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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMust Read Financial Times Article: Inside Trump's Coronavirus Meltdown
When the history is written of how America handled the global eras 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 worlds 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, its like a miracle, it will disappear. A few days afterwards, he claimed: Ive felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. That afternoon at the CDC provides an X-ray into Trumps 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. Trumps 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.
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/97dc7de6-940b-11ea-abcd-371e24b679ed
muriel_volestrangler
(101,311 posts)ProfessorGAC
(65,013 posts)That's quite the piece.
Great summation.
renate
(13,776 posts)My uncle votes Republican because he has lots of money; hed be open to the information in this article because its in the Financial Times.
He loathes Trump by now, but he certainly didnt at first. And I think he still doesnt blame Trump for the mismanagement of the pandemic because of how badly other governments have done. This article might persuade him that the death and misery could have been mitigated with a competent and sane person in charge.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,342 posts)America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence.
William Burns, former US diplomat