[USA] SJEDINJENE AMERIČKE DRŽAVE - unutrašnja politika i uticaj na svetska kretanja

[Yoyogi]

2 minutes ago, I, Ja Sam Laki said:

 

Ne pisem o tim ruralnim oblastima, Pariz sa okolinom ima preko 10miliona stanovnika. Rurska oblast u Nemackoj ima stanovnika kao Njujork, nekoliko velikih gradova su bukvalno spojeni. London ima isto preko 10mil stanovnika. Madrid ima preko 5miliona, Barcelona oko 4miliona, Atina ima oko 5 miliona, pa Rim, pa Milano,....Zasto se za ta podrucja ne koristi gustina naseljenosti, vec samo za USA slucajeve pa onda eto tamo je toliko zarazenih jer u Njujorku zivi mnogo ljudi na jednom mestu. Isto kao sto u Evropi mnogo ljudi zivi po ovim gradovima koje sam napisao.

 

 

Ne reče Tokyo, koji ima više stanovnika nego cela Kanada, 35 miliona,  i legendarne gužve po vozovima (za sada smanjene za samo 30%) . Japan je jeftino prošao, za sada.

[nssa]

13 hours ago, Angelia said:

Ako je sve to Kanada, sta onda kritikujes u US?

 

Ajde da se drzimo teme, unutrasnja politika i uticaj na svetska kretanja, zdravstvo u US, ima samo uticaja na nas koji zivimo u US.

 

Edit: btw to ne znaci da ne mozemo kritikovati neke autorativne sisteme, to je vec druga prica.

 

 

Kao prvo ja ne kritikujem US time sto iznosim misljenje da se neke stvari mogu drugacije resiti i/ili organizovati. U vecini diskusija (bar onih u kojima sam i ja ucestvovao) na kraju se svodi na tvrdnju da ostali ne razumeju specificnosti USA. I ti onda navedes te specificnosti i, izmedju ostalog opises i Kanadu. Sto ce reci da ne govorimo o specificnosti uredjenja nego o razlicitim pristupima u organizovanju ( i resavanju problema) pojedinih delova drzavnog sistema.

 

Zdravstvo u US ima velikog uticaja i na unutrasnju politiku pa ne vidim zasto ne bi moglo biti predmet diskusije.

 

I za tvoju informaciju prilkom iseljavanja ja sam izabrao Kanadu ispred USA, a tokom boravka u Kanadi sam 3 puta odbio ponudu da se preselim

[Amigo]

18 hours ago, Angelia said:

Ali Kanada ima liste cekanja a ja nemam.

 

Unverzalna zdravstvena zastita nije nesto sto se raspravlja na pojedinacnom nivou, npr ti ne cekas, a ja cekam, i to zavisi sta, ako je nesto sto moze da se ceka, onda cekam, ako je nesto hitno, onda ne cekam, medjutim nije razlog to sto neko ceka zato sto je univerzalna zastita, nego zato sto je manjka specijalista, ali to je neka druga tema.

Najveca razlika je u tome da svi imaju istu zdravstvenu zastitu, bez obzira na dubinu svoga dzepa, plus je to sve jeftinije. Tacno je da doktori malo manje zaradjuju, ali i ovde zaradjuju sasvim dovoljno, da nema razloga da zale, kao i sve ostalo medicinsko osoblje.

 

 

15 hours ago, Angelia said:

Znas onu americku "If ain't broken, dont fix it", americkim gradjanima u vecini taj sistem ne smeta. Time se bavi sacica "progresivaca" i ljudi izvan US.

 

Na svakim izborima se raspravlja o zdravstenoj zastiti na dugacko i na siroko, znaci da gradjani i nisu bas zadovoljni, poznajem ljude u USA koji su totalno nezadovoljni, pa cak i koji ne mogu da placaju osiguranje, jer im je preskupo.

 

14 hours ago, Angelia said:

Pa tebi nije vredno odgovora a u US ljudi to smatraju za elementarno pravo.

BTW potpuno je nebitno sta ja mislim da je socijalizam, bitno je sta javnost u US misli da je socijalizam. Do sad svaki put kad su u US probali da uvode tu pricu kako ja kupim kafu za nas oboje, mene kostalo duplo skuplje, tako da ne - sorry, u praksi ja ne bih da mi neko obecava kako ce me kostati jeftinije da kupim i tebi kafu, probao Obama pa me kostalo 5X skuplje.

 

Obamacare nije univerzalna zdravstvena zastita, ne treba to uopste porediti.

 

Da se razumijemo, ova tema nije vezana samo za Ameriku, vi cete tamo odluciti na kraju, ili bar ovi sto odlucuju, nego vise teoretska rasprava da li svaki covjek kao civilizacijsko dostignuce treba da ima zdravstvenu zastitu.

 

Quote

Jednostavno US se razlikuje od Evrope, ili Kanade, imali su razlicite istorije, i sistemi su se razvili na razlicite nacine.

 

To je totalno nebitno, ni Amerika od prije 30 godina nije ista kao sto je sada, sezdesetih je jos uvijek vladala rasna segregacija, a onda smo dobili crnca kao predsjednika. To je strahovita promjena i jedno civilizacijsko dostignuce, kao sto ce biti i sa zdravstvenom zastitom.

 

3 hours ago, mrd said:

Razmisli ti o tome tradicionalno, posto je US drustvo mnogo dinamicnije od Evropskog i vise je okrenuto ka pojedincu od Evropskog.

 

To je samo jedan mit, cak bih rekao da je kolektivitet u Americi mozda i veci od onoga u Evropi, greatest nation in the world, svuda okacene zastave, ratovanje hiljadama kilometara od kuce jer su ugrozeni nacionalni interesi, enormna ulaganja u vojsku, sve teski kolektivitet. Ima toga jos, mogao bi to da napises mnogo bolje od mene.

Cak i ovde u Kanadi se stalno istice taj kolektivitet, proud to be Canadian itd.

 

3 hours ago, Don Laki Juan said:

Nije to razlog.  Smrtnost je u manje, više očekivanim okvirima i manja je nego u nekim državama u Evropi, ali je virus eksplodirao u visoko naseljenim mestima, pa je i broj obolelih zato skočio, a taj broj obolelih je doveo do povećanog broja smrtnih slučajeva. Stopa smrnosti je međutim nešto niža nego u najjače pogođenim evropskim državama, ali tačan ili približan broj ćemo znati tek po završetku epidemije.

 

Ma problem je sto prezident bukvalno svaki dan ponavlja kao papagaj da niko na svijetu nema bolje mjere, da nema boljih testova, da su najbolji u svakom slucaju, u svim oblastima, Vucic je za njega mala maca, cak bih rekako vrlo skroman, ako se poredi za Trampom.

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Amigo

[melankolic]

Sta opstruira? Nisam videla da je uradio nista da opstruira bilo kakve mere.
A ne znam ni sta nazivas epidemioloskim merama - 50 razlicitih mera?

Kako nije? Zar nije zabranio saradnicima da svedoče? Zar nije istragu nazvao neviđenim napadom na bilo kog predsednika? Zar nije svakog svedoka, čak i onog generala ukrajinskog porekla (kojeg su njegovi lakeji optužili za špijunažu za Ukrajinu) omalovažavao i govorio da ne priznaje njihova svedočenja? Zar nije odbio da svedoči? Zar nisu (republikanci) u HofR odbili da pozovu bilo kog svedoka? Zar nije uticao na sudije Vrhovnog suda?...
Ne znam šta dalje da ti pričam? To je kao kada bih Vučićeve botove ubeđivao kakvim se njihov idol sve koristi metodama da pripreti političkim oponentima / kritičarima.

Što se epidemioloških uputstava tiče, eno, rekao je da se neće držati kao pijan plota preporuka CDC- a, vrhunskog doktora pokušava da diskredituje, pred javnim nastupima traži od epidemiologa da se slože s tim da unošenje dezinfekcionih sredstava ubija viruse i sl.

