Kurt Eichenwald Profile picture
Sep 18, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Watching Trump bring up swine flu (H1N1) shows the magnitude of his stupidity & his belief in the the stupidity of his followers and of conservative media.

The H1N1 response was a huge lesson in how *to* respond to an imminent pandemic and how the USA could lead the world...1
...in response. That a deadly disease killed people is a truism: It is only after deaths begin that anyone knows a deadly infectious outbreak has begun. How you measure success is how a government responded. And Obama's H1N1 response is practically a case study in competence...2
...just start with one comparative date: The key, most important moment in the development of a potential pandemic is when the @WHO, relying on its massive detection network, declares there to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Let's look at the dates and...3
...response. WHO declared an international public health emergency with H1N1 on April 25, 2009. On April 26 - the next day! - Obama declared a public health emergency which grants enormous powers to the health agencies. Same day, began releasing 25% of antiviral drugs needed...4
...to treat this new influenza virus from the federal stockpile.

Now, let's compare. We know now on January 28, 2020, Trump was told how disastrous this was. The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on Jan 30. The Trump response?...5
...nothing. Five days later, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” 2/10: "Going to be fine...April, will miraculously go away." on and on...2/26: "Its like the flu."

No real action, other than a half-assed travel restriction put in place after COVID was here from..
...Europe. Finally, on March 13 - two & half months after the WHO declaration, Trump declares a national emergency, finally giving our health agencies powers to fight it. By then, almost 10,000 Americans had died - 90% of total number who died in the entirety of H1N1 outbreak...
...the comparison here - the US developed the gold standard testing kit by April 28, 2009 and distributed testing kits to the world, THREE DAYS after the WHO declaration, we did emergency production and shipped them across the USA and the world (ours was used by everyone...
...because competence made us the gold standard of the world. That one act did more to contain the global spread than anything.

Again, this could go on and on. But calling H1N1 response a failure is more proof: #DimwitDon is too ignorant & incompetent to be president.

end

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More from @kurteichenwald

Jun 28
That SCOTUS overruling ANOTHER precedent - this one that established the Chevron doctrine, which has been cited in literally thousands of federal cases - was signaled by the court in 2022. Then I said the ruling in West Virginia v. EPA was the most important in decades.../1
...because it showed that the conservatives were gearing up to take regulatory administration out of the hands of experts and place it in the hands of the political hacks that now occupy our courts . It is an obscene power grab by this court, which has already ripped away.../2
...the authority of Congress, state legislatures, state courts etc. whenever it wants to drive policy. No precedent is safe. Stare decisis is over. This is an activist court unlike any in our country's history.

Mark Lemley broke down the court's imperial power grabs, and how..3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 14
I know lots of gun enthusiasts and collectors (I grew up in Texas.) And I have never met one who isn't horrified by bump stocks. "You can't aim the damn things," one said to me a few years back. "They're good for only one thing: Spraying lots of unaimed bullets into a crowd."...1
...make no mistake: Gun nuts who demand them have no interest in shooting *at* a target. They just shoot in the general direction. These are nothing more than machine guns that can't be aimed. Yet SCOTUS, in its new role as an adjunct to the GOP policy committee, breaks down.../2
...the gun not into its function, but to its means of pulling the trigger to jump through new hoops to declare the extremist wing of the GQP as sole arbiter of the Constitution. Their argument - that it is not the speed of firing, but the technique - is fatuous sophistry.../3
Read 7 tweets
Sep 24, 2023
Unsurprisingly, @RealPNavarro has no idea what the Mayo Clinic actually said. And the idea that doctors in ICUs are going to make medical decisions with critically ill pts based on CNN reports is crazy. But what do studies actually say, and why is hydro use so limited? Well...
Image
..In 2020, FDA (under Trump), NIH and World Health Organization stopped studies evaluating hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 due to a lack of benefit. Current NIH and US guidelines recommend its use for COVID-19 treatment in hospitals only in clinical trials...
...in *Britain*, the largest study on hydro (the RECOVERY Trial" - one of few randomized & controlled - evaluated potential treatments for patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Investigators found no benefit or reduction of death in hospitalized patients receiving hydro...
Read 6 tweets
Sep 15, 2023
Media who interview CEO Barra of @GM need to understand: When asked about difference between how much of an increase she receives to reach her compensation ($30 mill - higher than all but Tesla) compared to workers, she says "It's performance based." What a croc. Here's why.../1
...For most, it's hard for average person to understand because the compensation standards in GM's proxy is loaded with undefined acronyms - TSR, LTIP, NEO, etc. But when you know the meaning, you see that her compensation is rigged. A good percentage of her comp is based on...
...comparisons to the performance of other companies & comps with other company CEO's comp. Well, for the first one, they use other auto makers, most of which are nowhere close to the size/diversity of GM (Renault, Stelantis, Suzuki) so they really aren't comparable. BUT when...
Read 15 tweets
Aug 15, 2023
Would reporters *please* stop saying RICO law in Georgia is intended to be applied to organized crime. That is *false.* In fact, it is wrong on so many levels that it is shocking reporters keep saying it. They are clearly referring to federal RICO - where they are also wrong.../1
...federal RICO (not part of the Georgia case) has been and - according G. Robert Blakey, the man who wrote the statute - was intended both to apply to the activities of organized crime *and* other criminal enterprises, including white collar crime. From Blakey in 1989:.../2 Image
...the reason Blakey is discussing white collar crime is because, at that time, RICO was being used to bludgeon Wall Street fraud. But the federal law was specifically written to address a pattern of criminal activity that involved an "enterprise" such as a corrupt company.../3
Read 12 tweets
Jul 24, 2023
Florida wants to teach about "skills" slaves obtained in the antebellum south because "beneficent" slaveholders taught their slaves to read, write, blacksmithing, etc. They say this is supported by "scholars." Well, let's see what the scholars really say.../1
...first, let's start with blacksmithing, since this is specifically what DeSantis mentioned yesterday. This, more than anything, underscores the brutal ignorance of the GOP on history, and their apparent belief that Africans arrived here as ignorant, incompetent savages.../2
...reality: People who were already skilled blacksmiths were brought in chains from West Africa. These Africans were among the most skilled blacksmiths the world had ever seen, and *they* taught *white* blacksmiths new skills and techniques. African blacksmith slaves were.../3
Read 15 tweets

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