COVID-19

[Crowes]

Gotcha

I see Fauci has come under fire a little because he's come out and said similar, that he was warning the administration much earlier but nothing was done. Only problem, there are videos of him doing interviews as late as late February telling everyone the risk is low, and they shouldn't change anything they're doing, basically contradicting his claims.

There can't be a difference of what he was more than likely pressured to say on TV at the time to what he's telling administration behind the scenes?

[cougnix]

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper ... pdf#page=1

If you want to read through it all. I'm in between meetings a lot today, but going to try to read it.

Ummm, look 6 posts before yours...

[ReignOnU]

...and a beautifully timed server restart saves the day!

TLDR: A lot of smart people had a private email chain starting in early Feb. States timeline on reliable testing is 'weeks' away. Mid-Feb there is concern about the throughput for getting testing results. Agreement that China travel ban was the right move. By late Feb, they still don't have a strong grasp on what the virus is. 2 people on the thread are really concerned about an Italy like outbreak. They want mitigation measures in place now. Most agree it would be good and seems to be a consensus that public and leaders wouldn't understand why and give pushback. March 4th hits, everyone is saying we should implement mitigation measures. There's a lot of discussion that the European ban was too late/useless. March 12th hits, wide concern that this will mirror 1918 in terms of how some states/cities will be inconsistent in their measures. It may be too late for some already. Huge criticism of CDC direction and inconsistency in direction by other medical leaders. The 'controversial' stuff starts around page 60.


A few thoughts of my own:
- Back around the week of the 15th, I made a post saying that people are delusional if they thought that weren't being active in getting things moving. The emails here show that the move on testing was made Feb 10th: That we had functional test run of drive through testing in late Feb; That an issue with test turnaround was known and addressed with the high throughput system that was developed in about 3 weeks (that's a huge overhaul). Again, the initial failure of the test design played a big time role here.
- The CDC really f'd up some stuff along the way. (This includes the issue with the FDA, which was touched on in the email chains)
- China absolutely manipulated data
- A lot of what I've said is on point, when it comes to how overly complicated our government is.

- Early articles on this are already highly misleading about what is in here...
"He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus" - NY Times
"'We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window': Leaked emails show top public health experts raised alarm about the Trump administration's botched coronavirus response" - Business Insider
"Trump reportedly squandered 3 crucial weeks to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak after a CDC official’s blunt warnings spooked the stock market" - Business Insider
"5 takeaways on what Trump knew as the virus spread" - Boston.com

All of these (and infinitely more to come I'm sure) telling us that Trump knew all of this. The reality is, this is a private email chain that may have people that are in contact with him on small levels. It wasn't until late Feb sentiment really starts to rise within the email chain. That's about 3 weeks of private communication. We don't have the slightest clue what anyone on this chain said to him or forwarded. We do know that Trump has relied on the CDC for most of this and it's obvious from these criticisms that the CDC wasn't up to speed. If these professionals saw this in late Feb/early Mar, why isn't there some chatter in here about how they reached out to X, Y, and Z at the CDC to figure out WTF was going on? There's nothing in here that shows that anyone pushed this up the ladder, either to the CDC or to Trump, and was ignored or shunned. Not to marginalize it, but without any of these folks doing that, it's not much different than them posting data and complaining about the governors/CDC on this forum.

[ReignOnU]

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper ... pdf#page=1

If you want to read through it all. I'm in between meetings a lot today, but going to try to read it.

Ummm, look 6 posts before yours...

Hmm.. when I clicked that the first time it opened a NYT article that needed a subscription. That's why I reposted what I found after going a different way. Didn't realize it was the same link from the original.

[ReignOnU]

Gotcha

I see Fauci has come under fire a little because he's come out and said similar, that he was warning the administration much earlier but nothing was done. Only problem, there are videos of him doing interviews as late as late February telling everyone the risk is low, and they shouldn't change anything they're doing, basically contradicting his claims.

There can't be a difference of what he was more than likely pressured to say on TV at the time to what he's telling administration behind the scenes?

A.) Fauci isn't a puppet, I think we've seen enough to know that
B.) If you read the emails, as of late Feb, there's a massive range of outcomes and many unknowns about the virus.
C.) Even the professionals in the email chain admit that it would be really early for action and the public/leaders would struggle with understanding and implementing.
D.) It's pretty hard for a leader to act when information is inconsistent and far from perfect.

