Report: Trump Ignored Pleas To Put Social Distancing Practices In Place, Warnings Of A Pandemic

Matt Perez Forbes Staff

Apr 11, 2020,06:17pm EDT

Topline: A new report from the New York Times details early warnings issued to President Trump and his administration throughout early January and February that were ignored because of potential impacts to the economy and trade relations with China, including guidance for social distancing practices weeks before they were issued by the president.

Dr. Robert Kadlec, the Department of Health and Human Services' lead on disaster response, met with the White House's coronavirus task force on February 21, and the group concluded that social distancing measures including school closures would need to take place soon.

The group intended to present Trump with their plan after he returned from a trip from India—a February 14 memo prepared with the National Security Council went over guidelines like cancelling sporting events and issuing stay-at-home directives nationwide—but on February 25, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, put out a public warning that echoed the task force's plan but infuriated Trump as it impacted the stock market.

Instead of conducting a meeting with the task force about the need for social distancing, Trump instead had a briefing on February 26 where he replaced Dr. Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, as the head of the coronavirus task force with Vice President Mike Pence, with a focus on controlling the message so as not to impact the economy.

The report also details the struggles officials went through in convincing Trump and his administration to put in place social distancing measures, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who argued with national security adviser Robert O'Brien during an Oval Office meeting, claiming the economy could be destroyed.

Trump reportedly pushed back against social distancing because his "business friends" told him it would hurt the economy. Senior adviser Jared Kushner brought in former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb to convince Trump, and Pence also tried to help, but it was Dr. Deborah Birx, now a familiar face on the coronavirus task force, who finally got through to Trump.

Echoing a Washington Post report in March, officials in early January were reportedly issuing early warnings of the pandemic, with the State Department's epidemiologist writing the virus could turn into a pandemic and biodefense experts in the National Security Council telling officials to think about preparations for city-sized quarantines.

Azar in particular was reportedly told by Trump in January to "stop panicking" after he called him about a potential pandemic, and a plan by Azar to set up surveillance in five cities that would have cost $100 million fell through in February as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent struggled to issue working tests.

Tangent: The report also focuses on the touchy relationship between the White House and the Chinese government. Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, was warned early on in January by a Hong Kong epidemiologist that China was not being truthful about the spread of the virus. Described as a China hawk, Pottinger and others pushed the administration to blame China while economic advisers to Trump pushed back as they worked through a trade deal with the government. The debates eventually led to a restriction of foreign nationals traveling from China on January 31, a move consistently touted by Trump as a sign he acted early. However, no other broad actions were taken in February to prepare and address the pandemic, with senators in a briefing on February 5 telling Trump's administration to take the threat seriously and offering money to help state and local departments. While Trump tweeted praise to China early on, a war of words began to brew between the two nations, with Trump using the phrase "Wuhan Virus" throughout March.

Crucial Quote: In an email exchange with other experts after Trump issued travel restrictions between European countries on March 11, Dr. James Lawler, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said "We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window and are making decisions based on intuition."

Chief Critic: President Trump. After the publication of the New York Times story, Trump lashed out on Twitter Saturday, calling the accounts made up. "When the Failing [New York Times] or Amazon [Washington Post] writes a story saying 'unnamed sources said,' or any such phrase where a person’s name is not used, don’t believe them. Most of these unnamed sources don’t exist. They are made up to defame and disparage."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/04/11/report-trump-ignored-pleas-to-put-social-distancing-practices-in-place-warnings-of-a-pandemic/#30d76aa0751f

April 11, 2020, 5:05 PM CDT

By Jonathan Allen, Phil McCausland and Cyrus Farivar

WILMINGTON, Del. — The coronavirus presented DuPont, the chemical giant based here, with a golden business opportunity.

In January, the company convened a crisis team to figure out how to ramp up global production of personal protective equipment, including suits made out of its patented Tyvek material, which normally sell for about $5 apiece to hospitals. By early March, as the disease began to spread in the United States, DuPont's factory in Richmond, Virginia, was cranking out Tyvek.

It usually takes up to three months to ship the material to Vietnam, where it is sewn into body suits, and get it back. When the federal government offered to pay for chartered flights to reduce the roundtrip for 750,000 items to 10 days, DuPont agreed.

'The Children' and the '40-40-20' formula

The two priorities that officials say have not been sacrificed by Trump or his supply chain task force, dubbed “the children” inside FEMA’s headquarters, are private profit and the ability of the White House to choose where supplies go.

Members of the team include friends and close allies of Kushner, who is also the president’s son-in-law. Brad Smith, described as a “volunteer” because he is on loan from his job as deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is a Kushner friend who has been involved in its work.

The supply chain task force leaders pushed aside the existing federal emergency management response teams that had long-established methods for engaging assistance from the public and private sectors. Instead, they first reached out to personal contacts, according to people familiar with their operations. To the extent that they have absorbed some of the old practices over the course of time, with the help of career officials intent on bringing their actions in line with protocol, it has taken time to figure out their own system.

"Jared and his friends decided they were going to do their thing," said the senior government official involved in the response effort. "It cost weeks."

The senior administration official familiar with the task force’s work described a race to procure supplies of ventilators, test kits and protective equipment in the midst of a chaotic moment in which governors, mayors and hospital systems were demanding more than they needed. The supply-chain team had the ability to win bids and then either distribute the goods to directly, allocate them through the federal share of purchases or simply turn over contracts to states, this person said.

But when it comes to determining need, the source said, Kushner and his team have taken their time to require that governors and mayors have a handle on how much equipment they already have at their disposal and what they can get their hands on — some governors are smarter and more resourceful than others, the source added.

In one wrinkle that has had repercussions for small businesses and communities around the country, the task force ended FEMA's long-running practice of using its regional offices to locate, pay for and acquire goods from smaller local vendors in an emergency, preferring instead to contract with heavyweights.

One potential supplier whose officials spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity to avoid hurting future contract opportunities was originally contacted by a FEMA regional official in mid-March about producing face shields, which are needed by medical personnel to avoid being sprayed with virus particles by patients.

The supplier initially bought $20,000 of material and told the regional office that production could be ramped up to 10,000 face shields per day, using a supply chain based fully in the U.S., almost immediately. But word came back that under the new system, the regional office couldn't approve the buy. The application would have to go through the main federal acquisition system, where it still sits.

"That was a hell of an investment on our part that was met with layer upon layer upon layer of resistance and difficulty," one official from the small supplier said Friday.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-coronavirus-task-force-amassed-power-it-boosted-industry-n1180786

>>8761697

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>>8761838

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>>8761955

do you want to write a book

Compare and contrast

The eye opening scene from "An Andalusian Dog" (1929) or "Un Chien Andalou" with Salvador Dalí as Man on Beach.

The scene where Oja Kodar steps in the bathroom where various hippies are engaged in various sex acts. A young girl eats ice from a bucket and between her dress. Her lover gives her a doll. She takes a pair of scissors and hacks off the doll's hair, and then cuts its eyes out from "The Other Side of the Wind" (2018) by George Orson Welles.