U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at Detroit Metro Airport stopped a Chinese scientist carrying vials believed to contain the MERS and SARS viruses in November 2018 — just over a year before the first reported Wuhan coronavirus case, according to an FBI tactical intelligence report obtained by Yahoo News.
(CLICK)Scientists from California believe they have found the cure to the pandemic caused by the Wuhan Corona Virus. ‘Pandemic’ scientist says his team has discovered potential cure for COVID-19
Dr. Jacob Glanville’s team took antibodies used to neutralize SARS and used technology in their lab to adapt them to recognize COVID-19.Author: Kelly Hessedal (kfmb)Published: 9:12 PM EDT March 30, 2020Updated: 9:12 PM EDT March 30, 2020
CALIFORNIA, USA — A California scientist and his team say they have found a potential cure for COVID-19.
News 8 introduced you to Dr. Jacob Glanville of Distributed Bio a couple of weeks ago. He’s one of the doctors featured in the Netflix show “Pandemic.” His team in the Bay Area has been working around the clock trying to come up with a drug to treat COVID-19. Monday he announced he believes they’ve found one.
How To Deal When You Live With Someone Who May Have COVID-19
“We are happy to announce we have completed the engineering and we have some very potent antibodies that can be effective against the virus,” said Dr. Glanville.
Below is News 8 reporter Kelly Hessedal’s extended interview with Dr. Glanville and the answers he gave on the potential cure:
How did you come up with this potential cure?
We took a series of five antibodies from around 2002 that were able to neutralize SARS. We were able to use technology in our laboratories to evolve those antibodies against SARS to adapt them to recognize COVID-19.
We tried with five different antibodies because we weren’t sure which one would work the best. All five worked so we have a pretty powerful tool chest available to us right now to produce a final therapeutic.
Would the drug be a shot? Or a pill?
We think we will be able to deliver it as a shot. We’ve been deliberately trying to engineer extremely potent antibodies because if they’re potent you need less material and then you could give it as an injection.
Will you be doing the trials on sick patients in the United States?
This is a conversation we’re having with the United States government on exactly where the study is being done. We’re also talking to the European Commission.
Any person with a minimal form of sanity has realized that China’s reporting on the Wuhan Coronavirus is a complete lie. On the face of it we were initially taken back on the numbers they reported. For those who have died or are currently affected by the Wuhan Virus as reported by Xi’s lying machine is an outright bold faced lie. Chinese have manufactured the public relations space for only one purpose, “to save face.” How is it that other countries, for example Italy and the United States have had more deaths than China; IMPOSSIBLE.
New reports are now coming in that tens of thousands of urns have been delivered to funeral homes in Wuhan. Now why is that? The only logical reason is that people are dying by the thousands – this is not how China would have it.
Wuhan residents say coronavirus figures released by China don’t add up
Chinese officials, desperate to recast the country as a global leader that has conquered the coronavirus, have been saying that its death rates are decreasing in the city of Wuhan. The problem, residents say, is that the numbers don’t add up.
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Wuhan, the first epicenter of the global outbreak, began lifting its two-month lockdown over the weekend. The city in Central China restarted some subway service, reopened its borders and allowed families to reunite.
People wearing face masks wait for a subway train on the first day the city’s subway services resumed following the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Wuhan of Hubei province, on March 28, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song
The move is part of Beijing’s choreographed campaign to mark a turning point in China’s fight against the deadly virus, which has spread to 200 countries and infected more than 732,000 people as of Monday morning. Of those, 34,686 people have died.
Despite China’s propaganda pushers being all smiles for the international community, residents told Radio Free Asia that Beijing’s claims that there were only 2,500 deaths in Wuhan is far from reality.
For more than a week, seven large funeral homes that serve Wuhan have been handing out the cremated remains of about 500 people to their families every day. When added, the figure puts the official number the Chinese government has claimed into question.
“It can’t be right … because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died,” said Zhang, a Wuhan resident who only gave Radio Free Asia his last name. “They started distributing ashes and starting interment ceremonies on Monday.”