[Tomiprunet]

44 minutes ago, Yoyogi said:

 

Ne reče Tokyo, koji ima više stanovnika nego cela Kanada, 35 miliona,  i legendarne gužve po vozovima (za sada smanjene za samo 30%) . Japan je jeftino prošao, za sada.

 

Da, nisam napisao Tokio, i jos neke gradove po Japanu, isto kao i po Kini, pa onda po Indiji, ... 

[Don Juan]

20 minutes ago, Amigo said:

Ma problem je sto prezident bukvalno svaki dan ponavlja kao papagaj da niko na svijetu nema bolje mjere, da nema boljih testova, da su najbolji u svakom slucaju, u svim oblastima, Vucic je za njega mala maca, cak bih rekako vrlo skroman, ako se poredi za Trampom.

Ok, ali ovde nije reč o Trampu nego o bolesti koja je zajednički problem kako Amerikanaca, tako i ostalih ljudi na planeti. Sa druge strane, ipak treba dati "credit" medicinskim radnicima u USA koji su ipak imali najveći udar od svih država. Nema to veze sa onim šta lupa Tramp, ili bilo koji političar, nego o jednostavnom ljudskom odnosu prema drugom ljudskom životu. Primetio sam da se čak i sa sarkazmom priča o preminulima od virusa, nebitno da li u USA ili Kini ili bilo gde na svetu, što je zaista morbidno i tužno, i  ne mogu da verujem da su nekome, i kada je reč o ovoj bolesti, i preminulima od ove bolesti, idelogija i politika na prvom mestu.

[mrd]

55 minutes ago, I, Ja Sam Laki said:

Ne pisem o tim ruralnim oblastima, Pariz sa okolinom ima preko 10miliona stanovnika. Rurska oblast u Nemackoj ima stanovnika kao Njujork, nekoliko velikih gradova su bukvalno spojeni. London ima isto preko 10mil stanovnika. Madrid ima preko 5miliona, Barcelona oko 4miliona, Atina ima oko 5 miliona, pa Rim, pa Milano,

 

Quote

Population of Paris Demographics

According to recent estimates, the population of the city of Paris is 2,206,488, representing a small decline in population numbers from 2014.

However, the population of the surrounding suburbs is estimated to be around 10.5 million, which makes it the most populous urban area in the European Union. Today, the people who live in Paris and the surrounding areas have a slightly higher than average income and a younger median age in comparison with the rest of France. These people also are largely diverse and more immigrants live in Paris and its surrounding cities than they do in the rest of France.

 

57 minutes ago, I, Ja Sam Laki said:

Zasto se za ta podrucja ne koristi gustina naseljenosti, vec samo za USA slucajeve pa onda eto tamo je toliko zarazenih jer u Njujorku zivi mnogo ljudi na jednom mestu. Isto kao sto u Evropi mnogo ljudi zivi po ovim gradovima koje sam napisao.

 

Vec celu stranu ti se to objasnjava.

Neophodno je shvatiti da su US i ostali sasvim drugaciji.

[Angelia]

48 minutes ago, nssa said:

 

Zdravstvo u US ima velikog uticaja i na unutrasnju politiku pa ne vidim zasto ne bi moglo biti predmet diskusije.

 

I za tvoju informaciju prilkom iseljavanja ja sam izabrao Kanadu ispred USA, a tokom boravka u Kanadi sam 3 puta odbio ponudu da se preselim

Pa zdravstvo se ne moze menjati ako ne krenes od pocetka, a to je da menjas Ustav, nadam se da razumes koliko je to nemoguca misija.

A za tvoju informaciju - ja sam odbila Kanadu dva puta, kakve to veze ima? Biramo ono sto nam se vise dopada.

 

20 minutes ago, melankolic said:

Kako nije? Zar nije zabranio saradnicima da svedoče? Zar nije istragu nazvao neviđenim napadom na bilo kog predsednika? Zar nije svakog svedoka, čak i onog generala ukrajinskog porekla (kojeg su njegovi lakeji optužili za špijunažu za Ukrajinu) omalovažavao i govorio da ne priznaje njihova svedočenja? Zar nije odbio da svedoči? Zar nisu (republikanci) u HofR odbili da pozovu bilo kog svedoka? Zar nije uticao na sudije Vrhovnog suda?...
Ne znam šta dalje da ti pričam? To je kao kada bih Vučićeve botove ubeđivao kakvim se njihov idol sve koristi metodama da pripreti političkim oponentima / kritičarima.

Što se epidemioloških uputstava tiče, eno, rekao je da se neće držati kao pijan plota preporuka CDC- a, vrhunskog doktora pokušava da diskredituje, pred javnim nastupima traži od epidemiologa da se slože s tim da unošenje dezinfekcionih sredstava ubija viruse i sl.

Nista od toga nema veze sa opstrukcijom mera, to je samo politika. I nista on nije trazio od epidemiologa, pitao je glupo pitanje, dobio je odgovor da to nije razmatrano kao tretman i gotovo.

 

Navedi mi jednu opstrukciju mera. Izmedju ostalog vecina mera i nisu donesene od epidemiologa nego od politicara, zato i jesu razlicite u 50 drzava. A ja sam vec ranije navela da on nema jurisdikciju da o tome odlucuje, moze da kaze svoje misljenje, moze da ukine pomoc (sto bi bio polticki problem, ali u njegovoj jurisdikciji i on to nije uradio).

 

Da bi nesto bila opstrukcija mora da ima akciju koja legalno nije dozvoljena. Inace nemam pojma kakve veze ima Sc sa merama.

[Tomiprunet]

Ali koja je razlika izmedju 10miliona stanovnika oko Pariza i 10 miliona stanovnika u USA? Gustina naseljenosti Pariza 21616na kvadratni km . Gustina naseljenosti New York City 10715 na kvadratni km

[Angelia]

9 minutes ago, I, Ja Sam Laki said:

Ali koja je razlika izmedju 10miliona stanovnika oko Pariza i 10 miliona stanovnika u USA? Gustina naseljenosti Pariza 21616na kvadratni km . Gustina naseljenosti New York City 10715 na kvadratni km

Gledas ceo NYC a ne delove koji su u stvari zarista.

[𝓑𝓪𝓫𝔂]

 

What Do These Hackers Have On Trump, and Why Would Allen Grubman Pay to Suppress It?

 

Quote

The hackers who are holding celebrity lawyer Allen Grubman’s clients’ data for ransom announced on Thursday night that they have another cache of material to release. REvil, the group behind the breachof Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks that was confirmed on Monday, said that it’s doubling its price to $42 million and has a seemingly unrelated target in sight. “The next person we’ll be publishing is Donald Trump,” the hackers wrote in a new post. “There’s an election going on, and we found a ton of dirty laundry.”

Page Six reported the update and noted that Trump hasn’t been a client of Grubman’s so far as anyone can tell, and Business Insider pointed out that Grubman has donated to Democratic campaigns. It’s unclear why Grubman and company would be more incentivized to pay up in order to protect information on Trump, barring a previously unknown connection between the two. (Plus, it’s not like there’s a shortage of existing Trump dirt already out there—it just never seems to do anything.)

“Mr Trump, if you want to stay president, poke a sharp stick at the guys, otherwise you may forget this ambition forever,” REvil continued. “And to you voters, we can let you know that after such a publication, you certainly don’t want to see him as president…The deadline is one week

 

“Grubman, we will destroy your company down to the ground if we don’t see the money,” the group added.

 

REvil has already released some of the firm’s documents, according to Page Six, and a source told the tabloid that Grubman’s “view is, if he paid, the hackers might release the documents anyway. Plus, the FBI has stated this hack is considered an act of international terrorism, and we don’t negotiate with terrorists.” Ransomware attacks are common enough, although they typically operate at a lower key than this bout concerning Grubman’s clients like Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga, and there’s generally not a great way out.

In a statement to Page Six, the firm said, “We have been informed by the experts and the FBI that negotiating with or paying ransom to terrorists is a violation of federal criminal law. Even when enormous ransoms have been paid, the criminals often leak the documents anyway.” None of Grubman’s high-profile clients have commented yet.

