirus is now known) rising in countries like South Korea, Iran, and Italy, The White House asked Congress on Monday for $1.25 billion in additional funding to combat the outbreak. It wants to use money intended for other efforts like fighting Ebola to bring the total amount designated for the coronavirus response to $2.5 billion.

There are plenty of reasons to want a well-oiled biodefense system. Despite the ratification of the Biological Weapons Convention, the global treaty prohibiting countries from developing or stockpiling biological weapons, the new government watchdog report notes that biological warfare remains a threat. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Syria are still engaging in dual-use or bioweapons activities, according to the report. In just the last two decades, outbreaks of infectious diseases like Ebola, SARS, and now COVID-19 have sickened tens-of-thousands. New developments in synthetic biology mean a wide array of facilities have the ability to synthesize deadly pathogens. “Because the biological threat landscape is vast, it requires a multidisciplinary, enterprise-wide approach,” the report said.

It may still be too soon to cast judgement on the biodefense strategy, or to say whether the various government agencies in the structure can agree to a plan that implements a whole-of-government approach. The Government Accountability Office’s report said it won’t be until the 2022 budget cycle that biodefense spending will be guided by a joint plan. That may be too late for Trump’s strategy. Both of Trump’s immediate predecessors had biodefense plans and neither was fully realized, Gerstein wrote in 2018.

“Time is not your friend when you’re in a presidential administration,” he said. “It moves very rapidly. If you want to get something done, you really need your strategy out in the first year. And it really needs to be moving, and it’s got to be a priority

https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/trump-touts-biodefense-strategy-but-slashes-funding-to-detect-and-combat-outbreaks-like-coronavirus/

It's always a good idea on the cusp of a pandemic to go to the most densely populated country,with people packed shoulder to shoulder shouting adorations. He should have shown himself as a statesman and had a private meeting with Modi,to do a trade deal,not wanting to light the match of H2H 

When President Trump comes to visit, world leaders face the challenge of finding ways to entertain and impress a leader who relishes spectacle.

NEW DELHI — One of the most nerve-racking moments for any world leader these days comes with these six words: President Trump is coming to town.

Hosting any American leader is demanding enough with the usual requirements of diplomacy, protocol and geopolitics, but with Mr. Trump comes an additional challenge: how to entertain and impress a president who relishes spectacle and cherishes anything that is the first, the most or the biggest.

The British have a queen, so they made a grand show of a state dinner at Buckingham Palace. The French have Bastille Day, so they invited the president to view their elaborate miliary parade down the Champs-Élysées. The Japanese have an emperor, so they invited Mr. Trump to be the first foreign leader to visit their newly installed monarch — and threw in a sumo match with a special presidential trophy for good measure.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India opted to appeal to Mr. Trump’s first love — crowd size — as he stages a rally of more than 100,000 people in Ahmedabad on Monday after a drive in from the airport along roads where perhaps 100,000 more will line the motorcade route. The president will almost certainly not be greeted by the 10 million people he expects, but it will look like an enormous crowd nonetheless and, the Indians hope, satisfy his need for affirmation.

“World leaders are vying with each other to appeal to President Trump’s vanity,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of state under President George W. Bush who helped pave the way for agreements with India during that administration. “They understand his foreign trips are more about the image he wants to strike rather than substantive breakthroughs between governments.”

White House aides deny that the president’s trips are all about show. The United States and India have important issues involving trade and security for Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi to discuss, although administration officials briefing reporters before the president’s departure from Washington on Sunday made clear that the comprehensive trade agreement he seeks with India remains far-off.

What has seemed to animate Mr. Trump the most, though, are Mr. Modi’s promises of cheering crowds. “He told me we’ll have seven million people between the airport and the event,” Mr. Trump told reporters last Tuesday. 

Two days later, Mr. Trump ratcheted up the estimate to eight digits. “I hear they’re going to have 10 million people,” he said at a campaign rally. “They say anywhere from six to 10 million people are going to be showing up along the route to one of the largest stadiums in the world.”

By Sunday as he was leaving the White House to begin his long trip, it had become “millions and millions” of people. “Some people say the biggest event they’ve ever had in India,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “That’s what the prime minister told me.”

A crowd of 10 million would exceed the entire population of Ahmedabad, estimated at eight million. Local officials estimate that it will be more like 100,000, making Mr. Trump off by only 99 percent. But Motera Stadium, which is not really fully built yet, is supposed to become the largest cricket arena in the world.“

World leaders have learned to shorten or scrap the historical tours, remove local delicacies from the menu and focus on one thing only: feeding his ego,” said Julianne Smith, the director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “That’s taken different forms in recent years, but the goal is always the same — make Trump feel like he’s getting something unique: a parade in Paris, a grand state dinner at Buckingham Palace or a sumo match with a President’s Cup in Japan.”

Critics said that meeting, like a parade or a banquet, was just for the pictures, with no lasting result, and that the president should focus more on policy initiatives when he arrives in India. “Trump would be far wiser to frame the visit on substance — our strong military collaboration with India, Japan and Australia in limiting China, for example, rather than on seeking applause from crowds in a stadium,” Mr. Burns said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/us/politics/trump-india-crowd.html

Agreed. It is a shame on our nation we took so long to rescue our own.

