This WP investigation, based on inside reporting, finds that Trump and like-minded advisers — in particular, Scott Atlas — have abandoned the war on the virus. They've decided to accept mass infection, and they've undercut measures to stop the spread. /1 wapo.st/3dMuQb2
Atlas is undermining preventive measures. He dismisses masks and social distancing as meaningless. Two days ago, he publicly rejected the idea that "masks work." He says all restrictions on activity should be lifted except for the highest-risk groups. /2 wapo.st/3dMuQb2
Atlas has blocked efforts to test the general population. As a result, money allocated by Congress for testing is going unspent. That's one reason why people can't get fast test results. It also impedes the government's ability to monitor the spread. /3 wapo.st/3dMuQb2
Only about 10% of Americans have been infected. To attain herd immunity, we would need to reach 60% or 70% infection. That means the strategy being promoted by Atlas, and increasingly adopted by Trump, entails "hundreds of thousands of excess deaths." /4 wapo.st/3dMuQb2
Trump is pushing for a vaccine, and he promotes therapeutics (or, as he calls them, "cures"). But short of that, the administration is abandoning basic steps to mitigate the spread of the virus. “They’ve given up on everything else,” says an official. /5 wapo.st/3dMuQb2
Atlas has gained control of virus policy thanks to Kushner's support and Pence's acquiescence, and despite warnings from Birx that he's untrustworthy. He tells Trump what Trump wants to hear. “Everybody looks for what Atlas is giving,” says an official. /6 wapo.st/3dMuQb2
Having given up on prevention, Trump is lying about how soon a vaccine will be ready. He wants an announcement before the election.
For four days, we’ve watched Republicans lie about Trump’s mismanagement of the coronavirus.
Now it’s time to tell the truth. This article documents everything he did to multiply the death toll. Here are a few key facts and excerpts to read and share. /1 bit.ly/3fImz7h
Trump says China deceived him about the virus. But Trump actually collaborated with Xi to deceive the rest of us. Here’s a phone call in which Xi fed Trump a rosy talking point that US health officials called misleading. Trump then used that talking point at a campaign rally. /2
This chronology shows that Trump downplayed the virus and said it was going away 1) after he was told it was spreading, 2) after he was told that China was understating the crisis, and 3) after his own health officials warned it would overwhelm the US. /3 bit.ly/3b0kHpN
The @washingtonpost reports that Trump, in continuing to tell Americans that the virus is receding, is in fact contradicting an internal White House projection — which, according to aides, alarmed him — that infections will rise from August to October. /1 wapo.st/2XJloOO
The Post report also indicates that Trump has refused to force companies to produce equipment for virus tests, on the grounds that doing so would expose him to responsibility for the testing shortage, which he prefers to dump on governors. /2
The article says Trump's chief of staff, @MarkMeadows, "personally monitors" Fauci’s media appearances and "admonishes" him when he sees Fauci "sounding out of sync with Trump." Meadows has instructed Fauci, Birx, and other health officials not to "opine on restrictions." /3
Kudos to @nytimes and @SherylNYT for publishing this article on Birx, which rectifies some of the unfair criticism aimed at her in NYT's July 18 article. This one tells the rest of the story: She's been pushing the White House and governors to do more. /1 nyti.ms/30AEgS0
The July 18 article was full of criticisms of Birx, many of them anonymous, that exceeded, and in some cases contradicted, evidence in the public record. Some of that evidence was in the article itself. I described some problems with that article here. /2
On CNN, Birx escalates rules for personal behavior:
1) “If you’re in multi-generational households and there’s an outbreak in your [area], you need to really consider wearing a mask at home.”
2) If you vacation in a hotspot, you "need to come back [and] assume you’re infected.”
Birx warns rural residents: “What we’re seeing today is different from March and April." The virus is now "into the rural" areas, too. "You are not immune or protected from this virus … No matter where you live in America, you need to wear a mask and socially distance.” @CNNSotu
On reopening schools, Birx defends online instruction: “If you have high case load and active community spread … we’re asking people to distance-learn at this moment, so we can get this epidemic under control.”
This NYT story on the administration's COVID fiasco reads like a gang attack on Deborah Birx. Political officials who made bad decisions looking for a scapegoat, backed by quotes from doctors and scientists who think she didn't stand up enough to Trump. /1 nyti.ms/30odYB3
The article is full of claims attributed to Birx, saying in April that the numbers were heading in the right direction. Maybe that's because ... they were? "Mitigation was working." “All metros are stabilizing.” The US "was on the same trajectory as Italy." That was all true. /2
But the article says Birx "failed to account for a vital variable: how Mr. Trump’s rush to [reopen] would help undercut the social distancing," etc.
Wait, what? We're holding the mitigation-advocating scientist responsible for the president who trampled her recommendations? /3