 

 

 

[Mama_mia]

On 5/14/2020 at 8:52 PM, melankolic said:

Ako je nešto sigurno, to je da virus ne pravi selekciju ko je bogat a ko siromašan. Umiru i jedni i drugi.
A ko već doživi ARDS teško da će mu pomoći i Mayo.
Ali ti to očigledno ne znaš.

 

 

i to sto kazes, tacno sam se ponela kao da sam licno paris hilton ili marija antoaneta

 

medjutim nisam ja uvela u pricu klinike kao ni denisa, vec sam se nadovezala da niti denis niti lepe klinike ne mogu da budu faktor pomora

 

 izgleda da sam bila nejasna i kada sam sve to povezala sa masovnim grobnicama, no sebi sam bila jasna pa da ne objasnjavam da ako se sahranjuju u mas.grobnice, to samo znaci da nemaju nikoga ko ce ih sahraniti pojedinacno na groblju.

 

i jos nesto, naravno da virus napada svakoga bez obzira na materijalni status, ali siromastvo igra veliku ulogu u riziku od virusa

 

ako znamo kakve sve higijenske mere je trebalo i treba preduzimati, zatim distanciranje i sve ostalo, ako si na ivici egzistencije, zivis na malom prostoru sa mnogo njih, ne znas kakvu prethodnu hronicnu bolest eventualno imas, ili si prinudjen da zaradjujes na rizicnim poslovima jer ne mozes da priustis da ne radis - to jeste veliki rizik i upravo zbog toga je veci procenat umrlih kod afro i hispano porekla,

ili je to meni samo tako preneto sa sarenog menhetna.

 

Azijati u nyc, kazu mi - bolje prolaze, isto bez obzira na materijalni status, klinike mayo i naseg denisa.

 

i da ne ispadne da mislim da bogate virus ne dira, dira i njih, ali ako umru idu u svoj grob a ne u masovni.

 

 

 

 

[Mama_mia]

On 5/15/2020 at 6:40 AM, mrd said:

Upravo tako, ljudi koji su naselili US i pobegli od onoga sto neki hoce da vrate, se jednostavno ne slazu. Cini se da je jako malo onih koji bi US pretvorili u Evropu, posto su iz Evrope i ostalih tradicionalnih kultura bas pobegli. Sto ce reci nije im bilo tamo dobro, sto bi to sto im nije dobro sad pravili u US?

 

Cudna rasprava. 

 

 

zaista.

 

nekako je logicnije da ides tamo gde je sve po tvom,

a ne tamo gde moras da se mucis i toliko toga da menjas da bi bio zadovoljan...

 

broj aplikanata govori da ni trump nije neka prepreka u zelji da se skrase bas na ovom mestu, samo da dodju...no,

mozda zele tamosnji zivot samo kako bi napravili america great again?

 

 

[𝓑𝓪𝓫𝔂]

Odlican poduzi tekst koji daje uvid o Trampovom karakteru i zasto se reagovalo ovako na pandemiju. Tekst jeste dugacak, ali je i sa Trampom neki skandal na dnevnoj bazi. Kopirala sam ga ovde jer znam da mnogi ne otvaraju linkove, ali je uglavnom receno gotovo sve ili bar ono najvaznije... 

 

https://www.ft.com/content/97dc7de6-940b-11ea-abcd-371e24b679ed

Spoiler

Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown

 

When the history is written of how America handled the global era’s first real pandemic, March 6 will leap out of the timeline. That was the day Donald Trump visited the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His foray to the world’s best disease research body was meant to showcase that America had everything under control. It came midway between the time he was still denying the coronavirus posed a threat and the moment he said he had always known it could ravage America.

 

Shortly before the CDC visit, Trump said “within a couple of days, [infections are] going to be down to close to zero”. The US then had 15 cases. “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” A few days afterwards, he claimed: “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” That afternoon at the CDC provides an X-ray into Trump’s mind at the halfway point between denial and acceptance.

 

We now know that Covid-19 had already passed the breakout point in the US. The contagion had been spreading for weeks in New York, Washington state and other clusters. The curve was pointing sharply upwards. Trump’s goal in Atlanta was to assert the opposite.

 

Wearing his “Keep America Great” baseball cap, the US president was flanked by Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, Alex Azar, the US secretary of health and human services, and Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia. In his 47-minute interaction with the press, Trump rattled through his greatest hits.

 

He dismissed CNN as fake news, boasted about his high Fox News viewership, cited the US stock market’s recent highs, called Washington state’s Democratic governor a “snake” and admitted he hadn’t known that large numbers of people could die from ordinary flu. He also misunderstood a question on whether he should cancel campaign rallies for public health reasons. “I haven’t had any problems filling [the stadiums],” Trump said.

 

What caught the media’s attention were two comments he made about the disease. There would be four million testing kits available within a week. “The tests are beautiful,” he said. “Anybody that needs a test gets a test.”

Ten weeks later, that is still not close to being true. Fewer than 3 percent of Americans had been tested by mid-May. Trump also boasted about his grasp of science. He cited a “super genius” uncle, John Trump, who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and implied he inherited his intellect. “I really get it,” he said. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.” Historians might linger on that observation too.

 

What the headlines missed was a boast that posterity will take more seriously than Trump’s self-estimated IQ, or the exaggerated test numbers (the true number of CDC kits by March was 75,000). Trump proclaimed that America was leading the world. South Korea had its first infection on January 20, the same day as America’s first case, and was, he said, calling America for help. “They have a lot of people that are infected; we don’t.” “All I say is, ‘Be calm,’” said the president. “Everyone is relying on us. The world is relying on us.”

He could just as well have said baseball is popular or foreigners love New York. American leadership in any disaster, whether a tsunami or an Ebola outbreak, has been a truism for decades. The US is renowned for helping others in an emergency.

 

In hindsight, Trump’s claim to global leadership leaps out. History will mark Covid-19 as the first time that ceased to be true. US airlifts have been missing in action. America cannot even supply itself.

South Korea, which has a population density nearly 15 times greater and is next door to China, has lost a total of 259 lives to the disease. There have been days when America has lost 10 times that number. The US death toll is now approaching 90,000.

 

What has gone wrong? I interviewed dozens of people, including outsiders who Trump consults regularly, former senior advisers, World Health Organization officials, leading scientists and diplomats, and figures inside the White House. Some spoke off the record.

 

Again and again, the story that emerged is of a president who ignored increasingly urgent intelligence warnings from January, dismisses anyone who claims to know more than him and trusts no one outside a tiny coterie, led by his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner – the property developer who Trump has empowered to sideline the best-funded disaster response bureaucracy in the world.

 

People often observed during Trump’s first three years that he had yet to be tested in a true crisis. Covid-19 is way bigger than that. “Trump’s handling of the pandemic at home and abroad has exposed more painfully than anything since he took office the meaning of America First,” says William Burns, who was the most senior US diplomat, and is now head of the Carnegie Endowment.

“America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.”

The psychology behind Trump’s inaction on Covid-19 was on display that afternoon at the CDC. The unemployment number had come out that morning. The US had added 273,000 jobs in February, bringing the jobless rate down to a near record low of 3.5 per cent. Trump’s re-election chances were looking 50:50 or better. The previous Saturday, Joe Biden had won the South Carolina primary. But the Democratic contest still seemed to have miles to go. Nothing could be allowed to frighten the Dow Jones.

 

Any signal that the US was bracing for a pandemic – including taking actual steps to prepare for it – was discouraged.

“Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it,” says a Trump confidant who speaks to the president frequently. “That advice worked far more powerfully on him than what the scientists were saying. He thinks they always exaggerate.”

Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, who talks regularly to Trump and is a campaign adviser, says the mood was borderline ecstatic in early March. “The economy was just steaming along, the stock market was firing on all cylinders and that jobs report was fantastic,” says Moore. “It was almost too perfect. Nobody expected this virus. It hit us like a meteor or a terrorist attack.”