Wuhan accounts for about 60 percent of China’s coronavirus cases, but the numbers the government has been putting out has fallen sharply in weeks, a sign, the government says, that its aggressive measures are working.
Social media users aren’t buying it and have taken the country to task, doing basic math and finding faulty figures in the government’s reporting.
The news website Caixin.com reported that 5,000 urns had been delivered by a supplier to the Hankou Funeral Home in one day. That’s double the number of deaths Xi’s officials claimed. There have also been social media posts that have claimed all seven of Wuhan’s funeral homes have handed out 3,500 urns every day.
In this March 23, 2020 photo released by Xinhua News Agency, workers disinfect a subway train in preparation for the restoration of public transport in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei province. China’s health ministry says Wuhan has now gone several consecutive days without a new infection, showing the effectiveness of draconian travel restrictions that are slowly being relaxed around the country. (Xiao Yijiu/Xinhua via AP)
Radio Free Asia reported that funeral homes told families who have lost loved ones to COVID-19 that they will try to “complete cremations before the traditional grave-tending festival of Qing Ming on April 5, which would indicate a 12-day process beginning on Mach 23. Such an estimate would mean that 42,000 urns would be given out during that time.”
Another online estimate is based on the cremation capacity of funeral homes in Wuhan, which runs 84 furnaces with a capacity over a 24-hour period of 1,560 urns. That estimate puts the number of estimated deaths in Wuhan at 46,800.
Another resident of the Hubei province – where Wuhan is the capital – told RFA that the majority of people there believe more than 40,000 people died before and during the lockdown. That’s tens of thousands more than the government has claimed.
“Maybe the authorities are gradually releasing the real figures, intentionally or unintentionally, so that people will gradually come to accept the reality,” the resident, who only gave his last name as Mao, said.
One source close to the civil affairs bureau told RFA that the true number of deaths was a sensitive subject in the communist country and that authorities probably know the real number but are keeping it under wraps.
There have also been claims of city officials paying off families in exchange for their silence.
“There have been a lot of funerals in the past few days, and the authorities are handing out 3,000 yuan in hush money to families who get their loved ones remains laid to rest ahead of Qing Ming,” Wuhan resident Chen Yaohui said. “It’s to stop them keeing (a traditional expression of grief); nobody’s allowed to keen after [the festival] Qing Ming has passed.”
Chen told the news outlet that no one in Wuhan believes the official death toll is 2,500.
“Before the epidemic began, the city’s crematoriums typically cremated around 220 people a day,” he said, adding that during the epidemic, the government transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan to cremate bodies around the clock.You can find Barnini Chakrabortyon Twitter @Barnini.
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After Americans flatten the curve of coronavirus, it’s time to push back another spike: our increasing economic dependence on China, where the ruling Communist Party cares only about staying in power.
The facts are clear. China is not our friend or ally or even a responsible business partner. Right now, between 30 percent and 40 percent of world national economic output is affected by the coronavirus shutdowns, calculated the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in a report for the G20.
“Once we get clear of this terrible pandemic, it is imperative that we all rethink that relationship,” British politician Iain Duncan Smith told The Daily Mail on Saturday.
China’s President Xi is petrified that after this inferno the U.S. and others will turn their backs on globalization. In a March 26 letter to the G20, Xi pledged to increase active pharmaceutical supplies and implored G20 nations to cut tariffs and keep up the unfettered flow of trade.
Xi’s words don’t match his actions. In the face of this global crisis, China has hunkered down. China has tried to pin the origins of the coronavirus on the U.S. Army and on Italy. These inept, Communist Party responses show China is not ready to act with honesty or compassion. China wants to claim victory in their “peoples war,” as Xi called, it but they don’t want to change anything. Yes, Beijing has sent doctors and face masks. But the Communist Party’s two-month cover-up attempt cost lives around the world.
Here’s a gut check for you. In less than two years, Beijing plans to open the 2022 Winter Olympics under the motto “Joyful Rendezvous Upon Pure Ice and Snow.” Revolting, isn’t it?
Who wants to celebrate with the Communist Party that waited too long to tell the world the truth about their Wuhan COVID-19 outbreak?