Jason Easley??.......this is why I cannot open this topic....going back to Roblox

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/12/health-experts-sound-alarm-trump-fights-coronavirus-with-alternative-facts/

President Trump’s governing strategy is on a collision course with a novel foe. Can alternative facts stop a pandemic

Some of the nation’s leading public-health experts assembled before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning with some worrisome warnings: The dangerous Wuhan novel coronavirus is probably already in the United States in greater numbers than we know and should show itself in clusters in the coming weeks. There’s reason to doubt its spread will die down when the weather warms. And it could ultimately affect hundreds of thousands of Americans.
But Trump has never been one to embrace expert opinion, whether on climate change or on windmill cancer.
“By the way, the virus,” Trump told supporters at a political rally this week. “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
He told a meeting of governors that he "had a long talk with President Xi” of China. “He feels very confident. And he feels that, again, as I mentioned, by April or during the month of April, the heat, generally speaking, kills this kind of virus. So that would be a good thing. But we’re in great shape in our country. We have 11, and the 11 are getting better. Okay? Okay!
Maybe he’s right. We should all pray that he is. But the experts have a rather different take.Luciana Borio, the former director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, said the number of actual cases is “much, much higher” than reported and “very concerning for a pandemic.” She said it is “sufficiently lethal to stress severely the health-care system” and “we need to brace ourselves for difficult weeks or months to come. …
"We’re going to see a lot more cases in the United States in the near future.”
The coronavirus and other outbreaks are hard to contain.

Julie Gerberding, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she is “very concerned about the prospects for long-term containment” and warned that “we simply don’t have the surge capacity” to handle a widespread outbreak. Now is the time to be “leaning in,” she said.

   Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said there are “certainly cases we don’t know about” in the United States, and he called for expanded testing because we’re “capturing 25 percent of cases at best.” Gottlieb predicted: “We’re going to see those outbreaks start to emerge in the next two to four weeks.”
This is the time for a Manhattan Project, to put all public and private energy into vaccine and antiviral development, diagnostics and expanded hospital capabilities. If the worst happens, we’ll be better prepared. If not, we’ll be prepared for the next pandemic.

Instead, Trump this week proposed cutting U.S. funding for the World Health Organization in half. He has also proposed a nearly 16 percent cut to the CDC and a nearly 8 percent cut to the National Institutes of Health, though officials say they won’t cut from infectious-disease work. Trump’s budget director says the virus isn’t being taken into account in economic forecasts.
And Trump is parroting advice from the Chinese regime.
Maybe he’ll also endorse North Korea’s plan to fight the virus with “burdock roots.”
Trump administration officials were asked to participate in the Senate hearing; they refused, instead cooperating in a closed briefing later with senators.
“I’m disappointed,” said the chairman, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “I thought I had convinced them to come. … It’s extremely important the public understands these things.”
Had they come, they would have heard the experts knock down Trump’s claims that we’re in great shape, that there are only 11 cases here and that China has handled the outbreak well.

Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, said there are generally seven or eight unseen cases for every known case. “It may be hundreds of thousands of cases” here ultimately, she warned.
Gottlieb warned that even if the fatality rate drops from the current 2 percent to 0.2 percent, that could still “be quite devastating.”
As for the virus receding in warm weather, Gottlieb pointed out that there’s been some spread in Singapore, where it’s 90 degrees.
They also cautioned that they can’t be sure that current antiviral drug trials will be successful or that a vaccine will be available in a year. And many raw materials for drugs come from China — a gaping vulnerability.

Johnson seemed alarmed. “This ought to be a huge wake-up call,” he said, for domestic medical manufacturing.
In one of the few bright points, Gottlieb (who is on Pfizer’s board) said that “we probably could do this quickly if we wanted to” and avoid China’s “critical choke-point in supply.”
Alternatively, we can wait for the virus “miraculously” to
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/02/donald-trump-coronavirus-warm-weather


TRUMP CLAIMS CORONAVIRUS WILL “MIRACULOUSLY” GO AWAY BY APRIL

https://twitter.com/owillis/status/1226918856632999937

Where did Trump get his prognosis? While pulling facts directly from his #ss kind of this guy’s thing, in this case, his information has apparently come from Chinese president Xi Jinping, whose government’s early handling of the epidemic allowed it to spread, as the party prioritized secrecy instead of confronting the crisis head-o

                                           https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-doctors-coronavirus-prediction_n_5e41948dc5b6b70887058c58
                                        
        Stable Genius, I'm surprised he didn't say" I knows more than the scientists "                        

President Trump said Monday that he expected the coronavirus epidemic to disappear with the end of winter ― a remark at odds with warnings from infectious disease experts.

Trump’s comments on the virus known as 2019-nCoV, which has infected more than 42,000 people globally and claimed more than 1,000 lives, came during a White House business session with state governors.

“A lot of people think that goes away in April as the heat comes in,” he said of the outbreak that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan. “Typically that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases, 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape.”

“This statement minimizes the many critical factors needed for the containment of the outbreak and the prevention of further disease spread, such as adequate infection control measures and contact tracing,” Dr. Britta Lassmann, program director for the International Society for Infectious Diseases, told HuffPost. The president’s remarks set off some concern that he didn’t have a solid understanding of the threat at hand.

“Data on the role of temperature and climate on the transmissibility of 2019-nCoV are currently lacking,” she added.

But Trump’s rosy outlook is also risky because not all outbreaks subside as the weather warms, and this one remains shrouded in mystery on several fronts.

As an aside, my brother's job takes him to DC three days a week for the last few weeks. He told me last night that the streets in DC were empty this last week. He said there were a few people out on the streets, but very few. He's not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but he said it creeped him out and made him think something is up. Like DC know something the rest of us don't. He's decided if he has to go to DC going forward he won't take the train to DC anymore, but drive instead. And that he will not take any jobs (he's a contractor) going forward if they involve any travel.