Thread by @SusanKBradford

JFC

How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air” | Vanity Fair vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/h…

2/On March 31, 3 wks aft @WHO designated #coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, a DHL truck rattled up to the gray stone embassy of United Arab Emirates n D.C., delivering precious cargo: 1M Chinese-made diagnostic tests for COVID-19, ordered at the behest of the Trump admin.

3/Normally, fed gov purchases come w detailed contracts, replete w acronyms & identifying codes. They require sign-off from an authorized contract officer & are typically made public in a U.S. gov procurement database, under a sys intended as a hedge against waste, fraud &abuse

4/This purchase did not appear in any gov database. Nor was there any contract officer involved. Instead, it was documented in an invoice obtained by Vanity Fair, from a company, Cogna Technology Solutions (its own name misspelled as “Tecnology” on the bill)...

5/which noted a total order of 3.5 million tests for an amount owed of $52 million. The “client name” simply noted “WH.”

6/Over the next 3 months, the tests’ mysterious provenance would spark confusion & finger-pointing. An Abu Dhabi–based artificial intel co, Group 42, w close ties to the UAE’s ruling family, identified itself as the seller of 3.5M tests & demanded payment.

7/Its requests were routed thru various divisions within @HHSGov whose lawyers sought in vain for a bona fide contracting officer.

During that period, more than 2.4M Americans contracted #COVID-19 & 123,331 of them died of the illness.

8/First in NY, & then in states around the country, governors, public health experts, and frightened citizens sounded the alarm that a critical shortage of tests, and the ballooning time to get results, were crippling the U.S. pandemic response.

9/But the million tests, some of which were distributed by @fema to sev states, were of no help. According to docs obtained by Vanity Fair, they were examined in 3 sep gov labs & found to be “contaminated & unusable.”Grp 42 reps didnt respond to repeated requests for comment

10/The invoice for 3.5 million COVID-19 tests listed the client name as "WH."

11/The secret & legally dubious, acquisition of those test kits was the work of a task force at @WhiteHouse where Jared Kushner, #TraitorTrump son-in-law & “special adviser”, has assumed a sprawling role in the pandemic response.

12/That explains the “WH” on the invoice. While it’s unclear whether Kushner himself played a role in the acquisition, improper procurement of supplies “is a serious deal,” said a former White House staffer. “That is appropriations 101. That would be not good.”

13/Tho Kushner’s outsized role has bn widely reported, the procurement of Chinese-made test kits is being disclosed here for the 1st time. So is an even more extraordinary effort that Kushner oversaw: a secret proj to devise a comprehensive plan that wld have massively ramped up

14/and coordinated for #covid19 at the federal level.

15/Six months into the pandemic, the US continues to suffer the worst outbreak of COVID-19 in the developed world. Considerable blame belongs to a fed resp that offloaded responsibility for the crucial task of testing to the states.

16/this is some major epic level failure that cost #TaxPayers $52,000,000

Shouldn’t we be screaming abt this at the top of our lungs?

17/The irony is that, after assembling the team that came up w an aggressive & ambitious nat’t testing plan, Kushner then appears to have decided, for reasons that remain murky, to scrap its proposal.

18/Today, as governors & mayors scramble to stamp out epidemics plaguing their populations, philanthropists at the Rockefeller Foundation are working to fill the void & organize enough testing to bring the nationwide epidemic under control.

19/Inside the WH, over much of March & early April, Kushner’s handpicked group of young business assocs, which incl’d a former college roommate, teamed up w sev top experts from the diagnostic-testing industry. Together, they hammered out the outline of a nat’l testing strategy

20/The group—working night and day, using the encrypted platform WhatsApp—emerged w a detailed plan obtained by Vanity Fair. Rather than have states fight ea other for scarce diag tests & limited lab capacity, the plan wld have set up a sys of nat’l oversight & coordination ...

21/to surge supplies, allocate test kits, lift regulatory & contractual roadblocks, & establish a widespread virus surveillance sys by the fall, to help pinpoint subsequent outbreaks.

The solutions it proposed weren’t rocket science—

22/or even comparable to dauntingly complex undertaking of developing a new vaccine. Any nat’l plan to address testing deficits wld likely be more on level of “replicating UPS for an industry,” said Dr. Mike Pellini, the mgng partner of Sec 32, a tech & hc venture capital fund

23/Imagine if UPS/FedEx didn’t have infrastructure to connect all dots. It wld b complete chaos.” The plan crafted at WH, then, set out to connect the dots. Some of those who worked on the plan were told that it wld be presented to Trump & likely announced in Rose Garden in Apr

24/I was beyond optimistic,” said one participant. “My understanding was that the final document would make its way to the president over that weekend” & would result in a “significant announcement.”