Back in 2015, snow-free Beijing was chosen largely because the world still wanted to believe in China.
It’s time for a total reconsideration of China’s role in the world and specifically, the U.S. economic relationship with China. Decoupling won’t happen all at once, but pharmaceuticals, 5G wireless, agriculture policy and of course imports and exports all need a new look post-coronavirus.
Bringing drug manufacturing back home to the USA is a top priority. China’s push into generic drug manufacturing has made the U.S. – and much of the world – too dependent on China’s unregulated producers for common drugs like ibuprofen, doxycycline and others.
Its increasingly clear that coronavirus ended globalization as we know it: the phase dating from the day China joined the World Trade Organization on Dec. 11, 2001, until December 2019, when China fumbled its response to the Wuhan virus outbreak.
Another must-win is blocking Huawei from world domination of 5G through ridiculous price-cutting. This battle was deemed critical well before coronavirus, and now it simply must be won. The risk of trusting Huawei with data capture and vital communications is just too high.
Brace for bumpy agricultural policy. Farm exports are already in flux. China’s purchases of U.S. soybeans hit a 15-year low during tariff wars in 2019. China still places a 68 percent tariff on imported U.S. pork. The ag policy is very complicated, but American farmers should not be at the mercy of China’s state-run agriculture firms.
The U.S. can also cut back on Chinese imports. In 2019, the top U.S. imports from China were cell phones at $64 billion, computers at $42 billion, followed by toys and sporting goods at $26 billion, with telecommunications equipment and non-wool apparel each at $24 billion. Cell phone imports have doubled since 2011. Fashion, home gadgets, electronics, we all have them, but somehow, we made do with a lot less of this stuff from China 10 years ago, and we should again.
We can do this, folks. Canada and Mexico were America’s top two trade partners in 2019, with China ranked third in total value, which is exports and imports combined. Our neighbors Canada and Mexico really are the most important partners, accounting for a combined 30 percent of U.S. total trade vs. just 13.5 percent for China.
While Washington will have much to consider, its increasingly clear that coronavirus ended globalization as we know it: the phase dating from the day China joined the World Trade Organization on Dec. 11, 2001, until December 2019, when China fumbled its response to the Wuhan virus outbreak.
China has learned little from 18 years of good treatment by major world economies. Not much has changed since 2007, when China blew up one of its own weather satellites on orbit, creating 3,000 pieces of space junk that remain a problem today. Don’t even get me started on China’s illegal air bases in the South China Sea, their new nuclear weapons and their forays into Central and South America.
I’m hoping the 2022 Olympics move to Norway and that before the first downhill ski race, the U.S. and allies have flattened the curve of China’s rise and intrusion into Western economic life.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY REBECCA GRANTRebecca Grant is a national security analyst based in Washington, D.C. She earned her Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics at age 25 then worked for RAND and on the staff of the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Since founding IRIS Independent Research, she has specialized in research for government and aerospace industry clients ranging from analysis of military campaigns to projects on major technology acqusition such as the B-21 bomber. Follow her on Twitter at @rebeccagrantdc
As coronavirus started seeping from its origins in a Wuhan wet market in China late last year, the information coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) was one of dismissal, in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s muzzling of the disease’s potency.
“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China,” WHO tweeted in January.
Thus, after being left mostly unchecked in those first critical few weeks of inception, coronavirus – officially termed COVID-19 – has since infected upwards of 600,000 people globally and claimed the lives of some 27,000.
“(WHO) has been trying to be politically correct by underestimating the extent of the threat. They lost some credibility when they stated in late January that the global risk assessment was moderate,” Dr. Attila Hertelendy, a Florida-based expert in biomedicine, told Fox News. “For an international body that people (and) governments and the business community looks to for advice, they are simply too slow, burdened by bureaucracy and political correctness. They have a great staff working for them, and many of my colleagues are advisors, they just need to listen to them and take action swiftly.”
Dr. Stanley Weiss, a professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, concurred that the lack of early action has been especially frustrating for the medical community.
