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Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social Profile picture
@JeremyKonyndyk
Dec 29, 2023 • 12 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Haven't weighed in on COVID much lately but I'm seeing this video in my feed quite a bit today and I'm rankled. So for old time's sake:

This is a careless and misinformed reply by Collins that buys into the lazy "closed vs open" binary framing preferred by the Barrington crowd.
Did "public health" shut down rural Minnesota to save urban NYC? No.

Early on when virtually nothing was known about a disease that was massively flooding ERs (& morgues) around the world, US states implemented stay-at-home guidance for a few months to protect their hospitals.
Governors made those decisions, and they did weigh econ & other factors alongside.

Turns out it's not good economics for a hospital system to collapse!

And there was no reason to assume that what was hitting big cities wouldn't ultimately hit rural areas too.
BTW rural communities in 2020 had similar COVID death rates to urban metros.

Lower than huge cities, higher than other metro areas, and higher than the overall national average.

So applying precautions to rural areas was wise. cdc.gov/nchs/products/…
Image
By early May 2020, the CDC (public health!) had prepared detailed guidance for risk-based, phased re-opening of schools, business, day cares, etc. Not a simple open/closed binary.

The White House spiked it. Trump wanted a full re-opening.
apnews.com/article/virus-…
This led to total incoherence between state and federal levels amidst a 2x+ summer surge in infections.

So as schools had to make decisions about opening for fall, cases were exploding. In December, they were 3x+ higher. Hard choice for parents/teachers.
There was plenty of debate at the time about trade-offs. CDC actually did issue guidance on safely re-opening schools - which Trump then trashed publicly.

Rather than attempt to support and resource safe re-opening, he just pushed a return to normal ops.
cnn.com/2020/07/08/pol…
The choice didn't have to be open vs closed: it could have been to invest in safely reopening schools (more testing, enhanced support to schools, etc etc). I wrote about this at the time:




Not going to further relitigate the schools debate here but the essential point is: these were not binary options.

Public health guidance sought to manage risk in order to reopen in a safe & incremental way.

Trump rejected that, and pushed a false binary choice.
So Collins gets the history wrong and the public health wrong. It was not "public health" pushing the choice between open vs closed, it was Trump.

"Public health" was trying to reconcile COVID precautions with restarting schools, biz, etc - and that guidance was shot down.
It's easy to second-guess hard decisions made in the fog-of-crisis period when stakes are high and good info is scarce. And plenty we should learn.

But don't rewrite history in the process...
There is a concerted disinfo effort on the right to undermine "public health" by blaming it for all COVID-related grievances and airbrushing what Trump and other pols actually did.

Collins' answer naively plays into that. Unfortunate.

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More from @JeremyKonyndyk

Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 13
So...Max Primorac was the lead anti-USAID witness in the House hearing this morning and is one of the architects of the assault on the agency.

He made a few odd claims about his credentials at USAID in today's hearing.
He claimed that he "oversaw containment of two Ebola outbreaks and led the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance."

Neither of these claims are accurate.
On Ebola - there were two outbreaks in Congo in 2018-19 - a small one in Equateur and a huge one in Eastern DRC.

Tim Ziemer, a well-respected health leader, was overseeing Ebola response for USAID.

Max was working on religious freedom programs.
foreign.senate.gov/hearings/confr…
Read 5 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 13
As I told CNN earlier, most of the disinformation about @USAID falls into one of three categories:

▶️ Outright fabrications

▶️ Real programs, but not USAID-funded

▶️ Programs that make sense if you take 2 minutes to understand them
▶️Fabrications:

"Gaza condoms" is the classic here.

Absurd on its face, but still Elon and Trump spent a week repeating it as the pretext for destroying USAID.

Until Elon just glibly admitted it was bullshit and we shouldn't trust what he says.
▶️Real, but not USAID:

@RepBrianMast repeated a bunch of these today (a musical in Ireland, an opera in Colombia, a "drag show" in Ecuador).

One problem: all were State Dept funded - not USAID (as even Mast's own website admits).
foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/…
washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/… Image
Read 10 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 9
OK, time to bust another @USAID myth.

Stephen Miller said on Fox today that USAID is a rogue slush fund. Trump & Elon have made the same accusation.

FALSE. They're either ignorant of how USAID spends money, or willfully lying about it. Or...

Anyway, caffeinate and read on.

🧵
Buckle in for a roller coaster ride through the USAID budget process. To keep you reading, I will use memes.

Step 1.

Every year, the White House (via OMB) puts together a federal budget proposal to Congress. Every federal agency (incl USAID) sends OMB their budget wishlist.
OMB goes over everything and begins cutting down Agency requests and reviewing them for alignment with the president's priorities.

So to be clear: every dollar that USAID requests from Congress goes through White House review.

Not very slush-y.
Read 21 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 7
The state of play, a week into Elon's assault on USAID.

USAID is in a state of suspended animation - it has been powered down, but it's not *quite* to the point where it can't be powered back on.

What happens next comes down to the courts & Congress.
🧵
Ignore the wood-chipper tweets and here's where things actually stand:
- USAID's HQ is intact and could resume work
- USAID's staff are mostly furloughed - but could be recalled
- Overseas missions have been told they'll be drawn down - but for now remain intact and in place
- Much of USAID's partner base faces financial ruin - but is not yet *in* financial ruin. Orgs would survive if funding resumed.
- USAID's many grants & contracts are frozen - but only a few are yet cancelled. They could resume.
Read 20 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 4
Might not feel this way on twitter - but back here on earth, DOGE did not have a great day yesterday on the @USAID front.

Elon's attempt to speedrun the destruction of USAID is starting to hit real legal and political bumps.

The pushback is starting - and must be sustained.
🧵
Congress is waking up to what is happening, on both sides of the aisle.

Big spontaneous rally outside of USAID HQ yesterday with a sizable contingent of Congressional Dems defending the agency.
GOP is waking up as well. Multiple Republican senators weighed in yesterday criticizing the Rubio aid freeze. Notable that they're doing so publicly. Image
Image
Image
Read 12 tweets
Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social Profile picture
Feb 2
Whether or not you care about foreign aid, you should be very worried about what DOGE is doing to @USAID right now.

Breaching highly classified systems and unlawfully attempting to unilaterally dissolve an independent federal agency.

This is a test run.

🧵
Since last week rumors have been swirling of a potential Exec Order to dissolve USAID into State.

I did an earlier thread on why that would be deeply damaging to the USG's ability to advance American interests and values in the world. Would harm millions.
But what we're seeing now goes beyond just a question of folding AID into State.

Reports of DOGE demanding access to AID's classified systems are a 🚨huge alarm bell🚨

Lead security staff pushed out and Trump-appointed chief of staff resigned in protest.
Read 8 tweets

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