But no nationally coordinated testing strategy was ever announced.

25/The plan, according to the participant, “just went poof into thin air.” The WH did not respond to Vanity Fair’s request to interview Kushner or to a detailed list of questions.

— like everything else w this administration—

26/This summer has illustrated in devastating detail the human & economic cost of not launching a sys of nat’l testing, which most every other industrialized nation has done. South Korea serves as the gold standard, w innovative “phone booth” & drive-thru testing sites...

27/results that get returned w/in 24 hrs, & supportive isolation for those who test +, incl food drop-offs. In the US by contrast, cable news & front pgs have bn dominated by images of miles-long lines of 🚗 in scorching AZ & TX heat, their drivers waiting hrs 4 scarce diag tests

28/desperate Sunbelt mayors pleading in vain for federal help to expand testing capacity. In short, a “freaking debacle,” as 1 top public health expert put it.

We are just wks away from dangerous & controversial 🏫 reopenings & the looming fall 🤒 season,...

29/which the aborted plan had accounted for as a critical deadline for establishing a nat’l system for quickly identifying new outbreaks & hot spots.

Without systematic testing, “We might as well put duct tape over our 👀, cotton in our👂🏼, & hide under the 🛌,” ...

30/said Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux, research director for the Harvard Medical School Program in Global Public Policy.

Tho #traitorTrump likes to trumpet America’s sheer number of tests, that metric does not acct for the speed of results or the response to them, said Dr. June-Ho Kim

31/a public health researcher at Ariadne Labs, said. “If you’re pedaling really hard & not going anywhere, it’s all for naught.”

With no bankable nat’l plan, the effort to create 1 has fallen to a network of high-level civilians & nongovernmental organizations.

32/The most visible effort is led by the Rockefeller Fnd & its president, Dr. Rajiv Shah. Focused & determinedly apolitical, Shah, 47, is now steering a widening & bipartisan coalition that incl 3 former FDA commissioners, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, a movie star, ...

33/& 27 American cities, states, and tribal nations, all toward the far-reaching goal of getting to 30M COVID-19 tests a wk by autumn, up from the current rate of roughly 5.5M/wk.

“We know what has 2b done: broad & ubiquitous testing tied to broad & effective contact tracing,”

34/until a 💉 can be widely admin’d. “It takes abt 5 mins for any1 to understand thats the only path forward to reopening & recovering.” W/out that, he said “Our country is going 2b stuck facing a series of rebound epidemics that r highly consequential in a really deleterious way

35/Countries that have successfully contained their outbreaks have empowered scientists to lead the resp. But when Kushner set out in March to solve the diag-testing crisis, his efforts began not w PH experts but w bankers & billionaires.

36/They saw themselves as the “A-team of ppl who get shit done,” as 1 participant proclaimed in a March Politico article.

Kushner’s brain trust incl’d Adam Boehler, his summer college roommate who now serves as CEO of the newly created US Int’l Dev Finance Corp, a gov devmt bank

37/that makes loans overseas. Other group members included Nat Turner, the cofounder and CEO of Flatiron Health, which works to improve cancer treatment & research.

A Morgan Stanley banker w no notable health care exp, Jason Yeung took a leave of absence to join the task force

38/Along the way, the grp reached out for advice to billionaires, such as Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen.

The group’s collective lack of relevant exp was far from the only challenge it faced. The obstacles arrayed against any effective national testing effort included:

39/so they made another government bank for rich ppl w Kushner’s bestie in charge, but still dont have a plan for dealing w #COVID
..got it

40/limited laboratory capacity, supply shortages, huge discrepancies in employers’ abilities to cover testing costs for their employees, an enormous number of uninsured Americans, & a fragmented diagnostic-testing marketplace.

So where’s #ourstockpile ?

41/According to 1 participant, the grp didnt coordinate its work w a diagnostic-testing team at @HHSGov working under Adm Giroir, who was appointed as the nation’s “testing czar” on March 12. Kushner’s grp was “in their own bubble,” said the participant.

42/“Other agencies were in their own bubbles. The circles never overlapped.”

As it evolved, Kushner’s grp called on the help of sev top diagnostic-testing experts. Together, they worked arnd the ⏰, & thru a forest of WhatsApp messages.