“I was personally frustrated at WHO’s apparent great fear in moving from classifying from epidemic to pandemic, all the more so given all the evidence we had gathered from China’s experience,” he said. “Historically, a great strength of the WHO was its expertise in consensus building. Here, we needed leadership, not merely consensus building. It is hard for some organizations to act.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization speaks during a news conference on updates regarding on the novel coronavirus COVID-19, at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland earlier this month. On Monday, he said the pandemic was “accelerating” as the number of confirmed cases continue to increase. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
For weeks, the WHO resisted the alarming declaration, before classifying a pandemic on March 11. From Weiss’s lens, it’s a question of whether science is too frequently ignored “in favor of the politics within WHO’s vast constituency.”
“The WHO waited much too long to declare a ‘Global Health Emergency,’ a designation that importantly would have alerted public health officials in countries neighboring China to start preparing. Similarly, the WHO initially refused to declare a global pandemic, bizarrely claiming that they no longer used this designation, but then ultimately did so,” noted Dr. Dena Grayson, a Florida-based expert in infectious diseases. “This also likely cause substantial delays in preparedness by other nations in advance of this deadly virus.”
Some critics have also charged that WHO has acted as an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Brett Schaefer, a Senior Research Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs, the Heritage Foundation, said China has “a well-established record of suppressing information that it considers harmful,” a notion not new to the WHO.
“Thus, it is hardly surprising that it failed to be transparent and truthful in reporting details on COVID-19 to WHO and the international community. In fact, this is not the first time this has happened,” he said. “In 2003, China concealed and denied an infectious disease outbreak – later called SARS – for months.
“Given this history, the willingness of the WHO to take China’s statements at face value is shocking. WHO leadership is too susceptible to political pressure in its decisions on declaring a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), and this needs to be addressed.”
In this Feb. 7, 2020, file photo, people wearing masks attend a vigil for Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, who was reprimanded for warning about the outbreak of the new coronavirus, in Hong Kong. (AP)
The World Health Organization (WHO) serves as a specialized agency of the United Nations, falling under the UN’s Sustainable Development Group. It was brought to life in 1948, in conjunction with the UN’s creation, and given the broad mandate as the international governing body monitoring public health risks and overseeing responses to emergencies. Headquartered out of Geneva, Switzerland, WHO has 194 member states and operates on an annual budget of about $2.1 billion.
In 2017, voluntary contributions from the U.S. totaled more than $400 million. Moreover, WHO data shows that the U.S. is its largest financier – giving more money than the United Nations itself – followed by South Korea, Australia, the Gates Foundation, and then Japan.
Critics have accused WHO of whitewashing Chinese misconduct in the onset of the disease, and have instead heaped praise on the state for its authoritarian clampdown in purporting to combat the already escaped contagion last month.
The role of its leader, Ethiopian national Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – who was tapped for the top job in 2017 by member states and appointed to a five-year term – is now also coming into focus. Some are questioning whether he buttered up to governments like China in return for massive donations to the organization. Ghebreyesus routinely lauds Chinese President Xi Jinping for his handling of the pathogen, while not acknowledging early cover-ups and the fact that several doctors were muzzled for daring to speak out about a strange new virus percolating in Wuhan.
Furthermore, officials from Taiwan – a nation sharply at odds with the mainland Beijing leadership – claimed that they alerted WHO back in December about “the risk of human-to-human transmission.” However, Taipei leaders this week said that the information was not passed on to other countries and fell on deaf ears.
Taiwan is not currently allowed to be a member of the WHO, due to the controversial Peoples Republic of China’s One-China policy.
“Overall, the WHO is a useful organization, and its scientific experts are absolutely world-class,” Grayson stressed. “Unfortunately, like all too many organizations, politics sometimes get in the way of decisive action.”
Schaefer also asserted that once this pandemic dims, there will be some sort of re-evaluation.
“If the organization performs well, member governments are more confident in having it assume an increased role. If they fail, the member states look to reform them or create alternative mechanisms,” he said. “During the Ebola crisis in 2014, WHO was strongly criticized for its slow and ineffective response, and the member states pressed the leadership for reforms to address those failings. It is clear from the response to COVID-19 that more changes are necessary.”
