{"id":8729,"date":"2020-03-13T19:56:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T19:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/?page_id=8729"},"modified":"2022-02-22T18:18:26","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T18:18:26","slug":"03-13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/03-13\/","title":{"rendered":"03-13"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Friday, March 13<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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US Deaths 51<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Mar 13: President Trump declares<\/a><\/span> coronavirus a national emergency. He also states: \u201cI don\u2019t take responsibility at all,\u201d<\/a><\/span> in response to a question about the lack of available tests. President Trump falsely announces<\/a><\/span> the development of a new website: \u201cGoogle is going to develop a website \u2026 to determine if a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location. Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now. They have made tremendous progress.\u201d Google Communications corrects<\/a><\/span> the president\u2019s statement later that day. Federal agencies begin placing bulk orders on N95 masks, ventilators, and other medical equipment. Based on a review of federal purchasing contracts<\/a><\/span> by the Associated Press, the Trump administration only starts to place bulk orders on necessary medical equipment in mid-March. Mount Everest and the Louvre are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Boston Marathon is postponed. COVID-19 has spread into 114 countries and at least 4,000 people are dead. Democrats and Republicans work to pass a new financial aid package to address the crisis. <\/span>Disneyworld closes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Breonna Taylor is shot and killed by police in Louisville.*<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tFrom the Cutting Room Floor...\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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It is Friday the thirteenth. Feels appropriate. There is a mask shortage all over the country. No one can find toilet paper to save their lives. There\u2019s no treatment or vaccine (though none was expected this early on). All the touting of America\u2019s superior preparedness back in February looks to be hollow bluster. I am pretty sure that my local hospital does not have a way to test for the virus. We can\u2019t even properly screen the people flying in from countries covered by the various travel bans.[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>

Debate rages over who handled their pandemic worse: Trump in 2020 or Obama in 2009 (against the H1N1 influenza outbreak).\u00a0He
brings up Obama in tweets and on the Sean Hannity show to make two points: first that \u201cObama didn\u2019t handle the H1N1 pandemic well either,\u201d and second that \u201cWhen Obama was in office, he failed to create an infrastructure that would allow for an agile response to this new pandemic.\u201d Obama’s vaccination program hit some serious snags, admittedly, but they were much faster than Trump in providing funding to vaccine research. One could argue that\u00a0Trump should not be comparing himself to Obama.\u00a0The scale of response that the coronavirus demands of Trump is levels of degree higher than what we experienced in 2009 with H1N1. With H1N1, .02% of the people who had the virus, died. With the coronavirus, 2% of the people who have the virus are dying. Remember that the Spanish flu had a lethality rate of 3%, and 50 million people died in 1918-1919. He needs to be responding in a way that far exceeds anything that Obama ever did because this new virus is so much worse.<\/span><\/p>

The real problem seems to be in the other realm of leadership that is related to showing humility, empathy, and an ability to unify your team.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

[read_more id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]<\/p>

Trump can\u2019t bring himself admit that we have been caught off guard. Imagine how powerful his message would be if he compared this virus to the attacks on 9\/11 and Pearl Harbor, or to the lesser known sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 that started the Spanish-American War. Get in front of the nation with an American flag waving behind you. Tell everyone that this is a moment of crisis, that we all must come together, and then give clear instructions on what each American needs to do to fulfil their patriotic obligations to the nation. Call upon the American population to rally against this terrifying foe like George W. Bush and FDR did. Create a consensus across the aisle that will allow for mass mobilization. Stop saying that there is nothing to worry about. Obama is not the one who downplayed the seriousness of the virus, Trump did. And I get it; no one wants to scare the investors. But even in the world of business, there are examples of leaders who have had to be humble and transparent in order to survive. GE, Apple, and JP Morgan have all had CEO\u2019s who admitted that they had missed an opportunity, were redoubling their efforts to fix the problem, and in the long run saw high stock returns.<\/span><\/p>

If we\u2019re going to point fingers, they should also be directed at Congress, the CDC, HHS, and the government bureaucracy that is supposed to handle long term planning as presidents come and go. Like Dr. Osterholm pointed out in his interview with Joe Rogan, after the H1N1 flu faded a decade ago, no one spearheaded the infrastructure needed for the mass production of masks and ventilators or the planning for what would need to happen if a pandemic hit. It\u2019s like living in Miami without a hurricane evacuation plan. Everyone knew that this pandemic was coming sooner or later, or, at least, the people in power did. <\/span><\/p>