43/The effort of the WH team was “apolitical,” said the participant, & undertaken “w the nation’s best interests in mind.”
Kushner’s team hammered out a detailed plan, which Vanity Fair obtained. It stated, “Current challenges that need to be resolved incl uneven testing capacity

44/& supplies thru-out the US, both betw & within regions, significant delays in reporting results (4-11 days), & nat’l supply chain constraints, such as PPE, swabs, & certain testing reagents.”

The plan called for the fed gov to coordinate distribution of test kits,

45/so they could be surged to heavily affected areas, & oversee a nat’l contact-tracing infrastructure. It also proposed lifting contract restrictions on where🥼& 🏥 send tests, allowing any lab w capacity to test any sample.

46/It proposed a massive scale-up of antibody testing to facilitate a return to work. It called for mandating that all COVID-19 test results from any kind of testing, taken anywhere, be reported to a national repository as well as to state and local health departments.

47/And it proposed establishing “a national Sentinel Surveillance System” with “real-time intelligence capabilities to understand leading indicators where hot spots are arising and where the risks are high vs. where people can get back to work.”

48/By early April, some who worked on the plan were given the strong impression that it wld soon be shared w Trump & announced by WH. The plan, tho imperfect, was a starting pt. Simply working together as a nation on it “wld have put us in a fundamentally diff place,”

49/But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the WH. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, Trump had bn downplaying concerns about the 🦠 & spreading misinfo abt it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials & right-wing media figures.

50/Worried abt the #stockmarket & his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing wld only lead to higher case counts & more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Birx was reportedly sharing models w senior stf that optimistically—& erroneously, it wld turn out—predicted...

51/the 🦠 would soon fade away. Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale nat’l plan was losing favor, said 1 public health expert in frequent contact w the WH’s official coronavirus task force.

SO IN OTHER WORDS, #GrifterInChief lost interest & didnt care

52/Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that bec the 🦠 had hit blue states hardest, a nat’l plan was unnecessary & would not make sense politically.

?¿? Srsly? This is EXACTLY what we thought was happening!!

53/“The political folks believed that bec it was going 2b relegated to Dem states, that they could blame those govs, & that would be an eff political strategy,” said the expert. That logic may have swayed Kushner.

SO IF Kushner HAS any friends left in NY, HERES what he 💭 of u!

54/“It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.

On April 27, Trump stepped to a podium in the Rose Garden, flanked by membs of his coronavirus task force & leaders of America’s big comm testing labs...

55/Quest Diagnostics & LabCorp, & finally announced a testing plan: It bore almost no resemblance to the 1 that had bn forged in late March, & shifted the prob of diag testing almost entirely to individual states.

56/Under the plan released that day, the fed gov wld act as a facilitator to help increase needed supplies and rapidly approve new versions of diagnostic-testing kits. But the bulk of the effort to operate testing sites and find available labs fell to the states.

57/IMHO these ppl should be tried in The Hague! #CriminalInChief

58/“I had this naive optimism: This is too imp 2b caught n a partisan filter of how we view truth & the world,” said Rick Klausner, Rockefeller Fnd adv & former dir of Nat’l Cancer Institute. “But fed gov has decided to abrogate resp & basically throw 50 states onto their own.”

59/THE SUMMER OF DISASTER

It soon became clear that ceding testing responsibility to the states was a recipe for disaster, not just in Democratic-governed areas but across the country.

60/JFC! I need a break, this is mind blowing!

IM 😡 AS HELL AND I CANT TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!

THIS MOTHERFUCKER NEEDS TO BE PUT IN JAIL!!!

61/these mothefuckers literally killed 50,000 ppl bec they lived in blue states!

THIS IS A MAJOR DEAL! THIS NEEDS TO BE TALKED ABOUT! Where the HELL is @maddow when you need her! @JoyAnnReid @NicolleDWallace @AliVelshi @Lawrence i guess we need to count on y’all to talk abt it!

62/In April, Phoenix, AZ, was struggling just to provide tests to its health care workers& patients w severe symptoms of COVID-19. When Mayor Kate Gallego reached out to the fed gov for help, she got an unmistakable message back: America’s fifth-largest city was on its own.

63/“We didn’t have a sufficient number of cases to warrant” the help, Gallego told Vanity Fair.

Phoenix found itself in a catch-22, which the city’s gov relations mgr explained to lawyers in an April 21 email obtained by Vanity Fair thru a publ records request:

64/“On a call w the county last week the Mayor was told that the region has [not] received @fema funds related to testing bec we don’t have bad numbers. The probl w that logic is that the Mayor believes we don’t have bad numbers bec [of] a lack of testing.”

