Ineptitude and Obfuscation by the Numbers

Ineptitude and Obfuscation by the Numbers

A timeline researched and posted by a friend, with my annotations: In truth, this was (sort of) inspired by A Journal of the Plague Year written by Daniel Defoe, published in March 1722. It is an account of his experiences of the year 1665, during which Bubonic Plague struck London. (The book is far less known that his masterpiece, Robinson Crusoe, which remains second only to the Bible in its number of translations.)

Dec 18th - House Impeaches Trump.

Jan 8th - First CDC COVID warning.

This is the point at which Trump should have mobilized and consulted re: COVID response, but he had a rally to attend the next day, which really demonstrates his greater priorities. NIH was already beginning work on vaccine development, but not at Trump’s direction.

Jan 9th - Trump campaign rally.

Jan 14th - Trump campaign rally.

2 more rallies while the looming potential problem was ignored. That is to say “Trump ignored it”

Jan 16h - House sends impeachment articles to Senate.

Jan 18th - Trump golfs.

Jan 19th - Trump golfs.

Jan 20th - First case of coronavirus in the US, Washington State.

Jan 22nd - "No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine."

Jan 23:  China places Wuhan in quarantine,

Jan 24: First cases reported in Europe, Virus already present in most of Southeast Asia, death toll rising in China, S. Korea

Jan 24th - "It will all work out well."

Jan 28th - Trump campaign rally.

After whistling in the dark and generally ignoring WHO warnings Trump wastes two more days on MAGA rallies, billing cities for security with no intent to repay costs in each instance near the $50,000 level for increased police presence alone. Typical of this is the still outstanding bill for “public safety” of $35,129 for a Trump 2016 campaign stop in Erie. This, of course, ignores the additional taxpayer outlay for a one- hour Air Force One round trip (over $50,000) or housing for Secret Service personnel.

Jan 30th - Trump campaign rally.

Jan 30th - "We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully."

Jan 30: (WHO) declares coronavirus a “public health emergency of international concern

Feb 1st - Trump golfs.

Feb 2nd - "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."

Feb 3^rd - Diamond Princess is quarantined, with what will eventually be 417 confirmed cases.

Feb 5th - Senate votes to acquit. Then takes a five-day weekend.

At this point, with impeachment efforts over, and the President having announced a general, “Hey we got this.” Senator Chuck Schumer, if the President was credible, had no reason for concern. Yet, on 

April 2^nd, Trump sends a letter to Schumer blaming him and impeachment efforts for diverting his (the Senator’s) attention from what Trump had said was a non-existent problem.

 “If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the “invisible enemy.”   

Feb 10th - Trump campaign rally.

Feb 10th - "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away."

Feb 12th - Dow Jones closes at an all-time high of 29,551.42.

Feb 15th - Trump golfs.

Feb 19th - Trump campaign rally.

Feb 19th - "I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along."

At this point, “the numbers” were getting steadily more concerning and Italy was seeing a disturbing rise in cases which would lead to the quarantine of the entire nation by early March

Feb 20th - Trump campaign rally.

Feb 21st - Trump campaign rally.

It is noteworthy that, while other nations were stressing social distancing and even isolation, the president is gathering crowds for personal reelection aims)

Feb 24th - "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"

Feb 25th - "CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus."

Feb 25th - "I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine."

No, asshole we’re not “close” let alone “very” close to a vaccine. It was about this time that a major stockholder in the German Pharma firm which was on the frontier of vaccine research reported a Trump phone call attempting to obtain American exclusivity for any vaccine. This has since been denied by the company but confirmed by its principal investor and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. As usual, Trump continues the scattershot use of superlatives which his red capped deplorables have come to expect, know and love.

Feb 26th - "Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. … When you have 15 people, 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." 

(15 days later the “close to zero” was actually over 1000!)

Feb 26th - "We're going very substantially down, not up." Also "This is a flu. This is like a flu"; "Now, you treat this like a flu"; "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."

 This makes one realize that Trump probably uses the terms “preventative” and “treatment” interchangeably. He probably thinks a flu shot will “cure” flu. Not so much. “We” never went down at all from the 15 cases he cited on Feb 26^th. Similarly, we are no closer to a “flu shot” like preventive in the real world, never mind “fairly quick.”   

Feb 27th: "One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear."

No, moron, it won’t.

Feb 28th - "We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical."

Medical what? Why just start now, why not earlier, when the WHO cautioned you?

Feb 28th - Trump campaign rally.

Mar 2nd - "You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?"

Illustrating yet again his all-encompassing ignorance, it’s too late. Again, I’m not sure if he even understands the difference between a vaccine and a treatment.

Mar 2nd - "A lot of things are happening. A lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly."

Yeah, just not things related to COVID 19. Can this man complete a literate English sentence without the word “very?”

Mar 4th: "If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better."\

Mar 5th - "I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work."

Well, Jethro, you surely seemed to imply that yesterday!

Mar 5th - "The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!"

Mar 6th - "I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down."

Mar 6th - "There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been."

The below is from the New Yorker of March 24.  On the 6^th when Trump issued the blatant lie above, the situation was even worse.

 “The current trouble is a critical shortage of the physical components needed to carry out tests of any variety. Among these components are so-called viral transport media, which are used to stabilize a specimen as it travels from patient to lab; extraction kits, which isolate viral RNA from specimens once they reach the lab; and the reagents that do the actual work of determining whether the coronavirus that causes covid19 is present in the sample.” (New Yorker, March 6, 2020)

Mar 6th - "Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good."