The big question is, why? Why are we being caught with our pants down right now? Maybe part of the answer has to do with the kind of bureaucracy that is now running the country. There has been an 85% turnover rate among upper-level Trump administration officials since 2017.[2]<\/span><\/a> In the first 32 months of Trump\u2019s time in office, he exceeded the rate of turnover of all of his predecessors. On top of this, his cabinet is almost completely staffed with \u201cacting\u201d officials who he has personally chosen with no confirmation from the Senate. The implications of these two phenomena are serious and myriad. First, this means that there is very little long-term institutional memory at the heights of power. We may all be suspicious of the \u201cdeep state,\u201d but lifetime bureaucrats are the ones who remember the last crisis and push for long term, prophylactic planning. Second, this has created an environment where those who are <\/i>in power are there at the whim of the president. In so many ways, Trump\u2019s moves to consolidate power remind me of how Stalin cemented his regime in the late 1920s. Only candidates who professed support for Stalin could take positions as local secretaries. Those secretaries in turn elected delegates to the national congress, who then chose the people who would sit at the heights power in the Central Committee. And of course, the Central Committee voted to keep Stalin as their head. Russian historians call it the \u201ccircular flow of power.\u201d What this meant was that everyone owed their job to Stalin and he could fire whoever he liked. No one spoke up when Stalin took away civil rights or authorized extraordinary policing of the Soviet people. If you stuck your head out, it got cut off. And we see this happening here, today. Who in Trump\u2019s cabinet is going to tell him that he is wrong? Who in the intelligence community is going to throw a fit when Trump ignores their reports in January that a pandemic is coming?[3]<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/p>

Maybe another part of the answer lies in the old saying that \u201cgenerals always prepare for the last war.\u201d In the 1920s, after the First World War ended, the beleaguered French famously built the impregnable Maginot Line of fortresses through the Ardennes Forest to make sure that the Germans could never again invade again through a direct assault. They were preparing for the last war, not the one that was coming. They failed to predict the Blitzkrieg<\/i> that swept across their defenses in a matter of weeks. Even when generals know that war is coming, the cost and effort required to prepare for an unknown, perhaps even unimagined catastrophe that may not even happen at all, seems so very high.<\/span><\/p>

On this Friday the thirteenth, the US feels a little bit like eastern France in 1939. The CDC and the WHO were criticized back in 2003 for overreacting to SARS. Maybe they were gun shy. Clearly, we all underestimated this thing. Now we can see the enemy on the border. Our defenses seem porous at best. We have only \u201cwhat-ifs\u201d and \u201cif-onlies\u201d to mull over. What if we had shut down sooner? If only Trump had turned this over to professionals sooner and been more open to advice\u2026. Will a thousand die from this? How many more mothers and sons and sisters and lovers would be alive, if only we had \u2026?<\/span><\/p>

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[1]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Zolan Kanno-Youngs, \u201cTravelers From Coronavirus Hot Spots Say They Faced No Screening,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>The New York Times<\/em>, March 13, 2020, sec. U.S., https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/03\/13\/us\/politics\/coronavirus-travelers-screening.html.<\/span><\/p><\/div>

[2]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Ph.D, Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and. \u201cAnd Then There Were Ten: With 85% Turnover across President Trump\u2019s A Team, Who Remains?\u201d <\/span>Brookings<\/i> (blog), March 13, 2020. <\/span>https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/blog\/fixgov\/2020\/04\/13\/and-then-there-were-ten-with-85-turnover-across-president-trumps-a-team-who-remains\/<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>

[3]<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Dilanian, Ken. \u201cHow U.S. Spies Predict Pandemics like Coronavirus.\u201d NBC News, March 13, 2020.\u00a0<\/span>https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/health\/health-news\/spying-coronavirus-little-known-u-s-intel-outfit-has-its-n1157296<\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>[\/read_more]<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTrump calls out Obama for failing to manage his pandemic, too\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t@realdonaldtrump, Twitter\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhy it is not safe to move around even if you're not feeling sick\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thttps:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/3\/12\/21172040\/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhy social distancing can make a difference\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thttps:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/3\/12\/21172040\/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat it means to flatten the curve\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthews, Dylan. \u201c11 Coronavirus Charts Everyone Should See.\u201d Vox, March 12, 2020. https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/3\/12\/21172040\/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthews, Dylan. \u201c11 Coronavirus Charts Everyone Should See.\u201d Vox, March 12, 2020. https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/3\/12\/21172040\/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFlu vs. Covid\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthews, Dylan. \u201c11 Coronavirus Charts Everyone Should See.\u201d Vox, March 12, 2020. https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/3\/12\/21172040\/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe danger of being old during this pandemic\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthews, Dylan. \u201c11 Coronavirus Charts Everyone Should See.\u201d Vox, March 12, 2020. https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/3\/12\/21172040\/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCOVID-19 Symptoms\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthews, Dylan. \u201c11 Coronavirus Charts Everyone Should See.\u201d Vox, March 12, 2020. https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/3\/12\/21172040\/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthews, Dylan. \u201c11 Coronavirus Charts Everyone Should See.\u201d Vox, March 12, 2020. https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/2020\/3\/12\/21172040\/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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