[cougnix]

How badly does Trump want to fire Faucci? And if he was allowed to, what would that do for him in the long run?

[GeorgesGoons]

How badly does Trump want to fire Faucci? And if he was allowed to, what would that do for him in the long run?

He doesn't have the authority to fire him. He can remove him from the crisis team.

Watching CNN now and headline says, "Source: Trump fretting about Faucci for some time."

Have we learned enough to know that anytime these unnamed sources are used with Trump there is a greater probability of it being completely inaccurate than truthful.

[ReignOnU]

How badly does Trump want to fire Faucci? And if he was allowed to, what would that do for him in the long run?

I'd really like to know the 1st q. My gut says he despises him. But my head thinks that he has some kind of respect for him.

John Gotti was known as the Teflon Don... pretty sure Trump is giving him a run for his money right now. Any objective person would see the move as absurd and be highly critical. But it wouldn't really move the needle on a national level. We'd get bad articles for a few days to a week and move on to the next.

[ReignOnU]

How badly does Trump want to fire Faucci? And if he was allowed to, what would that do for him in the long run?

He doesn't have the authority to fire him. He can remove him from the crisis team.

Watching CNN now and headline says, "Source: Trump fretting about Faucci for some time."

Have we learned enough to know that anytime these unnamed sources are used with Trump there is a greater probability of it being completely inaccurate than truthful.

I'm at the point that I give less credibility to anonymous sources than I'd give information emailed from Lennay Kekua.

[GeorgesGoons]

How badly does Trump want to fire Faucci? And if he was allowed to, what would that do for him in the long run?

He doesn't have the authority to fire him. He can remove him from the crisis team.

Watching CNN now and headline says, "Source: Trump fretting about Faucci for some time."

Have we learned enough to know that anytime these unnamed sources are used with Trump there is a greater probability of it being completely inaccurate than truthful.

I'm at the point that I give less credibility to anonymous sources than I'd give information emailed from Lennay Kekua.

100% had to Google who this person was. Then it went straight to Ta'o and I had to read part of an article to know what the heck you were talking about. But yes, I'm on board with you on this.

[GeorgesGoons]

It's sad because anonymous sources used to be a real game changer and a look on the inside of things. But now everyone is an anonymous sources and some have agendas that detract from what they are leaking.

[dakshdar]

I think the emails are less about those people were telling anything directly to Trump and more that they were flowing information to their leadership and not much was happening. None of this should ultimately be written as being "Trump's fault" - it's an administration failure more than anything. The problem is, when things go bad, the person at the top takes the fall. I've seen it multiple times at work (and I'm sure many of you have as well if you work a big company) - there are a series of bad decisions made by various levels of leaders and ultimately the overall lead is replaced/"decides to retire early"/gets put on "special assignment" and is back-filled by someone else.

The 'We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window'" headline was a direct quote from one of the emails (not sure if you saw it). They were basically saying that a playbook for this had been developed over many years, other countries were implementing it (I believe Hong Kong and Singapore were noted, possibly bad examples because of geography). People felt it was a solid, agreed upon plan with the best chance of success, but we were not following it.

The "He Could Have Seen What Was Coming" article also provides explicit details for specific instances where information was passed up including to Trump himself (in addition to other leads)

I'm not really sure any of this is about hindsight, it doesn't need to be (though it's all too easy to make it out to be that). There's an obvious failure of things when a large contingent of people feel there's a major problem coming, they're the right people to be consulted on it, and multiple levels of leadership fail to act on that.

[GeorgesGoons]

I think the emails are less about those people were telling anything directly to Trump and more that they were flowing information to their leadership and not much was happening. None of this should ultimately be written as being "Trump's fault" - it's an administration failure more than anything. The problem is, when things go bad, the person at the top takes the fall. I've seen it multiple times at work (and I'm sure many of you have as well if you work a big company) - there are a series of bad decisions made by various levels of leaders and ultimately the overall lead is replaced/"decides to retire early"/gets put on "special assignment" and is back-filled by someone else.

The 'We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window'" headline was a direct quote from one of the emails (not sure if you saw it). They were basically saying that a playbook for this had been developed over many years, other countries were implementing it (I believe Hong Kong and Singapore were noted, possibly bad examples because of geography). People felt it was a solid, agreed upon plan with the best chance of success, but we were not following it.

