DeWine: School Buildings will not reopen this Spring

[BASESWIMPARENT]

I (respectfully) disagree.

The pandemic response team, under the auspice of the National Security Council, was the US' best collection of experts put together to formulate biodefense policy to protect from an unbridled contagion causing significant harm to American society. There is some debate as to whether it was "disbanded" (John Bolton says it was "streamlined"), but there are prominent arguments claiming that the disbanding/streamlining of the pandemic response team inhibited the US' ability to plan, prepare, study and suggest preventative measures aimed at minimizing the impact of the coronavirus stateside. See: USA Today, 3/18/20.

The "pandemic playbook", crafted at the tail end of the Obama presidency as a response and remediation of policy failures (lessons to be learned) from the Ebola virus outbreak of 2014, was reportedly never touched or utilized. This playbook calls out the need to procure PPE, even if it means invoking the Defense Protection Act early on to ramp up the supply. Instead, we saw... states engage in bidding wars for the scarce PPE in our country, and even the New England Patriots going to China and delivering 1 million N95 masks to the state of Massachusetts. Politico, 3/25/20.

Donald Trump was briefed by the intelligence community twice in January about the threat of the novel coronavirus. Bloomberg, 3/3/20. While the White House defends against the idea that nothing was done and replies "travel was banned from China", this is a specious argument because it is understood that the coronavirus outbreak in New York City originated from SARS-CoV-2 transmission by Europeans ABC News, 4/9/20 and research published in the last couple of days is indicating that the vast majority of COVID-19 spread is linked to carrier travel that originated stateside in New York City before NY went on lockdown. Donald Trump is probably not to blame for the fact it extended beyond New York City (that really isn't Cuomo's fault either, as New York is a World City) but the lack of guidance, established rules, lack of testing, lack of preparation in the month of February (leading into March) is inexcusable.

The most recent indictment that suggests that Donald Trump has to be held accountable for actions amidst these times is the report published yesterday that says he is not listening to what the CDC is saying on how the economy should be "re-opened" Chicago Tribune, 5/7/20. Like, I think everyone wants the economy to be re-opened. Of course. Donald, the best collection of public health minds in the United States is giving you their advice how to re-open the economy safely. Listen to them. It is a hard enough sell right now to get consumer confidence going in these times, and the Senate GOP is even saying this themselves MSN, 5/7/20.

The Intelligence did brief him twice, do you know what he did, he turned to his health experts and they said don't sweat it yet. You do know that all the public health officials were talking about this long before they started shutting things down right? Dr. Acton has said that on numerable occasions. You do know that Dr. Acton has said that that think the virus was active in the United States as early as late November, early December, right and that the Public Health Officials missed it, right. This might be the reason thy were so aggressive with the shut down You do know that for reasons beyond the President's control that most our PPE is made overseas, right? And you do know that every time, Trump's health advisors told to him to act he did. Finally , you do know that 30 Million Americans are unemployed right now and because we did not test, isolate and quarantine (which is what you do to fight an epidemic), the government is forced to open up things just to get some money flowing through the economy otherwise we will be looking like the mid-thirties again. And finally, you do know that almost a third of the deaths are from people in rest homes (you know the most vulnerable). So the strategy to quarantine the healthy did not help them at all (I am looking at you Governor Cuomo). So let's stop the blame game and start developing some targeted strategies that will save the most vulnerable because leaving them in their retirement homes is akin to a death sentence.

 

[ShoelessJoe]

The whole point being that we understand, before our eyes, that there is demonstrable proof that our federal government was not prepared for the coronavirus. And it should have been. In the absence of a prepared, coordinated response at the national level to monitor the contagion and shape distancing policies to try and stem off / reduce transmissions of COVID-19, Mike DeWine and Andrew Cuomo were left with no choice but to look at their top public health officials & have them shape the policy for their own states based off imperfect sets of data (leading to modeling) on a virus little was known about in early March.

I'm not at all suggesting the models or policies enacted in Ohio were optimal or beyond criticism, but frankly their implementation and its effects on Ohio society is ultimately beyond DeWine and Acton: it goes straight to the fact our federal government was not prepared when it should have been and thus the states (looking out for the health of their citizens) were left but no choice to implement imperfect measures that the public health community believed to be the best course of action.

Hey Doc....You have made your point...You are obviously one of those with TDS whose first thought every day and all day long is how can I bash and destroy D. Trump. That decease is bigger and likely more destructive than the pandemic. Is causes people not to think straight and make bad decisions. Certainly I don't like everything Trump does or says but he doesn't hide or shy away from making tough decisions. Our leaders whether the President, Governor, Mayors, etc. are in a tough position they didn't ask for or create. Like them or not we need to respect their efforts and if you disagree with them do it in a respectful way. For a long time I and many others have just kept our mouths shut about the ranting people with TDS. I am not going to do that any longer.

 

[The Dock]

Hey Doc....You have made your point...You are obviously one of those with TDS whose first thought every day and all day long is how can I bash and destroy D. Trump. That decease is bigger and likely more destructive than the pandemic. Is causes people not to think straight and make bad decisions. Certainly I don't like everything Trump does or says but he doesn't hide or shy away from making tough decisions. Our leaders whether the President, Governor, Mayors, etc. are in a tough position they didn't ask for or create. Like them or not we need to respect their efforts and if you disagree with them do it in a respectful way. For a long time I and many others have just kept our mouths shut about the ranting people with TDS. I am not going to do that any longer.

lol