65/In June, Phoenix’s case counts began to ⬆️ dramatically. At a drive-thru test site near her🏡,Gallego saw miles-long lines of🚗waiting in temps above 100°. “We had ppl waiting 13 hrs 4 tests. These r ppl who r struggling to breathe, whose bodies 😖, who have to sit n a🚗 4 hrs

66/One man, his 🚗 ran out of⛽️ & he had to refill while struggling to breathe.”

Gallego’s own staff members were waiting 2 wks to get back test results, a period in which they cld have bn unwittingly transmitting the 🦠.

67/“The turnaround times are way beyond what’s clinically relevant,” said Dr. James Lawler, executive director of international programs & innovation at the Global Center for Health Security at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

By July 5, Gallego was out of patience.

68/She went on ABC News, wearing a neon-pink 👚& politely blasted the fed resp: “We’ve asked FEMA if they could come & do community-based testing here.

We were told they’re moving away from that, which feels like they’re declaring victory while we’re still in crisis mode.”

69/wow, just WOW. This article goes on. Imma put the closing but y’all should read this for yourself! MY GAWD! Where are @GOP in this? #25thAmendmentBeforeWeAllDie

70/Experts are now warning that the U.S. testing system is on the brink of collapse. “We are at a very bad moment here,” said Margaret Bourdeaux. “We are about to lose visibility on this monster and it’s going to rampage through our whole country. This is a massive emergency.”

71/THE PLOT TO SAVE AMERICA
On April 21, the Rockefeller Foundation released a detailed plan for what it described as the “largest public health testing prog in American history,” a massive scale-up from roughly 1M tests a wk at the time to 3M/wk by June & 30M by the fall.

72/Rockefeller plan sought to do exactly what the fed had chosen not to: create a national infrastructure in a record-short period of time. Dr. Anthony Fauci called the Rockefeller plan “music to my ears.”

73/Despite Rockefeller Foundation’s round-the-clock work to guide the US to a nationwide testing sys essential to reopening, the foundation has not yet been able to bend the most important curve of all: the Trump administration’s determined disinterest in big federal action.

74/Just 3 days later, news reports revealed Trump admin was trying to block any new funding for tests & contact tracing in the new coronavirus relief pkg being hammered out in Congress.“We’re dealing w a schizophrenic org. Who the hell knows what’s going on? It’s just insanity.”

75/On July 31, the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus, which is investigating the federal response, will hold a hearing to examine the “urgent need” for a comprehensive nat’l plan, at which Dr. Fauci, CDC dir Redfield, & Adm Giroir will testify.

76/Among other things, the subcommittee is probing whether the Trump administration sought to suppress testing, in part due to Trump’s claim at his Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally in June that he ordered staff to “slow the testing down.”

77/The gamble that son-in-law RE developers/Morgan Stanley bankers liaising w billionaires, cld eff stand n 4 a well-coordinated fed resp has proven 2b💀wrong. Even smallest of Kushner’s solutions to #COVID19 hav entangled gov agencies n confusion & raised concerns abt illegality

78/In the 3 mos after the mysterious test kits arrived at UAE embassy, diplomats there had bn prodding the US gov to make good on the $52M shipment. Finally, on June 26, lawyers for the HHS sent a cable to the embassy, directed to the company Cogna Technology Solutions LLC.

79/It said, “HHS is unable to remit💰for test kits in question, as HHS hasnt identified any warranted US contracting officer”/any contract docs involved in the procurement. The cable cited relevant fed contract laws that wld make it “unlawful for Gov to💰for the test kits in Q.”

80/But perhaps most relevant for Americans counting on the fed gov to mount an eff resp to #covidpandemic & safeguard their health, the test kits didn’t work. As the HHS cable to the UAE embassy noted:

81/“When the kits were delivered they were tested in accordance w standard procedures & were found to be contaminated & unusable.”

An FDA spokesperson told Vanity Fair the tests may have bn rendered ineffective bec of how they were stored when they were shipped from the ME.

82/The reagents should be kept cold,” the spokesperson said.

Although officials w FEMA and HHS wld not acknowledge that the tests even exist, stating only that there was no official gov contract for them, the UAE’s records are clear enuf.

83/As a spokesperson for the UAE embassy confirmed, “the US Gov made an urgent request for add’l COVID-19 test kits from the UAE gov. 1M test kits were delivered to the US gov by April 1. An add’l 2.5M test kits were delivered to the US gov by April 20.”

84/The tests may not have worked, in other words, but Trump would have been pleased at the sheer number of them.

Im speechless 😶

/end

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