Even in this crisis and a month after the impeachment farce, he can’t help himself: He’s referring to the Ukraine “blackmail” phone calls in a totally unrelated issue, simply to justify previous bad actions. As shown immediately above he was lying about the testing availability. Again, note that in 4 sentences he uses 6 superlatives where none is appropriate.

Mar 6th - "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."

Spare me. He couldn’t do an MBA at all and even his BA was without academic distinction. I guarantee that every doctor had some reaction, but certainly not what Trump cites.

Mar 6th - "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."

Huh? What does that even matter. In Trump world it isn’t about people, but “numbers”

Mar 7th - Trump golfs.

Mar 8th - Trump golfs.

Two more days of wasted money and time, although the current value of Trump’s time may be a debit. This is probably the right time to point out that Trump viciously criticized Barack Obama for golfing at various times, none of which remotely approached the severity of the current pandemic. 

Here’s one: “President Obama has a major meeting on the N.Y.C. Ebola outbreak, with people flying in from all over the country, but decided to play golf! 11:54 PM - Oct 23, 2014”

 So he played golf, he then went to the meeting. So? 

Meanwhile in the throes of the worst pandemic since 1918 Spanish flu, Trump himself is on the links.

This elevates hypocrisy to a new level, even for Trump, who also said: “I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”  Apparently he’s not working for us now?   

Mar 8th - "We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on Coronavirus."

Mar 9th - "This blindsided the world."

No, it didn’t. It blindsided China. We (Trump) had plenty of notice but soft-pedaled concern for fear of economic impact.

Mar 9th - "The Fake News Media & their partner, the Democratic Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power to inflame the Coronavirus situation."

This despicable comment alone should be grounds for a bitch slapping of epic proportions. Now the, media (except Fox News), the WHO and Democratic national Committee are the bad guys here?

Mar 10th - "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

Mar 13th - [Declared state of emergency].

Mar 13th - "No, I don't take responsibility at all."

We know that, Donald, you never take responsibility for mistakes, but poach the credit where not due (like decrease in cancer stats, for example)

Mar 15th - "This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over."

2 superlatives, one accurate, the second a blatant lie. Citizens have a great deal of control at this point by social distancing, the government…not so much

Mar 17th - "This is a pandemic," Mr. Trump told reporters. "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."

Wow, just wow. Less than a month ago, and a month after the WHO called it a pandemic, Trump was proclaiming that it was “just like the Flu” and "One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear." This is classic Trump, tell a lie and embroider it by claiming to be smarter than those who really are leagues brighter than you.

Mar 18th - "I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning"

Mar 18th - "It’s not racist at all. No. Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate."

Mar 18th - "No, I’ve always viewed it as serious, there was no difference yesterday from days before. I feel the tone is similar, but some people said it wasn’t."

Racist much? Probably. Always viewed it as serious…? What about: “we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine." (January 22)

Mar 23rd - Dow Jones closes at 18,591.93.

Mar 25th - 3.3 million Americans file for unemployment.

Mar 30th - Dow Jones closes at 21,917.16.

None of the above 3 entries is Trump’s fault, in all fairness. Of course, if we had acted earlier and listened to the WHO and Dr Fauci…? Of course, Trump’s lack of regard for the WHO is a side effect of his similar disdain for the UN in general.

Apr 1st - "Did you know I was number one on Facebook? I just found out I’m number one on Facebook. I thought that was very nice, for whatever it means." (Trump has 25 million likes; Obama has 55 million for comparison).

Number one on Facebook? So was the “dancing baby”. He’s less popular than a man who’s been out of office for three years! He is so used to the big lie he doesn’t even bother about the truth anymore   

Apr 1st - "I don’t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached."

This is relatively meaningless and gratuitous, like so much of the man. Yet, in the previously shown Schumer letter, he tries to evoke some linkage between a crisis which wasn’t a crisis yet, and which he largely ignored, and New York State’s COVID dilemma

Apr 2nd - 6.6 million Americans file for unemployment.

Apr 2nd - More than 1000 Americans die from coronavirus in a single day. Over 5000 dead total.

Apr 3rd - “The models show hundreds of thousands of people are going to die and you know what I want to do? I want to come way under the model,” Trump said. “The professionals did the models and I was never involved in a model. At least this kind of a model.”

He just can’t help himself. He is apparently referring here to models of the photographic genre.

Typically, even when he’s attempting to make sense, he frequently doesn’t. Here’s a snippet from a conversation he had with another truly repulsive man, Sean Hannity, on March 4:

“Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this, and it is very mild... So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better and then, when you do have a death like you had in the state of Washington, like you had one in California, I believe you had one in New York, you know, all of a sudden it seems like 3 or 4 percent, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1 percent.”

I guess the “takeaway” from this rambling is that 3 to 4% is a larger number than less than 1%. Wow!   

Finally:

If you still think this guy is, like Ferris Bueller, a “righteous dude,” reflect on a recent press conference where he refused to even let the real expert speak.

A CNN reporter, seeking clarification about a COVID “preventive” being touted by that great man of medicine, Rudy Giuliani, turned to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (And a real doctor), for his opinion on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine with a sharper question: “What is the medical evidence?”

Standing at the microphone, Fauci opened his mouth to answer,  but before he could speak, the answer came from Trump, instead. “Do you know how many times he’s answered that question?” (Trump interrupted) “Maybe 15.”

A tight smile, almost a grimace, crossed Fauci’s face. He looked briefly at Trump, then glanced back at the reporter, who was saying to the president, “The question is for the doctor. … He’s your medical expert, correct?”

Fauci’s smile, for just a moment, widened, but…. Trump raised his finger sternly, telling the journalist, “You don’t have to ask the question,” and so Fauci didn’t answer it, and the news conference shuffled right along.

These are no longer really “news” conferences anymore, are they?