Trump's Revolving Door and Pandemic Response
Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic and U.S. Response
Friday, Jan. 13, 2017: The joint Obama-Trump transition teams run an exercise for pandemic preparedness.
The outgoing Obama team runs the Trump transition team through a series of pandemic-scenarios. The transition documents, obtained by POLITICO, show that the purpose of the exercise is to familiarize the incoming team with "domestic incident management policy and practices" in the face of major crises.
Key takeaways from the exercise include: (1) a collective understanding of the science and the disease must drive response decisions; (2) days and even hours are paramount in order to build as much lead time as possible; (3) a coordinated and unified national response and message is necessary; and (4) "medical countermeasure strategy is key for success," including social distancing and addressing shortages in ventilators and personal protective equipment.
Trump administration attendees include: Steven Mnuchin, Rep. Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Dr. Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, Stephen Miller, Marc Short, Reince Priebus (resigned), Rex Tillerson (fired), Gen. James Mattis (fired), Rep. Ryan Zinke (resigned), Sen. Jeff Sessions (resigned), Sen. Dan Coats (fired), Andrew Puzder (not confirmed), Dr. Tom Price (resigned), Gov. Rick Perry (resigned), Dr. David Shulkin (fired), Gen. John Kelly (resigned), Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Linda McMahon (resigned), Sean Spicer (fired), Joe Hagin (resigned), Joshua Pitcock (resigned), Tom Bossert (fired), KT McFarland (resigned), Gen. Michael Flynn (awaiting criminal sentencing), Gary Cohn (resigned), Katie Walsh (resigned), and Rick Dearborn (resigned).
Evangelicals, God, Protection and the China Virus
Two-Thirds Of Religious Americans Believe Coronavirus Is A Message From God | Forbes |
While the vast majority of respondents chalked up the situation to either foreign governments or the U.S. government (43% and 37%, respectively), about one in 10 directly attribute the pandemic to human sinfulness.
More than half of those surveyed said they felt God would protect them from infection, though 9% say God has abandoned humanity.
Jupiter man skeptical of coronavirus gets infected, changes opinion | WPTV |
A Jupiter man, who admits he was sceptical that the coronavirus was a real threat, has a new outlook after contracting the virus. Around this time last month, Jupiter rideshare driver Brian Hitchens was a self-proclaimed COVID-19 sceptic.
"I thought it was maybe the government trying something, and it was kind of like they threw it out there to kinda distract us," said Hitchens.
He made Facebook posts downplaying the seriousness and sticking to his faith, saying God is bigger than this virus will ever be.
"I'd get up in the morning and pray and trust in God for his protection, and I'd just leave it at that. There were all these masks and gloves. I thought it looks like a hysteria," Hitchens explained.
Fast forward to this week and Hitchens has a whole new outlook from his hospital bed at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center as a coronavirus-positive patient.
This hits even closer to home for Hitchens after his wife was admitted to the same hospital at the same time for coronavirus.
"My wife's on a ventilator. It's been like that for three weeks, and it's tough. It's sad," said Hitchens.
Brian Hitchens and his wife are both hospitalized at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center battling the coronavirus.
Local TV, warning of a possible pandemic on Jan. 30, 2020 ...
○ Palm Beach Gardens: Dr. Elysha Hussein is interviewed on WPTV NewsChannel 5 on Coronavirus
[Update-1]
UChicagoNews: The Science of Conspiracy Theories and Political Polarization with Eric Oliver
Press Release: “Shadowland”: A New Project From The Atlantic on the Power and Danger of Conspiracy
Machine learning and behavioral economics for personalized choice architecture
Behavioral economics changed the way we think about market participants and revolutionized policy-making by introducing the concept of choice architecture. However, even though effective on the level of a population, interventions from behavioral economics, nudges, are often characterized by weak generalisation as they struggle on the level of individuals. Recent developments in data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have shown ability to alleviate some of the problems of weak generalisation by providing tools and methods that result in models with stronger predictive power. This paper aims to describe how ML and AI can work with behavioral economics to support and augment decision-making and inform policy decisions by designing personalized interventions, assuming that enough personalized traits and psychological variables can be sampled.
The World Community knows the Trump Administration was quite busy with daily petty quarrels with the media at press briefings, the hours Trump spends on Fox News, right-wing talk radio, complot and conspiracy theories … so Trump has been completely swamped in Washington. The President has no grasp of the facts as the US Consumer is treated on complete bullsh*t from the Oval Offices and Washington DC environs. As the US economy needs to open up – be LIBERATED – the White House goes into isolation and near LOCKDOWN. What a great show … leadership my a$$.
SARS Hero Dr. Zhong Nanshan returns to China on Jan. 19, 2020 to take on the SARS CoV-2 endemic in Wuhan
… and the leadership of the Communist Party listens! In CNN Interview he provides an insider view of the facts. Most all conspiracies of the Trump administration about China, it’s response and data are rebutted.
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[Update-2]
Lack of immunity means all nations are vulnerable to another wave of coronavirus, top adviser warns | CNN News |
China still faces the "big challenge" of a potential second wave of Covid-19 infections, the country's top respiratory authority has warned, with the lack of immunity among the community a serious concern as the race to develop a vaccine continues.
Dr. Zhong Nanshan, the Chinese government's senior medical adviser and the public face of the country's fight against Covid-19, also confirmed in an exclusive interview with CNN on Saturday that local authorities in Wuhan, the city where the novel coronavirus was first reported in December, had suppressed key details about the magnitude of the initial outbreak.
China has reported more than 82,000 coronavirus cases, with at least 4,633 deaths, according to data from the country's National Health Commission (NHC).
Local authorities hid the truth of the coronavirus outbreak
Zhong is known as the "SARS hero" in China for combating the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in 2003. This time around, he has led the country's coronavirus response -- especially in the critical early stages of the outbreak.
On January 20, it was Zhong who confirmed on state broadcaster CCTV that the coronavirus can be transmitted between people, after Wuhan health authorities had maintained for weeks that there was no clear evidence for human-to-human transmission, and that the outbreak was "preventable and controllable."
Heading a team of experts dispatched by the NHC to investigate the initial outbreak, Zhong visited Wuhan on January 18. He said that upon his arrival, he received many calls from doctors and former students, warning him that the situation was much worse than the official reports had claimed.
In Beijing two days later, on January 20, he was told the total number of cases in Wuhan was now 198, with three people killed and 13 medical workers infected.
In a meeting with central government officials, including Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, that same day, he proposed to lock Wuhan down to contain the virus' spread.
The move was unprecedented. The central government placed Wuhan under lockdown on January 23, canceling all flights, trains and buses in and out of the city, and blocking major highway entrances.
The Wuhan lockdown was eventually lifted 76 days later.
In an interview with CCTV on January 27, Wuhan mayor Zhou Xianwang admitted that his government did not disclose information on the coronavirus to the public "in a timely fashion," saying, "as a local government, we can only disclose information after being authorized."
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Zhong also rejected the theory pushed by Trump and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
He said he had repeatedly asked Shi Zhengli, the lead virologist from the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the center of the Trump administration's accusations, about claims that the virus was created in her lab and accidentally leaked.
Zhong said that in early February, China's disease control authorities spent two weeks investigating Shi's lab for wrongdoing. They didn't find anything, he added.
Institut Pasteur of Shanghai, CAS
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