This Washington Post story about the “lost summer” of the pandemic is as stunning as the stories about “the lost February” and “the lost March” and “the lost spring.”
This one focuses on the almost criminal bad leadership in the White House under Chief of Staff mark Meadows, a man who is even more over his head than the president. He’s a throwback like Trump who doesn’t believe in science, an idea which has apparently permeated the White House to the point where they are simply ignoring it altogether:
Trump and many of his top aides talk about the virus not as a contagion that must be controlled through social behavior but rather as a plague that eventually will dissipate on its own. Aides view the coronavirus task force — which includes Fauci, Birx and relevant agency heads — as a burden that has to be managed, officials said.
Yet the virus rages coast to coast, making the United States the world leader, by far, in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths. An internal model by Trump’s Council on Economic Advisers predicts a looming disaster, with the number of infections projected to rise later in August and into September and October in the Midwest and elsewhere, according to people briefed on the data.
CEA chief of staff Rachael Slobodien said Sunday, “CEA has not been circulating, and does not have, an internal model like that mentioned in your article.”
The forecast has alarmed the president and his top aides, even as some have chosen not to believe it, arguing that some previous projections did not materialize. Trump, meanwhile, has continued to insist publicly that the virus is “receding,” as he described it recently.
Skepticism of scientific projections abounds inside the West Wing. During an Oval Office meeting last month to discuss the Republican National Convention celebration planned for Jacksonville, where coronavirus cases had been surging, advisers informed Trump and other advisers that Birx had warned that they should be prepared for a large percentage of people potentially testing positive.
“Oh, if Doctor Birx says it,” Meadows quipped derisively, questioning the assumption that as many people would get the virus as she said, according to people in the room. The Jacksonville celebration ultimately was canceled.
Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Pence, who chairs the coronavirus task force, and other administration officials both senior and junior operate with a similarly skeptical attitude toward the administration’s scientists, officials say.
These aides serve as Trump’s bureaucratic muscle, acting upon the views of a president whose public statements have revealed his ignorance of how the pathogen works, impatience with doctors’ recommendations and faith in a “cure” that could soon return life to normal.
Nearly seven months after the first coronavirus case was reported in the United States, there still is no national strategy to contain the outbreak — other than the demands, some of them contradictory, that Trump issues on Twitter or at news conferences. “OPEN THE SCHOOLS!!!” the president decreed in a tweet Monday.
And the whole place is completely out of control:
As the nation confronts a once-in-a-century health crisis that has killed at least 158,000 people, infected nearly 5 million and devastated the economy, the atmosphere in the White House is as chaotic as at any other time in Trump’s presidency — “an unmitigated disaster,” in the words of a second former senior administration official.
In the weeks ahead, the administration plans to draw more attention to the push to develop and test a coronavirus vaccine, and to the government’s plan for mass distribution, together dubbed “Operation Warp Speed.” Aware that the public could view this as a politicized effort ahead of the November election, the administration plans to use public health professionals to promote the vaccine project and to limit the president’s personal involvement in the promotional campaign so it is not viewed as a “Trump vaccine,” according to a senior White House official.
Trump’s new campaign manager, Bill Stepien, has argued that Trump and campaign surrogates should talk more forcefully about the virus to help reverse the president’s downward polling trend, according to a campaign official.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has played golf with Trump throughout the pandemic, argued that the president could change voters’ minds about the administration’s handling of the crisis by more aggressively blaming the virus on China and stirring hopes for a vaccine.
“He has a better story to tell than he has told so far,” Graham said.
Over the past two weeks, the White House communications staff has worked with Birx, Fauci and other public health professionals on what they have deemed an “embers strategy” — a reference to snuffing out an emerging fire — to help prevent spikes in metropolitan areas that internal data project could see a rise in cases. Aides deployed the doctors and other experts to deliver stark warnings and reiterate best practices in local media interviews in an array of such markets, including Indianapolis and Minneapolis, as well as throughout the states of Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, which also happen to be election battleground states.
Trump, meanwhile, has tried to project an image of competence and control by resuming regular news briefings in which he reads from a script containing a flurry of statistics and other updates on the virus’s spread.
Trump’s recent performances have won plaudits from Fauci and others.
“I’m pleased that the president has gone out there and is saying things now that I think are important, that have to do with wearing masks, staying away from crowded places,” Fauci said. “Also, they’ve been short and crisp, which I think is good when you’re trying to get a message across.”
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R), a Trump confidant who also is a lobbyist for some hospitals, agreed. “I think his focus on encouraging the American people to wear masks, to letting them know that we are going to be in this for a while and we have to remain strong and resolute about it, I think are all things that are very, very important,” he said.
But in recent interviews, several governors and mayors in some of the nation’s hardest-hit areas questioned the president’s credibility and the value of his presentations.
“You can be out front, but if you’re not providing accurate and truthful information, it can hurt rather than help,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner (D), whose city has been a major hot spot. “Correct information is vital. People are listening, and they will respond based on what they’re hearing. And they look to their leaders at all levels of government. … That trust factor is critical. If you lose that, it’s very difficult to govern.”
He sounds ridiculous at these “briefings,” woodenly reading a bunch of statistics he obviously doesn’t understand and then talking about Hydroxychloroquine again and whining that nobody likes him. It’s embarrassing. If he wanted to be taken seriously he’d have the CDC and other public health experts give daily briefings on this. But he’s an attention hog and so it continues.
This is the most depressing part:
Jack Chow, a U.S. ambassador for global HIV/AIDS during the George W. Bush administration and a former World Health Organization assistant director general, said, “It’s extraordinary that a country that helped eradicate smallpox, promoted HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide and suppressed Ebola — we were the world’s leader in public health and medicine, and now we can’t even protect our own people from the most devastating epidemic in decades.”
I think we all knew on some level that when the US elected Donald Trump that something fundamental had shifted and we were in a downward spiral. I admit, I didn’t anticipate that absolutely everything would stop working all at once, but it’s not a great surprise.
Still, this story continues to be astonishing every single day. He literally cannot do anything right and yet he is still supported by tens of millions of people.