People in Trump’s orbit are fond of comparing coronavirus to the 9/11 attacks. George W Bush missed red flags in the build-up to al-Qaeda’s Twin Towers attacks. But he was only once explicitly warned of a possible plot a few weeks before it happened. “All right, you’ve covered your ass,” Bush reportedly told the briefer.

 

At some point, Congress is likely to establish a body like the 9/11 Commission to investigate Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The inquiry would find that Trump was warned countless times of the epidemic threat in his presidential daily briefings, by federal scientists, the health secretary Alex Azar, Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, Matt Pottinger, his Asia adviser, by business friends and the world at large. Any report would probably conclude that tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented – even now as Trump pushes to “liberate” states from lockdown.

 

“It is as though we knew for a fact that 9/11 was going to happen for months, did nothing to prepare for it and then shrugged a few days later and said, ‘Oh well, there’s not much we can do about it,’” says Gregg Gonsalves, a public health scholar at Yale University. “Trump could have prevented mass deaths and he didn’t.”

In fairness, other democracies, notably the UK, Italy, and Spain, also wasted time failing to prepare for the approaching onslaught. Whoever was America’s president might have been equally ill-served by Washington infighting.

The CDC has been plagued by mishap and error throughout the crisis. The agency spent weeks trying to develop a jinxed test when it could simply have imported WHO-approved kits from Germany, which has been making them since late January. “The CDC has been missing in action,” says a former senior adviser in the Trump White House. “Because of the CDC’s errors, we did not have a true picture of the spread of the disease.”

 

Here again, though, Trump’s stamp is clear. It was Trump who chose Robert Redfield to head the CDC in spite of widespread warnings about the former military officer’s controversial record. Redfield led the Pentagon’s response to HIV-Aids in the 1980s. It involved isolating suspected soldiers in so-called HIV Hotels. Many who tested positive were dishonorably discharged. Some committed suicide. A devout Catholic, Redfield saw Aids as the product of an immoral society. For many years, he championed a much-hyped remedy that was discredited in tests. That debacle led to his removal from the job in 1994.

“Redfield is about the worst person you could think of to be heading the CDC at this time,” says Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist who has reported on epidemics. “He lets his prejudices interfere with the science, which you cannot afford during a pandemic.”

 

One of the CDC’s constraints was to insist on developing its own test rather than import a foreign one. Dr Anthony Fauci – the infectious disease expert and now a household name – is widely known to loathe Redfield, and vice versa. That meant the CDC and Fauci’s National Institutes of Health were not on the same page. “The last thing you need is scientists fighting with each other in the middle of an epidemic,” says Dr Kenneth Bernard, who set up a previous White House pandemic unit in 2004, which was scrapped under Barack Obama and later revived after Ebola struck in 2014.

The scarcity of kits meant that the scientists lacked a picture of America’s rapidly spreading infections. The CDC was forced to ration tests to “persons under investigation” – people who had come within 6ft of someone who had either visited China or been infected with Covid-19 in the previous 14 days. Most were denied. Few could prove that they had met either criterion. This was at a time when several countries, notably Germany, Taiwan and South Korea, gave access to on-the-spot tests, including at drive-through centres – an option most Americans still lack.

“You’ve been commuting by train or subway into New York every day, you show up sick in the clinic and they refuse to test you because you can’t prove you’ve been within 6ft of someone with Covid-19,” says the former adviser. “You’ve probably been close to half a million people in the previous two weeks.”

 

Restrictions on testing narrow the options. “Once you get to one per cent prevalence in any community, it is too late for non-pharmaceutical interventions to work,” says Tom Bossert, who led the since-disbanded White House pandemic office before he was ejected in 2018 by John Bolton, Trump’s then national security adviser.**

 

By March 11, just five days after Trump’s CDC visit, the reality was beginning to seep through. In an Oval Office broadcast, Trump banned travel from most of Europe, which expanded the partial ban he put on China in February. Two days later, he declared a national emergency. Even then, however, he insisted America was leading the world. “We’ve done a great job because we acted quickly,” he said. “We acted early.

 

Over the next 48 hours, however, something snapped in Trump’s mind. Citing a call with one of his sons, Trump said on March 16: “It’s bad. It’s bad… They think August [before the disease peaks]. Could be July. Could be longer than that.”

 

Eleven days later, Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister contracted Covid-19. The disease nearly killed him. That was Johnson’s road-to-Damascus. Many hoped Trump had had a similar conversion. If so, it did not last long. The next week, he was saying that America should reopen by Easter on April 12. “I was one of the ones advising him to make it ‘Resurrection Sunday,’” says Moore. “I told him then what I think now, that this lockdown is causing more deaths and misery than the disease itself.”

 

Trump’s mindset became increasingly surreal. He began to tout hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19. On March 19, at a regular televised briefing, which he conducted daily for five weeks, often rambling for more than two hours, he depicted the antimalarial drug as a potential magic bullet. It could be “one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine”, he later tweeted.

The president’s leap of faith, which was inspired by Fox News anchors, notably Laura Ingraham, and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, none of whom have a medical background, turned Washington’s bureaucracy upside down. Scientists who demurred were punished. In April, Rick Bright, the federal scientist in charge of developing a vaccine – arguably the most urgent role in government – was removed after blocking efforts to promote hydroxychloroquine.

 

Most clinical trials have shown the drug has no positive impact on Covid-19 patients and can harm people with heart problems. “I was pressured to let politics and cronyism drive decisions over the opinions of the best scientists we have in government,” Bright said in a statement. In a whistleblower complaint, he said he was pressured to send millions of dollars worth of contracts to a company controlled by a friend of Jared Kushner. When he refused, he was fired. The US Department of Health and Human Services denied Bright’s allegations.

Other scientists have taken note of Bright’s fate. During the Ebola outbreak in 2014, when Obama’s administration sent 3,000 US military personnel to Africa to fight the epidemic, the CDC held a daily briefing about the state of progress. It has not held one since early March. Scientists across Washington are terrified of saying anything that contradicts Trump.

 

“The way to keep your job is to out-loyal everyone else, which means you have to tolerate quackery,” says Anthony Scaramucci, an estranged former Trump adviser, who was briefly his White House head of communications. “You have to flatter him in public and flatter him in private. Above all, you must never make him feel ignorant.”

 

An administration official says advising Trump is like “bringing fruits to the volcano” – Trump being the lava source. “You’re trying to appease a great force that’s impervious to reason,” says the official.

When Trump suggested in late April that people could stop Covid-19, or even cure themselves, by injecting disinfectant, such as Lysol or Dettol, his chief scientist, Deborah Birx, did not dare contradict him. The leading bleach companies issued statements urging customers not to inject or ingest disinfectant because it could be fatal. The CDC only issued a cryptic tweet advising Americans to: “Follow the instructions on the product label.”

“I can’t even get my calls returned,” says Garrett. “The CDC has led the response to every disease for decades. Now it has vanished from view.” A former senior Trump official says: “People turn into wusses around Trump. If you stand up to him, you’ll never get back in. What you see in public is what you get in private. He is exactly the same.”

 

America’s foreign partners have had an equally sharp reminder of Trump’s way of doing business. Few western leaders are as ideologically aligned with Trump as Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister. Early into the epidemic, Morrison created a national cabinet that meets at least once a week. It includes every state premier of the two main parties. Morrison’s unity cabinet projects an air of bipartisan resolve in a country that has lost just under 100 people to coronavirus in three months. Some days, America has lost more people to it every hour.

 

Trump, by contrast, plays US state governors against each other, much as he does with his staff. Republican states have received considerably more ventilators and personal protective equipment per capita than Democratic states, in spite of having far lower rates of hospitalisation. Trump says America is fighting a war against Covid-19. In practice, he is stoking national disunity. “It’s like saying to the governors that each state has to produce its own tanks and bullets,” says Bernard. “You’re on your own. It’s not my responsibility.”

 

Trump’s dog-eat-dog instinct has been just as strong abroad as at home. A meeting of G7 foreign ministers in March failed to agree on a statement after Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, insisted they brand it the “Wuhan virus”. America declined to participate in a recent summit hosted by Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, to collaborate on a vaccine.