A woman wearing a face mask walks across London Bridge in London. British authorities laid out plans Tuesday to confront a COVID-19 epidemic, saying that the new coronavirus could spread within weeks from a few dozen confirmed cases to millions of infections, with thousands of people in the U.K. at risk of death. (AP)
Dr. Roger Bate, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and specialist in public health and infectious diseases, pointed out that bloated bureaucracies need to be examined going forward to stop another such pandemic as coronavirus in its much earlier tracks.
“WHO is part of the UN. UN is overly bureaucratic, but we need it because it is the global organization where member states can come to discuss issues like this,” he explained. “WHO has become less relevant in the past few decades, COVID-19 reminds us why it is important and why when it fails, we all pay the price.”
Bate also stressed that the WHO has to be more forthright in demanding local action from wherever the epidemic begins.
“I believe following COVID-19, U.S. and E.U. will back it because of the huge cost we are now paying. Basically, WHO should get the funds it requires and can embarrass nations like China that do not act properly,” he continued. “And this will happen again unless China shuts its wet markets with live animals. Contagions from zoonotic viruses are the problem, and China is ground zero for these.”
Hertelendy concurred that the playbook ought to be changed.
“Following a politically correct agenda doesn’t work in the 21st century,” he added. “Simply, they need to focus on restoring credibility, admit mistakes, and be transparent and ready to make difficult decisions quickly and confidently.”
WHO did not respond to a request for comment.Hollie McKay has a been a Fox News Digital staff reporter since 2007. She has extensively reported from war zones including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, and Latin America investigates global conflicts, war crimes and terrorism around the world. Follow her on Twitter.
VP BIDEN CHARGES TRUMP WITH CUTTING CDC BUDGET, WHEN THE FACTS INDICATE THAT OBAMA EVISCERATED THE FUNDING OF CDC.
Numerous Democrats, including Biden, have falsely claimed that Trump slashed the CDC budget, and Biden has suggested that he would never pursue similar cuts. The Associated Press has noted that those claims “distort” the facts, with FactCheck.org pointing out that CDC funding has actually increased under the current administration, largely because Congress insisted on maintaining funding levels for both CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Nevertheless, speaking to ABC News’ “This Week” on March 1, Biden claimed: “They’ve cut the funding for the CDC.” On Friday, Biden stepped up his attacks, writing on Twitter: “Donald Trump’s careless, shortsighted actions left our nation ill-prepared and now Americans are paying the price.”
In its fiscal year 2013 budget, while Biden was vice president, the Obama administration sought a total funding level of $5.9 billion from the CDC, or a $569 million cut from the 2012 budget of $6.46 billion. In fiscal year 2015, the Obama administration wanted a $414 million cut year-over-year, and again in the fiscal year 2017 budget, the Obama administration looked to eliminate $251 million in CDC funding.
The proposed cuts take into account money budgeted for The Prevention and Public Health Fund, which was established under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 to bolster the nation’s health care system. When not including that fund, the Obama administration sought CDC cuts in five of its eight years.
“LOCK HER UP” SPEWS DIARRHEA FROM DA MOUT. This low life POS, murderer, killer, lying felon – a literal scum bag – says this, “He did promise ‘America First,'” Clinton wrote, referring to one of the president’s oft-repeated campaign slogan. This is proof of her demonic self, a self serving dirt bag ever since her marriage to Slick Willie. She thinks nothing of Americans.
Americans don’t like you, never did, never will. You have proved that by your “Deplorable” comments, your “out of work” statements regarding coal miner, your disdain for anybody who challenges you. America has written you off. You are a three time loser. DO YOURSELF AND AMERICA A FAVOR, SHUT UP.
Dr. Alex Greninger shares insight on COVID-19 pandemic from the University of Washington Virology Lab.
