But it's not politics, it's CRISIS RESPONSE, goddamnit!
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Wicked Witch of New Haven, Rosa DeLauro, demands answers, right now!
I’m more sanguine about the Kung Flu mania sweeping the world than our media masters, but maybe I’m wrong to be so. So let’s see how our Democrats are handling the matter; surely they are convinced there’s a doomsday machine up and running and threatening to destroy civilization as we know it. If so, they’d be working with the president and his party to bring a non-partisan attack on the disease, right? I mean, if they really did see a threat, they’d set aside politics for the duration, right? Wrong.
Connecticut’s own, Congressman Rosa DeLauro, rails against Trump
Several House Republicans walked out of a closed-door briefing on the coronavirus by Trump administration health officials after a Democratic chairman railed against the White House response to the crisis.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the leading House health appropriator, kicked off the briefing by criticizing the administration for being disorganized and lacking urgency in its response. Several GOP members started to boo before most Republicans got up and walked out.
"If I wanted to hear the politics of it, I'd read Politico or something, let's be serious," said Rep. Paul Mitchell of Michigan. Even Democrats were uncomfortable with DeLauro's tirade.
[At] least one Democrat also left the briefing irritated. Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), who led the health department under President Bill Clinton, said DeLauro’s diatribe missed the purpose of the meeting.
“No one wanted to hear that, either the Democrats or Republican. We just wanted to hear the substance,” she said.
DeLauro was unapologetic.
As lawmakers transferred to a bigger room to accommodate all the attendees, a visibly frustrated DeLauro told colleagues she didn’t “give a rat’s ass” and about the reaction and that members needed answers from the administration.
“I feel that the issue on resources and current expenditures has been less than adequate and that these are some of the questions that we have to get answered,” she told reporters afterward, and her office later released a transcript of her remarks. “I quite frankly don’t worry about people who may have a concern. I just know that the questions are right.”
Well okay, then, nice to know that there’s a non-partisan group of politicians down there in the swamp looking after our interests and making sure we’re safe. Just for fun, let’s see how their own champion did in the last one of these panics:
Obama sat idle while millions were infected, 1,000 died in the U.S.
Now, let's go to the Wayback Machine. In April of 2009, the H1N1 became a pandemic.
But it wasn't until six months later, October, that then-President Obama declared a public health emergency on what was already a pandemic. By that time, the disease had infected millions of Americans and more than 1,000 people had died in the U.S.
CNN reported at the time:
Since the H1N1 flu pandemic began in April, millions of people in the United States have been infected, at least 20,000 have been hospitalized and more than 1,000 have died, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [emphasis added]
Furthermore, the CDC's Frieden fretted at the time that efforts to create a vaccine had stumbled:
"We are nowhere near where we thought we would be," Frieden said, acknowledging that manufacturing delays have contributed to less vaccine being available than expected. "As public health professionals, vaccination is our strongest tool. Not having enough is frustrating to all of us."
Frieden said that while the way vaccine is manufactured is "tried and true," it's not well-suited for ramping up production during a pandemic because it takes at least six months. The vaccine is produced by growing weakened virus in eggs.
But wait, there's more.
According to Virology Journal, the 2009 H1N1 came into the U.S. from Mexico:
The swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus that appeared in 2009 and was first found in human beings in Mexico, is a reassortant with at least three parents. Six of the genes are closest in sequence to those of H1N2 'triple-reassortant' influenza viruses isolated from pigs in North America around 1999-2000.
Border walls, anyone? No, they’re waacist!
Returning to today:
HOW AUSTRALIA DEFIED THE WHO ON ITS TRAVEL BAN.
Why were the Australians ahead of the world? For a very simple reason. They don’t trust the WHO. The information from multiple international sources is that the WHO is under intense pressure from the Chinese government, and succumbing to it.
The Australian Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy, told the NSC that it was medically inexplicable that the WHO hadn’t already declared a global pandemic. It’s politics, in other words.
That’s why Australia had earlier forged ahead of the WHO in declaring the China travel ban, on February 1. It was, again, on the unanimous advice of the AHPPC.
The travel ban was decided immediately after the US made the same call. Beijing instantly lashed both the US and Australia on that occasion – the Chinese Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, People’s Daily, calling it “racist”.
And so, as recently as 5/20/2020, did our Democrats:
So, either the Democrats don’t believe there’s a crisis, and are cynically manipulating this panic for their immediate political advantage, or they do believe it, but just can’t help themselves from being who they are. It’s disgusting either way.