Most dramatically, Trump has suspended US funding of the WHO, which he says covered up for China’s lying. The WHO confirms that Trump met the then director-general designate, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in the Oval Office in June 2017, shortly before he took up the role. Trump supported his candidacy. Other critics say the Geneva-based body was too ready to take Beijing’s word at face value. There is some truth to that claim. “They were too scared of offending China,” says Bernard, who was America’s WHO director for two years. But its bureaucratic timidity did not stop other countries from taking early precautions.

Trump alleged the WHO’s negligence had increased the world’s death rate “twenty-fold”. In practice, the body must always abide by member state limits, especially the big ones, notably the US and China. That is the reality for all multilateral bodies. The WHO nevertheless declared an international emergency six weeks before Trump’s US announcement. WHO officials say Trump’s move has badly hindered its operations.

 

“You don’t turn off the hose in the middle of the fire, even if you dislike the fireman,” says Bernhard Schwartländer, chief of staff at the WHO. “This virus threatens every country in the world and will exploit any crack in our resolve.” The body, in other words, has fallen victim to US-China hostility.

 

Blaming America’s death rate on China and the WHO could well help Trump’s re-election campaign. Many voters are all too ready to believe the US is a victim of nefarious global forces. Garrett, who is a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, cites Inferno, a lesser-known novel by Dan Brown, author of the best-selling Da Vinci Code, in which the WHO plays a dastardly role.

 

One of its leading characters is a biologist at the CFR. During a pandemic, she kidnaps the head of the WHO and puts him in the think-tank’s basement. He is rescued by a WHO military team that swoops in on the body’s C-130 jet. In reality, the agency has no police powers at all. “We are not like Interpol,” says Schwartländer. The WHO can no more insist on going into Wuhan to investigate the origins of Covid-19 than it can barge into Atlanta to investigate the CDC’s delay in producing a test.

Both the US and China have spread outlandish rumours about the other. Some Chinese officials have circulated the groundless conspiracy theory that the US army planted the virus in Wuhan at an athletics event last year. Trump administration officials, including Pompeo, have repeatedly suggested Covid-19 originated from a bat-to-human transmission in Wuhan’s virology lab.

Last month, Australia called for an international inquiry into the disease’s origins. “Australia’s goal was to defuse conspiracy theories in both China and America,” says Michael Fullilove, head of the Lowy Institute, Australia’s largest think-tank.

 

Days later, Australia’s Daily Telegraph, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, ran an apparent scoop that the “five eyes” – the intelligence agencies of the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – had concluded the disease came from the Wuhan lab, whether by accident or design. It appears the story had no substance. Fauci and other scientists say the pathogen almost certainly came from a wet market in Wuhan. No “five eyes” dossier existed.

 

According to a five eye senior intelligence officer and a figure close to Australia’s government, the Daily Telegraph story probably came from the US embassy in Canberra. There was no chance after its publication that Beijing would agree to an international probe. The report damaged Australia’s hopes of defusing US-China tensions. “We used to think of America as the world’s leading power, not as the epicentre of disease,” says Fullilove, who is an ardent pro-American. “We increasingly feel caught between a reckless China and a feckless America that no longer seems to care about its allies.”*

 

So where does the American chapter of the plague go from here? Early into his partial about-turn, Trump said scientists told him that up to 2.5 million Americans could die of the disease. The most recent estimates suggest 135,000 Americans will die by late July. That means two things.

 

First, Trump will tell voters that he has saved millions of lives. Second, he will continue to push aggressively for US states to lift their lockdowns. His overriding goal is to revive the economy before the general election. Both Trump and Kushner have all but declared mission accomplished on the pandemic. “This is a great success story,” said Kushner in late April. “We have prevailed,” said Trump on Monday.

Economists say a V-shaped recovery is unlikely. Even then it could be two Vs stuck together – a W, in other words. The social mingling resulting from any short-term economic reopening would probably come at the price of a second contagious outburst. As long as the second V began only after November, Trump might just be re-elected.

 

“From Trump’s point of view, there is no choice,” says Charlie Black, a senior Republican consultant and lobbyist. “It is the economy or nothing. He can’t exactly run on his personality.” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, had a slightly different emphasis: “Trump’s campaign will be about China, China, China,” he says. “And hopefully the fact that he rebooted the economy.”

 

In the meantime, Trump will probably continue to dangle the prospect of miracle cures. Every week since the start of the outbreak, he has said a vaccine is just around the corner. His latest estimate is that it will be ready by July. Scientists say it will take a year at best to produce an inoculation. Most say 18 months would be lucky. Even that would break all records. The previous fastest development was four years for mumps in the 1960s.

For the time being, Trump has been persuaded to cease his daily briefings. The White House internal polling shows that his once double-digit lead over Biden among Americans over 65 has been wiped out. It turns out retirees are no fans of herd immunity.

 

Friends of the president are trying to figure out how to return life to normal without provoking a new death toll. After an initial rally in March, Trump’s poll numbers have been steadily dropping over the last month. For the next six months, America’s microbial fate will be in the hands of its president’s erratic re-election strategy. There is more than a whiff of rising desperation.

 

“Trump is caught in a box which keeps getting smaller,” says George Conway, a Republican lawyer who is married to Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior counsellor. “In my view he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist. When a person suffering from these disorders feels the world closing in on them, their tendencies get worse. They lash out and fantasise and lose any ability to think rationally.” Conway is known for taunting Trump on Twitter (to great effect, it should be added: Trump often retaliates).

 

Yet without exception, everyone I interviewed, including the most ardent Trump loyalists, made a similar point to Conway. Trump is deaf to advice, said one. He is his own worst enemy, said another. He only listens to family, said a third. He is mentally imbalanced, said a fourth. America, in other words, should brace itself for a turbulent six months ahead – with no assurance of a safe landing.

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by Baby

[NMX]

38 minutes ago, Baby said:

Odlican poduzi tekst koji daje uvid o Trampovom karakteru i zasto se reagovalo ovako na pandemiju. Tekst jeste dugacak, ali je i sa Trampom neki skandal na dnevnoj bazi. Kopirala sam ga ovde jer znam da mnogi ne otvaraju linkove, ali je uglavnom receno gotovo sve ili bar ono najvaznije... 

 

https://www.ft.com/content/97dc7de6-940b-11ea-abcd-371e24b679ed

  Reveal hidden contents

Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown

 

When the history is written of how America handled the global era’s first real pandemic, March 6 will leap out of the timeline. That was the day Donald Trump visited the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His foray to the world’s best disease research body was meant to showcase that America had everything under control. It came midway between the time he was still denying the coronavirus posed a threat and the moment he said he had always known it could ravage America.

 

Shortly before the CDC visit, Trump said “within a couple of days, [infections are] going to be down to close to zero”. The US then had 15 cases. “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” A few days afterwards, he claimed: “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” That afternoon at the CDC provides an X-ray into Trump’s mind at the halfway point between denial and acceptance.

 

We now know that Covid-19 had already passed the breakout point in the US. The contagion had been spreading for weeks in New York, Washington state and other clusters. The curve was pointing sharply upwards. Trump’s goal in Atlanta was to assert the opposite.

 

Wearing his “Keep America Great” baseball cap, the US president was flanked by Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, Alex Azar, the US secretary of health and human services, and Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia. In his 47-minute interaction with the press, Trump rattled through his greatest hits.

 

He dismissed CNN as fake news, boasted about his high Fox News viewership, cited the US stock market’s recent highs, called Washington state’s Democratic governor a “snake” and admitted he hadn’t known that large numbers of people could die from ordinary flu. He also misunderstood a question on whether he should cancel campaign rallies for public health reasons. “I haven’t had any problems filling [the stadiums],” Trump said.

 

What caught the media’s attention were two comments he made about the disease. There would be four million testing kits available within a week. “The tests are beautiful,” he said. “Anybody that needs a test gets a test.”

Ten weeks later, that is still not close to being true. Fewer than 3 percent of Americans had been tested by mid-May. Trump also boasted about his grasp of science. He cited a “super genius” uncle, John Trump, who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and implied he inherited his intellect. “I really get it,” he said. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.” Historians might linger on that observation too.

