“We have testing coming in two weeks that will blow the industry away.”
—Donald Trump, at Monday’s briefing on the coronavirus.
“If the testing does not get sorted out as soon as possible, it will be another nail in an almost closed coffin.”
—Comment of a Republican close to the White House in response to that assertion, adding that empty self-serving claims will not overcome the political challenge to Trump..
Louisiana Voice 
It just gets sadder and sadder, and more infuriating.
Well, Corona19 has surpassed 2.3M cases worldwide, with 154K deaths attributed so far. HiNi infected 1.4B people worldwide with approximately 51,560 deaths attributed to it in the year 2009. One virus (H1N1 was more flu like, Corona is pneumonia like) seems to have a higher mortality rate, especially among certain types-overweight, elderly etc.We can establish that both virus were quite bad.
Obama did not inflict quarantine on anyone. Did not ban travel. Did not replace workers wages. Did not rush in FEMA in to help locally.. Did not expedite testing. No bad press.No one seems to even remember.
I wonder, why is this Trump’s fault now when no one was blaming Obama (nor should they have) when he ran for re-election ? No one asked Obama to accept responsibility for lack of testing, for lack of medical equipment, for lack of masks, swabs etc. Now tell me, do you honestly believe the media is impartial ? And how about any future virus epidemics ? Is this now the fault of the President no matter who it is President at the time, or does this only apply to current President ?
We need to quit pointing fingers and deal with situation. And rest assured, this will happen again, and I hope we have learned something. You know, wash hands often, do not touch face, distancing….this also helps with “common” flu.
Zoe,
According to your figures, which I have not checked, the death rate for H1N1 is 51,560 / 1,400,000,000 = 0.0037%. The death rate so far from COVID-19 is 154,000 / 2,300,000 = 6.7% which is 181,800% higher if my math is correct. Doesn’t that justify a much more extreme response?
Impeached trump says no one could have anticipated this pandemic. According to one source, the last three presidents have all had significant pandemic planning efforts in place. President Obama established a White House Pandemic response planning group that created a plan. Even impeached trump’s administration had a disaster response exercise less than a year ago where the exercise pandemic was eerily similar to COVID-19. Yes, Zoe, many people have anticipated a disaster like this. Impeached trump lied and your conservative “news” sources repeated and reinforced those lies.
Impeached trump eliminated the pandemic response group that President Obama established. He cut funding to the CDC. He ignored the information about the Wuhan disaster from the intelligence agencies as early as November, WHO starting in December and many other sources through January. His administration refused to buy the German test, even after the CDC test was delayed. His administration blocked non-CDC testing facilities from developing and administering their own tests for critical weeks. And he lied, lied, lied about how serious this pandemic would be.
As a result if this incompetence, we didn’t have the facts about how many people were infected. We couldn’t test, trace and isolate as other countries have done. Today’s news is that coronavirus was wide spread in California in January resulting in deaths in early February. We didn’t start ramping up production of PPE, which one of the first responses called for in the Obama era plan, until way too late. I could go on but I need to get back to work.
The obstruction of the appropriate extreme response required has cost the the USA thousands of preventable deaths. And I predict that impeached trump will encourage opening the economy too soon and there will be even more un-necessary deaths. Now, while the restrictions are still in effect, we are seeing many impeached trump supports gathering to protest the restrictions and he is specifically encouraging this dangerous behavior.
Zoe, some very deep analysis and lack of connecting facts which answers your own criticism. You got enough buzz words mixed in to make Perscale very happy and very rich. thanks for the inSIGHT. ron thompson
I have said before that I am tired of fact checking what Gerneral Honre called “stupid” but here I am doing it again and the ZOE insinuations are already well reviewed already. The reason you do not remember the situation that ZOE discribes as it was HANDLED CORRECTLY.
Here is what factcheck.org said. The full accounting can be found on their web site. You might have to search as it so SO OLD.
“Trump is correct on the number of H1N1 cases and deaths, but it’s misleading to compare those figures to the current outbreak of COVID-19, which has just begun. It’s also not true that the Obama administration did nothing or waited a long time to act on the H1N1 influenza pandemic.
In 2009, a new H1N1 influenza virus cropped up out of season, in late spring. Because of genetic similarities to influenza viruses in pigs, it became known as a “swine flu,” even though there is no evidence the virus spread between pigs or pigs to humans.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were about 60.8 million cases of infection with the novel type of influenza virus in the U.S. between April 2009 and April 2010, with a total of approximately 274,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths.
While that death toll may sound high, it’s over an entire year and, in fact, ended up being far lower than was initially expected. The strain of influenza also turned out to have a case fatality rate of just 0.02% — well below even many typical seasonal influenzas.
Everything that’s known about the new coronavirus so far suggests that it’s an entirely different beast than its most recent pandemic predecessor. Peter Jay Hotez, a professor and dean of the tropical medicine school at Baylor College of Medicine, told us that the new virus, which is known as SARS-CoV-2, is considerably more transmissible and more lethal than H1N1.
For those reasons, he said, “the urgency to contain this coronavirus is so much greater than the H1N1 2009 one was.”
In the Hannity interview, Trump touted his travel restrictions and noted that Obama “never did close the borders.” Paul A. Offit, chair of vaccinology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, agreed that Trump’s travel restrictions bought the U.S. time to react, but he said it didn’t make any sense to impose travel restrictions in 2009 since the H1N1 was first reported in North America and the flu is “hard to stop.”
“I don’t think it is a fair comparison,” Offit said. “The flu is constantly mutating – it usually happens in pig and humans in southeast Asia – it is really hard to stop that. Unless you ban all travel anywhere in the world to the United States you would have had trouble. That is true with all flu pandemics. I don’t think a travel ban would have ever made a difference.”
Contrary to Trump’s suggestion that the Obama administration did “nothing,” officials declared a public health emergency early in the H1N1 outbreak, secured funding from Congress and ultimately declared a national emergency, as we’ll explain below.
On top of that, the CDC sequenced the new virus, created testing kits, and the Food and Drug Administration approved multiple vaccines, among other actions.
Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican from Texas, praised the CDC at a House hearing in 2016 for quickly developing a vaccine for the swine flu in about six months — in time for the start of the school year in September 2009. “So that’s a 6-month time frame if I’m doing my math correctly that you were able to identify the genetic sequence of the virus, reverse engineer a vaccine, test it, assure its safety and efficacy, and get it to school teachers on the second week of school. That’s pretty impressive,” he said.
Trump said in a tweet that the Obama administration’s response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic “was a full scale disaster.” While he can have that opinion, there is little to support such a negative view. ” (my ” added before and after)
here is the web page:https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/trumps-h1n1-swine-flu-pandemic-spin/
Guess I must say it again you don’t remember it because unlike Trumps disaster it was handled correctly. And of course following liar Trump, If it appears false issued by Trump or his minions it is to be known as FALSE until proven otherwise. They have earned that……
Would someone tell me why we have to suffer each day with a presidential press conference on TV. I immediately change channels because he cuts in on Jeopardy. We all know this virus is a serious matter and should know by now what our responsibilities are to help combat it.