GOOD ADVICE: DO NOT LISTEN TO THE PRESIDENT REGARDING THE CORONAVIRUS!

…The president, lying to the American people

As ususal, the truth and the US president have nothing in common

The Coronavirus  is a serious issue for both the United States and the world in general.  After a very inaccurate lengthy news conference, the president needs to be called out for all that he said that was wrong.

Here is just some the basics of what he said, and what is the truth:

Per the president: “Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low.”

The truth: Multiple public health officials from the administration have contradicted that prediction, which appears rooted in the idea that US flu season generally ends in the spring. The virus is spreading in Singapore, where temperatures are akin to summer in the United States. This virus is new, so there is no widespread immunity, which is why so many people are vulnerable to being infected by it.

Asked whether he agreed that the new coronavirus would be gone by April, Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Congress he did not. “It is prudent to assume this pathogen will be with us for some time to come,” he said.

Per Trump: “As most of you know, the level that we’ve had in our country is very low, and those people are getting better, or we think almost all cases, they’re better or are getting….we have a total of 15. We took in some from Japan, you heard about that because they are American citizens, and they are in quarantine. And they are getting better, too. But we felt we had an obligation to do that. It could have been as many as 42.”

The truth: There are 60 confirmed cases of Americans who have returned from overseas, but the figure of 15 cited by Trump includes only cases detected and tested in the United States. More than 40 were diagnosed overseas and returned to the United States on State Department-chartered flights.  We now have the first US Death from the Coronavirus.

The numbers in the US may seem low, but there has not been widespread testing, either. (The CDC had sent out faulty test kits.) As of Feb. 26, the CDC said, only 445 people had been tested in the United States. By contrast,66,652 people at that point had been tested in South Korea, resulting in 1,766 confirmed cases. (About 25,000 people who had been tested in Korea were still awaiting lab results.)

Trump would have been more accurate if he had said it is unclear how many cases are in the United States.

Per Trump: “The flu in our country kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. That was shocking to me. And so far, if you look at what we have with the 15 people and their recovery. One is — one is pretty sick but hopefully will recover.”

Trump appeared very casual about learning some basic public health information…such as the number of deaths annually from the seasonal flu.  The precise number is not known, but the CDC offers estimates that in the past decade range from a low of 12,000 in the 2011-2012 season to a high of 61,000 in the 2017-2018 season.

But Trump misleadingly compares those numbers with the known cases of covid-19 [Coronavirus] in the United States. Tens of millions of people each year come down with the flu, possibly as many as 58 million in 2017-2018. The fatality rate in the United States from the seasonal flu is 0.1 percent. The new coronavirus fatality rate is considered 20 times higher, but no one really knows for sure.

As Trump spoke, the CDC announced that it had “confirmed an infection with the virus that causes covid-19 in California in a person who reportedly did not have relevant travel history or exposure to another known But Trump misleadingly compares those numbers with the known cases of covid-19 in the United States. Tens of millions of people each year come down with the flu…..possibly as many as 58 million in 2017-2018.

Per Trump: “We’re rapidly developing a vaccine and they can speak to you. … The vaccine is coming along well. And in speaking to the doctors, we think this is something that we can develop fairly rapidly, a vaccine for the future and coordinate with the support of our partners.”

Why wouldn’t Trump be enthusiastic about the prospect of a vaccine? It represents a clear solution. The problem is, according to Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH),  any vaccine would not be “applicable to the epidemic unless we really wait about a year to a year and a half.” In other words, although NIH is moving the fastest it ever has, there is no chance a vaccine would be ready to help people in proximity to the virus now.

Fauci did, however, say researchers will know “reasonably soon” whether there is a therapeutic treatment, a standard of care, or an existing drug or combination.

Trump has put Vice President Mike Pence as a so called Virus Czar.

Vice President Pence’s record on public health is not “tremendous” as Trump states.  In fact, it is mixed at best.

As governor of Indiana, Pence was widely criticized for his handling of an HIV outbreak among intravenous drug users. Local, state and federal health officials urged the then-governor to allow clean needles to be distributed to help slow the outbreak. Despite their recommendations, it was more than two months before Pence issued an executive order that allowed syringes to be distributed. The program helped slow a flood of HIV cases to a trickle.  But a 2018 study from Yale University found that the epidemic could have been prevented if Pence and state officials had acted faster.

But per Trump: “Mike has been very good, very adept. Anybody that knows anything about health care, they look at the Indiana model. And it has been a very great success, it has been a tremendous model in terms of health care. And this is really an offshoot of that.”

Totally not true.

Also Per Trump: “I don't think it's inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we're totally prepared.”

Here, Trump contradicts Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who a day earlier had said: “Ultimately, we will see community spread in this country. It’s not a question of if but rather a question of when and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

Per Trump: “This is a list of the different countries, United States is rated number one most prepared. United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Sweden, Denmark, South Korea, Finland, these — this is a list of the best-rated countries in the world by Johns Hopkins.”

Trump was referring to the Global Health Security Index, which the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security first issued in October. The university responded to Trump’s call-out by posting this statement: “Though the US does sit atop the rankings, overall the report — produced by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Economist Intelligence Unit… paints a discouraging picture of global readiness. ‘National health security is fundamentally weak around the world,’ the 324 page report concludes. ‘No country is fully prepared for epidemics or pandemics, and every country has important gaps to address.’ ”

Per Trump: “When you have 15, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Trump apparently was not listening to his own news conference. He made this remark just after Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said “the degree of risk has the potential to change quickly. And we can expect to see more cases in the United States” and Anne Schuchat of the CDC said “we do expect more cases and this is a good time to prepare.”

I could go on, but the case is that Trump’s news conference was a very dangerous conference for not properly informing the nation with the truth about the Coronavirus situation.

DO NOT LISTEN TO THE PRESIDENT ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS! 

IT IS MORE SERIOUS THAN HE HAS STATED!!!!!!!

Copyright G. Ater 2020