The United States was ranked the best-prepared country in the world to handle a pandemic in late 2019 by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (JHCHS) — an assessment seemingly at odds with claims by Democrats that the Trump administration left the country vulnerable to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
The Global Health Security Index was was “developed with guidance from an international panel of experts from 13 countries, with research by the Economist Intelligence Unit” from 2018 to 2019, The Washington Post reported last year. “More than 100 researchers spent a year collecting and validating publicly available data.”
At the same time, the paper noted that the U.S. score was still not perfect, and that “factors driving down the U.S. score include the risks of social unrest and terrorism, and low public confidence in government.”
President Trump’s campaign has argued in recent days that misinformation may be one of the leading causes of that lack of confidence. For example, Trump’s team has pointed to claims by presidential contender Joe Biden that “no one on the National Security Council staff was put in charge” of pandemic preparedness, based on a report that in May 2018, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton eliminated the NSC’s Office of Global Health Security and Biodefense in a reorganization effort.
Rear Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer reportedly was ousted as senior director, and no replacement was named. But, FactCheck.org has determined that the matter amounted to a reorganization, and that “some team members [of the NSC pandemic office] were shifted to other groups, and others took over some of [the top official’s] duties.”Video
The White House says the NSC remains involved in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. A senior administration official said earlier this month that the NSC’s global health security directorate was absorbed into another division where similar responsibilities still exist, but under different titles. The work of coordinating policy and making sure that decisions made by Trump’s coronavirus task force are implemented is still the job of the NSC.
Separately, the Biden team has repeatedly argued that the president once referred to coronavirus as a “hoax.” That claim has been refuted by numerous fact-checkers, including the Post’s, which found that Trump was clearly referring to Democrats’ efforts to blame him for the pandemic, not the virus itself.
Additionally, numerous Democrats, including Biden, have falsely claimed that the president cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget. The Associated Press has noted that those claims “distort” the facts.
Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased. Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies.
Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness — the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.
“The CDC’s response has been excellent, as it has been in the past,” said John Auerbach, president of the nonpartisan Trust for America’s Health, which works with government at all levels to improve the nation’s response to high-risk health crises. Some Democrats have charged that Trump decimated the nation’s public health leadership, but Auerbach said CDC’s top scientific ranks have remained stable during the past three years.
People work in a lab that President Donald Trump watched during his meeting about the coronavirus at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Friday, March 6, 2020 in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Nevertheless, misleading reports about the Trump campaign’s pandemic response efforts have continued to spread. A recent report by Reuters that the U.S. had recently terminated a CDC position in China was widely cited by Democrats and reporters as evidence of a lack of preparedness, and formed the basis for a reporter’s question at a recent White House coronavirus briefing.
But, the article itself made clear that experts didn’t think the move had anything to do with the spread of coronavirus in the United States.
“One disease expert told Reuters he was skeptical that the U.S. resident adviser would have been able to get earlier or better information to the Trump administration, given the Chinese government’s suppression of information,” the outlet noted.
“In the end, based on circumstances in China, it probably wouldn’t have made a big difference,” former CDC epidemiologist and Emory University professor Scott McNabb told Reuters.
‘Fox News @ Night’ anchor Shannon Bream delivers a 2020 update in 60 seconds on the biggest political stories.
“The problem was how the Chinese handled it,” McNabb continued. “What should have changed was the Chinese should have acknowledged it earlier and didn’t.”
Regardless, some lawmakers are pushing for more action out of an abundance of caution. Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., and Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, have introduced a bill that would require future administrations to have experts always in place to prepare for new pandemics.
“Two years ago, the administration dismantled the apparatus that had been put in place five years before in the face of the Ebola crisis,” Connolly said. “I think, in retrospect, that was an unwise move. This bill would restore that and institutionalize it.”
Connolly said the bill is not meant to be critical of the Trump administration. He said it’s a recognition that Trump had to name a coronavirus responder just like Obama had to name one for Ebola in 2014. “We can’t go from pandemic to pandemic,” Connolly said.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 4 passed the measure, which is co-sponsored by 37 Democrats and five Republicans.
Fox News’ Andrew O’Reilly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.Gregg Re is a lawyer and editor based in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter @gregg_re or email him at [email protected].