 

What the headlines missed was a boast that posterity will take more seriously than Trump’s self-estimated IQ, or the exaggerated test numbers (the true number of CDC kits by March was 75,000). Trump proclaimed that America was leading the world. South Korea had its first infection on January 20, the same day as America’s first case, and was, he said, calling America for help. “They have a lot of people that are infected; we don’t.” “All I say is, ‘Be calm,’” said the president. “Everyone is relying on us. The world is relying on us.”

He could just as well have said baseball is popular or foreigners love New York. American leadership in any disaster, whether a tsunami or an Ebola outbreak, has been a truism for decades. The US is renowned for helping others in an emergency.

 

In hindsight, Trump’s claim to global leadership leaps out. History will mark Covid-19 as the first time that ceased to be true. US airlifts have been missing in action. America cannot even supply itself.

South Korea, which has a population density nearly 15 times greater and is next door to China, has lost a total of 259 lives to the disease. There have been days when America has lost 10 times that number. The US death toll is now approaching 90,000.

 

What has gone wrong? I interviewed dozens of people, including outsiders who Trump consults regularly, former senior advisers, World Health Organization officials, leading scientists and diplomats, and figures inside the White House. Some spoke off the record.

 

Again and again, the story that emerged is of a president who ignored increasingly urgent intelligence warnings from January, dismisses anyone who claims to know more than him and trusts no one outside a tiny coterie, led by his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner – the property developer who Trump has empowered to sideline the best-funded disaster response bureaucracy in the world.

 

People often observed during Trump’s first three years that he had yet to be tested in a true crisis. Covid-19 is way bigger than that. “Trump’s handling of the pandemic at home and abroad has exposed more painfully than anything since he took office the meaning of America First,” says William Burns, who was the most senior US diplomat, and is now head of the Carnegie Endowment.

“America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.”

The psychology behind Trump’s inaction on Covid-19 was on display that afternoon at the CDC. The unemployment number had come out that morning. The US had added 273,000 jobs in February, bringing the jobless rate down to a near record low of 3.5 per cent. Trump’s re-election chances were looking 50:50 or better. The previous Saturday, Joe Biden had won the South Carolina primary. But the Democratic contest still seemed to have miles to go. Nothing could be allowed to frighten the Dow Jones.

 

Any signal that the US was bracing for a pandemic – including taking actual steps to prepare for it – was discouraged.

“Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it,” says a Trump confidant who speaks to the president frequently. “That advice worked far more powerfully on him than what the scientists were saying. He thinks they always exaggerate.”

Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, who talks regularly to Trump and is a campaign adviser, says the mood was borderline ecstatic in early March. “The economy was just steaming along, the stock market was firing on all cylinders and that jobs report was fantastic,” says Moore. “It was almost too perfect. Nobody expected this virus. It hit us like a meteor or a terrorist attack.”

People in Trump’s orbit are fond of comparing coronavirus to the 9/11 attacks. George W Bush missed red flags in the build-up to al-Qaeda’s Twin Towers attacks. But he was only once explicitly warned of a possible plot a few weeks before it happened. “All right, you’ve covered your ass,” Bush reportedly told the briefer.

 

At some point, Congress is likely to establish a body like the 9/11 Commission to investigate Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The inquiry would find that Trump was warned countless times of the epidemic threat in his presidential daily briefings, by federal scientists, the health secretary Alex Azar, Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, Matt Pottinger, his Asia adviser, by business friends and the world at large. Any report would probably conclude that tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented – even now as Trump pushes to “liberate” states from lockdown.

 

“It is as though we knew for a fact that 9/11 was going to happen for months, did nothing to prepare for it and then shrugged a few days later and said, ‘Oh well, there’s not much we can do about it,’” says Gregg Gonsalves, a public health scholar at Yale University. “Trump could have prevented mass deaths and he didn’t.”

In fairness, other democracies, notably the UK, Italy, and Spain, also wasted time failing to prepare for the approaching onslaught. Whoever was America’s president might have been equally ill-served by Washington infighting.

The CDC has been plagued by mishap and error throughout the crisis. The agency spent weeks trying to develop a jinxed test when it could simply have imported WHO-approved kits from Germany, which has been making them since late January. “The CDC has been missing in action,” says a former senior adviser in the Trump White House. “Because of the CDC’s errors, we did not have a true picture of the spread of the disease.”

 

Here again, though, Trump’s stamp is clear. It was Trump who chose Robert Redfield to head the CDC in spite of widespread warnings about the former military officer’s controversial record. Redfield led the Pentagon’s response to HIV-Aids in the 1980s. It involved isolating suspected soldiers in so-called HIV Hotels. Many who tested positive were dishonorably discharged. Some committed suicide. A devout Catholic, Redfield saw Aids as the product of an immoral society. For many years, he championed a much-hyped remedy that was discredited in tests. That debacle led to his removal from the job in 1994.

“Redfield is about the worst person you could think of to be heading the CDC at this time,” says Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist who has reported on epidemics. “He lets his prejudices interfere with the science, which you cannot afford during a pandemic.”

 

One of the CDC’s constraints was to insist on developing its own test rather than import a foreign one. Dr Anthony Fauci – the infectious disease expert and now a household name – is widely known to loathe Redfield, and vice versa. That meant the CDC and Fauci’s National Institutes of Health were not on the same page. “The last thing you need is scientists fighting with each other in the middle of an epidemic,” says Dr Kenneth Bernard, who set up a previous White House pandemic unit in 2004, which was scrapped under Barack Obama and later revived after Ebola struck in 2014.

The scarcity of kits meant that the scientists lacked a picture of America’s rapidly spreading infections. The CDC was forced to ration tests to “persons under investigation” – people who had come within 6ft of someone who had either visited China or been infected with Covid-19 in the previous 14 days. Most were denied. Few could prove that they had met either criterion. This was at a time when several countries, notably Germany, Taiwan and South Korea, gave access to on-the-spot tests, including at drive-through centres – an option most Americans still lack.

“You’ve been commuting by train or subway into New York every day, you show up sick in the clinic and they refuse to test you because you can’t prove you’ve been within 6ft of someone with Covid-19,” says the former adviser. “You’ve probably been close to half a million people in the previous two weeks.”

 

Restrictions on testing narrow the options. “Once you get to one per cent prevalence in any community, it is too late for non-pharmaceutical interventions to work,” says Tom Bossert, who led the since-disbanded White House pandemic office before he was ejected in 2018 by John Bolton, Trump’s then national security adviser.**

 

By March 11, just five days after Trump’s CDC visit, the reality was beginning to seep through. In an Oval Office broadcast, Trump banned travel from most of Europe, which expanded the partial ban he put on China in February. Two days later, he declared a national emergency. Even then, however, he insisted America was leading the world. “We’ve done a great job because we acted quickly,” he said. “We acted early.

 

Over the next 48 hours, however, something snapped in Trump’s mind. Citing a call with one of his sons, Trump said on March 16: “It’s bad. It’s bad… They think August [before the disease peaks]. Could be July. Could be longer than that.”

 

Eleven days later, Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister contracted Covid-19. The disease nearly killed him. That was Johnson’s road-to-Damascus. Many hoped Trump had had a similar conversion. If so, it did not last long. The next week, he was saying that America should reopen by Easter on April 12. “I was one of the ones advising him to make it ‘Resurrection Sunday,’” says Moore. “I told him then what I think now, that this lockdown is causing more deaths and misery than the disease itself.”

 

Trump’s mindset became increasingly surreal. He began to tout hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19. On March 19, at a regular televised briefing, which he conducted daily for five weeks, often rambling for more than two hours, he depicted the antimalarial drug as a potential magic bullet. It could be “one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine”, he later tweeted.

The president’s leap of faith, which was inspired by Fox News anchors, notably Laura Ingraham, and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, none of whom have a medical background, turned Washington’s bureaucracy upside down. Scientists who demurred were punished. In April, Rick Bright, the federal scientist in charge of developing a vaccine – arguably the most urgent role in government – was removed after blocking efforts to promote hydroxychloroquine.