The "He Could Have Seen What Was Coming" article also provides explicit details for specific instances where information was passed up including to Trump himself (in addition to other leads)

I'm not really sure any of this is about hindsight, it doesn't need to be (though it's all too easy to make it out to be that). There's an obvious failure of things when a large contingent of people feel there's a major problem coming, they're the right people to be consulted on it, and multiple levels of leadership fail to act on that.

Well said

[nick]

annoying thing is for data collection todays gonna skew results since theyre clearly not posting new data with Easter and shit.. Italy, Canada and Germany have added 0 confirms today? lol unlikely.

[nick]

http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2 ... RFezg4hii0

Stanford did tests and TL;DR.. there isnt a mass population that had it before February and it's spread like people have hoped (to start creating herd immunity). Theyve tracked first cases in the US (Cali area) back to February when it first started.

[ReignOnU]

I think the emails are less about those people were telling anything directly to Trump and more that they were flowing information to their leadership and not much was happening. None of this should ultimately be written as being "Trump's fault" - it's an administration failure more than anything. The problem is, when things go bad, the person at the top takes the fall. I've seen it multiple times at work (and I'm sure many of you have as well if you work a big company) - there are a series of bad decisions made by various levels of leaders and ultimately the overall lead is replaced/"decides to retire early"/gets put on "special assignment" and is back-filled by someone else.

The 'We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window'" headline was a direct quote from one of the emails (not sure if you saw it). They were basically saying that a playbook for this had been developed over many years, other countries were implementing it (I believe Hong Kong and Singapore were noted, possibly bad examples because of geography). People felt it was a solid, agreed upon plan with the best chance of success, but we were not following it.

The "He Could Have Seen What Was Coming" article also provides explicit details for specific instances where information was passed up including to Trump himself (in addition to other leads)

I'm not really sure any of this is about hindsight, it doesn't need to be (though it's all too easy to make it out to be that). There's an obvious failure of things when a large contingent of people feel there's a major problem coming, they're the right people to be consulted on it, and multiple levels of leadership fail to act on that.

Yeah, saw it the quotes. 100% with you on everything. My point is that the media just takes that sample and makes it seem like this is 80 pages of screw ups.

I don't really see it as them telling leadership anything. No one really indicates that they've raised a flag. Just because you slap a name on a group email doesn't mean you're requesting a call to action. Yes there are short emails that reply "act now," but what is that? Who on that chain is the person to do something? Is there someone there that has that power? You don't see any email back stating "I have told person X to do Y. Y said..."

I don't see anything that indicates that this is anything more than a lot of smart people have an open discussion about it and stating to each other that we should have done things differently. To me, if you're that smart and that sure, why aren't you taking action to make it happen? What are you doing?

This is analogous to what I do nearly every day. I look at information, interpret the impacts on the business, collaborate with other business leaders and if/when I see something that needs action, I address it accordingly. It's a very specific setup... this is what happened, "X" is what could happen, this is what we need to do to make "X or Y" happen... My recommendation is "thing A." If it's to the C suite, I'll request their feedback directly. If it's going to other areas and requires attention, I give the who, what, when and why and request followup. None of this shit is complicated, it's common sense.

[ReignOnU]

annoying thing is for data collection todays gonna skew results since theyre clearly not posting new data with Easter and shit.. Italy, Canada and Germany have added 0 confirms today? lol unlikely.

Right!

Was hoping no one jumped into jinx us by commenting on the lower case and death totals for Sat/Sun. Would be great to see a stable/declining Tuesday # tomorrow, but pessimistic considering reporting history.

[nick]

annoying thing is for data collection todays gonna skew results since theyre clearly not posting new data with Easter and shit.. Italy, Canada and Germany have added 0 confirms today? lol unlikely.

Right!

Was hoping no one jumped into jinx us by commenting on the lower case and death totals for Sat/Sun. Would be great to see a stable/declining Tuesday # tomorrow, but pessimistic considering reporting history.

day to day cases by major countries. I dont know how to turn the bottom column from numbers to the dates (but can np with the confirmed cases). but ya thats from March 15th to April 12th

[nick]

were almost a month into the world being locked down. what a time to be alive.

[shel311]

There can't be a difference of what he was more than likely pressured to say on TV at the time to what he's telling administration behind the scenes?

Sure, but at that point you're quite literally just making up an excuse for him with no basis for it other than, well, ya know


That being said, it still doesn't make sense for him to be pressured to say one thing 1 month ago, and then now publicly stating something else. Is he all of a sudden not pressured any more?