Even the Leftwing Media Notices That Joe Biden Is Social Distancing Himself From the Presidency
Posted at 1:45 pm on March 24, 2020 by streiffShare On FacebookShare On Twitter
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden makes a point during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Friday, Feb. 7, 2020, hosted by ABC News, Apple News, and WMUR-TV at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Yesterday, like a bedraggled Punxsutawney Phil, Joe Biden emerged from his undisclosed location and essentially pronounced his candidacy over. His strategy, apparently, was some sort of Bizarro World variation on the Rose Garden strategy used by successful incumbent presidents seeking reelection. In Biden’s camp, this resulted in something that had ground its way through the strategic alimentary canal of highly paid consultants and emerged as Biden running a shadow government, you know, showing us how it is really done. For this to work, a) Biden would have to have access to information, b) someone would have to listen to him, and c) he’d have to not be in a severe and noticeable state of mental decline. My colleague, Nick Arama, covered the carnage in First, Biden Had Someone Else Speak for Him, But When He Finally Emerged, It Was a Trainwreck, here are some of the highlights:
This was not a case of us making fun of a hapless and somewhat addled geriatric while the rest of the nation saw something different, it was a case of Biden being so bad that even the leftwing media felt compelled to sit up and take notice. This from Politico, hardly a pro-GOP or Trump-friendly outlet, in fact, it is very much none of those things: Biden goes in search of a bully pulpit
Without the trappings of office, Biden has faded from the national stage as the coronavirus contagion chews through news cycle after news cycle. And without the actual authority that accompanies public office, he can’t make dramatic moves to muster the power of the government to make sweeping decisions that affect millions. It’s left him straining to remain relevant amid Trump’s daily briefings — carried live on cable television each afternoon. … Few who watched Biden’s briefing saw it as equivalent counterprogramming to Monday’s White House briefing, which featured the president, Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr and White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx, among others. Most other times, that briefing has featured Anthony Fauci, the highly respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Accustomed to speaking from behind a lectern, Biden decided to have one placed in the middle of his new home studio — an awkward fit amid the backdrop of bookshelves and personal pictures framed beneath a living room table lamp.
There were hiccups that showed the telltale signs of a 77-year-old candidate adjusting to a campaign that’s gone completely online in a matter of days. At the start of the webcast, Biden wasn’t sure when he was live. A few minutes in, his teleprompter appeared to have broken as he tried, but failed, to gesture beneath the camera shot for an unseen aide to hand him notes.
This is Biden’s problem. He’s a lightweight and a moron. Biden back slapped and ingratiated his way up the Senate pecking order. For all of his bluster about all the stuff he’s done, his resume, outside of the graft, grift, and corruption that he’s made available for his wildly unethical, if not downright criminal, brother and son, is pretty banal. He’s not quick on his feet. His understanding of issues where, based on his experience, you’d expect some expertise, is stunningly absent. I suspect this entire ‘shadow government’ thing was driven by exactly one thing. Biden and his inner circle had calculated that the media could come up with enough bullsh** negative stories to torpedo Trump and they decided the best course of action was simply to stand aside, surface after the economy has been laid to ruins, and run against the media narrative of President Trump’s performance. As it’s turned out, Trump, even while being unvarnished Trump, has shown leadership and initiative and a willingness to do battle with the bureaucratic status quo that has been recognized by the public and rewarded in substantial increases in his polling across all polls.
Now, Biden is in a game of catch-up that he can’t win. Because he is not yet the Democrat nominee, he doesn’t get classified briefings. His knowledge of what is going on is limited to what he reads in the newspapers. Because so many governors are following Trump’s lead and being complimentary of Trump, Biden has to be very measured and circumspect in his statements else he will attack Democrats as well as Trump. He dare not engage in the kind of freewheeling, Irish wake/press conference that Trump seems to revel in because it will become clear, in nano-seconds, that Biden is simply mentally incompetent. The best he can do is this kibbitzing from the sidelines; useless and outdated information and discarded ideas tossed out by a rather daft old man in the forlorn hope that someone, somewhere is listening to him.
"Where Revolution is the Solution" Taking back the Empire