 

Most clinical trials have shown the drug has no positive impact on Covid-19 patients and can harm people with heart problems. “I was pressured to let politics and cronyism drive decisions over the opinions of the best scientists we have in government,” Bright said in a statement. In a whistleblower complaint, he said he was pressured to send millions of dollars worth of contracts to a company controlled by a friend of Jared Kushner. When he refused, he was fired. The US Department of Health and Human Services denied Bright’s allegations.

Other scientists have taken note of Bright’s fate. During the Ebola outbreak in 2014, when Obama’s administration sent 3,000 US military personnel to Africa to fight the epidemic, the CDC held a daily briefing about the state of progress. It has not held one since early March. Scientists across Washington are terrified of saying anything that contradicts Trump.

 

“The way to keep your job is to out-loyal everyone else, which means you have to tolerate quackery,” says Anthony Scaramucci, an estranged former Trump adviser, who was briefly his White House head of communications. “You have to flatter him in public and flatter him in private. Above all, you must never make him feel ignorant.”

 

An administration official says advising Trump is like “bringing fruits to the volcano” – Trump being the lava source. “You’re trying to appease a great force that’s impervious to reason,” says the official.

When Trump suggested in late April that people could stop Covid-19, or even cure themselves, by injecting disinfectant, such as Lysol or Dettol, his chief scientist, Deborah Birx, did not dare contradict him. The leading bleach companies issued statements urging customers not to inject or ingest disinfectant because it could be fatal. The CDC only issued a cryptic tweet advising Americans to: “Follow the instructions on the product label.”

“I can’t even get my calls returned,” says Garrett. “The CDC has led the response to every disease for decades. Now it has vanished from view.” A former senior Trump official says: “People turn into wusses around Trump. If you stand up to him, you’ll never get back in. What you see in public is what you get in private. He is exactly the same.”

 

America’s foreign partners have had an equally sharp reminder of Trump’s way of doing business. Few western leaders are as ideologically aligned with Trump as Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister. Early into the epidemic, Morrison created a national cabinet that meets at least once a week. It includes every state premier of the two main parties. Morrison’s unity cabinet projects an air of bipartisan resolve in a country that has lost just under 100 people to coronavirus in three months. Some days, America has lost more people to it every hour.

 

Trump, by contrast, plays US state governors against each other, much as he does with his staff. Republican states have received considerably more ventilators and personal protective equipment per capita than Democratic states, in spite of having far lower rates of hospitalisation. Trump says America is fighting a war against Covid-19. In practice, he is stoking national disunity. “It’s like saying to the governors that each state has to produce its own tanks and bullets,” says Bernard. “You’re on your own. It’s not my responsibility.”

 

Trump’s dog-eat-dog instinct has been just as strong abroad as at home. A meeting of G7 foreign ministers in March failed to agree on a statement after Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, insisted they brand it the “Wuhan virus”. America declined to participate in a recent summit hosted by Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, to collaborate on a vaccine.

Most dramatically, Trump has suspended US funding of the WHO, which he says covered up for China’s lying. The WHO confirms that Trump met the then director-general designate, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in the Oval Office in June 2017, shortly before he took up the role. Trump supported his candidacy. Other critics say the Geneva-based body was too ready to take Beijing’s word at face value. There is some truth to that claim. “They were too scared of offending China,” says Bernard, who was America’s WHO director for two years. But its bureaucratic timidity did not stop other countries from taking early precautions.

Trump alleged the WHO’s negligence had increased the world’s death rate “twenty-fold”. In practice, the body must always abide by member state limits, especially the big ones, notably the US and China. That is the reality for all multilateral bodies. The WHO nevertheless declared an international emergency six weeks before Trump’s US announcement. WHO officials say Trump’s move has badly hindered its operations.

 

“You don’t turn off the hose in the middle of the fire, even if you dislike the fireman,” says Bernhard Schwartländer, chief of staff at the WHO. “This virus threatens every country in the world and will exploit any crack in our resolve.” The body, in other words, has fallen victim to US-China hostility.

 

Blaming America’s death rate on China and the WHO could well help Trump’s re-election campaign. Many voters are all too ready to believe the US is a victim of nefarious global forces. Garrett, who is a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, cites Inferno, a lesser-known novel by Dan Brown, author of the best-selling Da Vinci Code, in which the WHO plays a dastardly role.

 

One of its leading characters is a biologist at the CFR. During a pandemic, she kidnaps the head of the WHO and puts him in the think-tank’s basement. He is rescued by a WHO military team that swoops in on the body’s C-130 jet. In reality, the agency has no police powers at all. “We are not like Interpol,” says Schwartländer. The WHO can no more insist on going into Wuhan to investigate the origins of Covid-19 than it can barge into Atlanta to investigate the CDC’s delay in producing a test.

Both the US and China have spread outlandish rumours about the other. Some Chinese officials have circulated the groundless conspiracy theory that the US army planted the virus in Wuhan at an athletics event last year. Trump administration officials, including Pompeo, have repeatedly suggested Covid-19 originated from a bat-to-human transmission in Wuhan’s virology lab.

Last month, Australia called for an international inquiry into the disease’s origins. “Australia’s goal was to defuse conspiracy theories in both China and America,” says Michael Fullilove, head of the Lowy Institute, Australia’s largest think-tank.

 

Days later, Australia’s Daily Telegraph, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, ran an apparent scoop that the “five eyes” – the intelligence agencies of the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – had concluded the disease came from the Wuhan lab, whether by accident or design. It appears the story had no substance. Fauci and other scientists say the pathogen almost certainly came from a wet market in Wuhan. No “five eyes” dossier existed.

 

According to a five eye senior intelligence officer and a figure close to Australia’s government, the Daily Telegraph story probably came from the US embassy in Canberra. There was no chance after its publication that Beijing would agree to an international probe. The report damaged Australia’s hopes of defusing US-China tensions. “We used to think of America as the world’s leading power, not as the epicentre of disease,” says Fullilove, who is an ardent pro-American. “We increasingly feel caught between a reckless China and a feckless America that no longer seems to care about its allies.”*

 

So where does the American chapter of the plague go from here? Early into his partial about-turn, Trump said scientists told him that up to 2.5 million Americans could die of the disease. The most recent estimates suggest 135,000 Americans will die by late July. That means two things.

 

First, Trump will tell voters that he has saved millions of lives. Second, he will continue to push aggressively for US states to lift their lockdowns. His overriding goal is to revive the economy before the general election. Both Trump and Kushner have all but declared mission accomplished on the pandemic. “This is a great success story,” said Kushner in late April. “We have prevailed,” said Trump on Monday.

Economists say a V-shaped recovery is unlikely. Even then it could be two Vs stuck together – a W, in other words. The social mingling resulting from any short-term economic reopening would probably come at the price of a second contagious outburst. As long as the second V began only after November, Trump might just be re-elected.

 

“From Trump’s point of view, there is no choice,” says Charlie Black, a senior Republican consultant and lobbyist. “It is the economy or nothing. He can’t exactly run on his personality.” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, had a slightly different emphasis: “Trump’s campaign will be about China, China, China,” he says. “And hopefully the fact that he rebooted the economy.”

 

In the meantime, Trump will probably continue to dangle the prospect of miracle cures. Every week since the start of the outbreak, he has said a vaccine is just around the corner. His latest estimate is that it will be ready by July. Scientists say it will take a year at best to produce an inoculation. Most say 18 months would be lucky. Even that would break all records. The previous fastest development was four years for mumps in the 1960s.

For the time being, Trump has been persuaded to cease his daily briefings. The White House internal polling shows that his once double-digit lead over Biden among Americans over 65 has been wiped out. It turns out retirees are no fans of herd immunity.

 

Friends of the president are trying to figure out how to return life to normal without provoking a new death toll. After an initial rally in March, Trump’s poll numbers have been steadily dropping over the last month. For the next six months, America’s microbial fate will be in the hands of its president’s erratic re-election strategy. There is more than a whiff of rising desperation.

 

“Trump is caught in a box which keeps getting smaller,” says George Conway, a Republican lawyer who is married to Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s senior counsellor. “In my view he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist. When a person suffering from these disorders feels the world closing in on them, their tendencies get worse. They lash out and fantasise and lose any ability to think rationally.” Conway is known for taunting Trump on Twitter (to great effect, it should be added: Trump often retaliates).

 

Yet without exception, everyone I interviewed, including the most ardent Trump loyalists, made a similar point to Conway. Trump is deaf to advice, said one. He is his own worst enemy, said another. He only listens to family, said a third. He is mentally imbalanced, said a fourth. America, in other words, should brace itself for a turbulent six months ahead – with no assurance of a safe landing.

 

 

Dobar tekst.

 

Inače, koliko sam ja zaljubljen u Ameriku i koliko volim da je idealizujem pokazuje i ovaj post...koliko sam promašio sunce ti jbm

 

[𝓑𝓪𝓫𝔂]

2 minutes ago, NMX said:

 

Dobar tekst.

 

Inače, koliko sam ja zaljubljen u Ameriku i koliko volim da je idealizujem pokazuje i ovaj post...koliko sam promašio sunce ti jbm

 

 

Welcome to the club!

 

Amerika je uvek imala nekih svojih problema, medjutim ova Trampova Amerika je neka sasvim druga Amerika i sasvim neka druga dimenzija od one koju mi znamo. Evo ja se uveravam na licu mesta u te razlicitosti i transformacije koje dozivljava. Moram priznati da sam veoma tuzna i veoma besna. Za mene je ovo bio raj na zemlji... sa akcentom na "bio" 

 

[sasa965]

Da li je Tramp uzrok ili opravdanje ?

[mrd]

Da li je Tramp uzrok ili opravdanje ?

Tromp je otvorio Pandorinu kutiju i kompenzovao revolt protiv dems/reps. Jedini u grupi nije praktikovao politiku kao karijeru.

Sent from my LM-G710VM using Tapatalk

[Angelia]

8 minutes ago, sasa965 said:

Da li je Tramp uzrok ili opravdanje ?

Od kako je dobio izbore on je izgovor za sve, ukljucujuci i stvari koje dems radi, jbga "isprovocirao nas"....

Ljudi koji pate od TDS ne primecuju da im je logika uvrnuta, ili da je nekad uopste nema.

Jos se nisu dogovorili da li je zli genije ili totalna budala, nesposoban, ali ce uvesti diktaturu....ustvari obicno je sve to odjednom. Samo nemoj da ukazujes da to nema smisla.

[Amigo]

1 hour ago, Angelia said:

Jos se nisu dogovorili da li je zli genije ili totalna budala, nesposoban, ali ce uvesti diktaturu....ustvari obicno je sve to odjednom. 

 

 Nema tu nikakve dileme, nije on nikakav genije, nego jedan obican narcisoidni lazov koji nije nista uradio od onog sto je obecao, npr da napravi zid koji ce da plati Meksiko 🇲🇩🤥

[Yoyogi]

australijski sajt 

 

news.com.au

 

koji je ekvivalent tabloida kao  "Kurir" obično nije dirao Trampa. Tu se informišu rednecks. Tamo obavezno zalazim da vidim šta oni misle, šta misli fina štampa to već znam.

Evo, danas, i njima je postalo neprijatno da prećutkuju ili glaziraju njegove budalaštine. Deo članka je ovaj, bold je njihova objava da više ne mogu da ćute:

 

“Don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world. But why? Because we do more testing,” Mr Trump told workers at a medical supply plant in Pennsylvania yesterday.

“When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases.

“They don’t want to write that. It’s just common sense.”

If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases.

This is a stupid statement. It is not “controversial” or “bizarre” or “unconventional”, or any of the other words we traditionally use to sanitise the absurd things that come out of Mr Trump’s mouth with such depressing regularity.

It is just pure, weapons-grade stupid.

It’s like saying that if you don’t use pregnancy tests, you’ll never have a baby. Or that if police stop investigating murders, the amount of crime will drop.

[𝓑𝓪𝓫𝔂]

2 hours ago, Angelia said:

Od kako je dobio izbore on je izgovor za sve, ukljucujuci i stvari koje dems radi, jbga "isprovocirao nas"....

Ljudi koji pate od TDS ne primecuju da im je logika uvrnuta, ili da je nekad uopste nema.

Jos se nisu dogovorili da li je zli genije ili totalna budala, nesposoban, ali ce uvesti diktaturu....ustvari obicno je sve to odjednom. Samo nemoj da ukazujes da to nema smisla.

 

Ne znam za ovaj TDS mislis na mene, ili na drugu polovinu Amerike koja vidi nesto sto neki ne zele da vide?

 

Jbg meni je uvrnuta logika da neko veruje u #OBAMAGATE iliti vrhunac debilizma. 

[mrd]

Interesantno je to, da je mnogima od svih predizbornih DT slogana samo zid u sećanju. To upravo govori o profilu i interesu glasača. Ovo se ne vezuje samo za US, već sve zemlje sveta.

Sent from my LM-G710VM using Tapatalk

[Angelia]

3 hours ago, Amigo said:

 

 Nema tu nikakve dileme, nije on nikakav genije, nego jedan obican narcisoidni lazov koji nije nista uradio od onog sto je obecao, npr da napravi zid koji ce da plati Meksiko 🇲🇩🤥

Znaci debil, odlicno, znaci nije nikakva opasnost za upropascavanje US, niti neki buduci diktator, osim ako ne mislis da su svi glasaci i gradjani US debili.

2 hours ago, Baby said:

 

Ne znam za ovaj TDS mislis na mene, ili na drugu polovinu Amerike koja vidi nesto sto neki ne zele da vide?

 

Jbg meni je uvrnuta logika da neko veruje u #OBAMAGATE iliti vrhunac debilizma. 

Mislim na one kojima je DT krivac za sve a da ne vide da to nema logike.

 

Ti povremeno potezes neke stvari koje nemaju smisla, tipa DT ukinuo lockdown u NYC, a nije, niti moze (dokazano da se to nije desilo)....da li stvarno verujes u to - nemam pojma.

[𝓑𝓪𝓫𝔂]

Just now, Angelia said:

Mislim na one kojima je DT krivac za sve a da ne vide da to nema logike.

 

Ti povremeno potezes neke stvari koje nemaju smisla, tipa DT ukinuo lockdown u NYC, a nije, niti moze (dokazano da se to nije desilo)....da li stvarno verujes u to - nemam pojma.

 

Naravno da nije krivac za sve, ali je krivac za dosta toga. Meni nije ni jasno da neko ima uvek za svako njegovo sranje opravdanje i brani kao da mu se o zivotu radi. Ovo oko virusa je bez presedana kriv, a jos ce prikazati kao uspeh i naravno kult ce se primiti jer nisu umrli milioni. On ladno svakodnevno daje izjave kako je US super prosla, a eto jadna Francuska, Nemacka... pa mora ventilatore da im salje. Jbt ko to guta da mi je znati?

 

Andjo, ja nemam pojma zasto toliko ignorisete sta se desava? Kladim se da nisi procitala tekst gore gde si mogla da nadjes da pola njegove "svite" misli o njemu lose, ali cute i trpe, lupaju gluposti i baronisu da ne bi ostali bez dobro placenog i uglavnom nezasluzenog posla. U krajnjem slucaju, nije to jedini tekst, mozes naci gomilu (sramezljivih) izjava gde pokusavaju da balansiraju, kazu nesto, ali ne prejako... da bi sacuvali guzice. 

 

Mislim, ja kada slusam i gledam Trampa, sta govori i sta radi, pa ne nalazim puno smisla u "ovo je US svi hoce ovamo" i slicne nebuloze koje se ovde pisu... dok naoruzana ekipa stoji da ukine lockdown pred gradskom kucom u ime slobode. 

 

Mislim, u cemu je caka sa Trampom, sa bilo kojim predsednikom? Bre treba ih metlati kada ne valjaju, ko ih bre...