Redfield should be watching Trump Twitter for his pink slip

The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was called on by President Donald Trump on Wednesday to walk back his remark that the second wave of novel coronavirus in the fall could be worse than the current situation.

CDC Director Robert Redfield made the widely circulated comment in an interview Tuesday with the Washington Post. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that the health expert was misquoted and would be putting out a statement. Redfield, however, said he was quoted accurately. "I think it's really important to emphasize what I didn't say: I didn't say that this was going to be worse," Redfield said at the daily White House coronavirus briefing. "I said it was going to be more difficult and potentially complicated because we're going to have flu and coronavirus circulating at the same time."

[...]

"We will not go through what we went through in the last few months," Trump said. "It may not come back at all."

Trump said, however, that there could be "embers of corona" that could combine with flu to create "a mess."

Even as Trump attempted to project optimism in the nation's battle with the virus, he said he disagreed with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's aggressive push to re-open his state's economy in violation of federal recommendations. Trump said that was too soon.

  Jerusalem Post

THAT's the mess. And Trump created it.

[Trump] announced that his administration will hold a July 4 celebration on the National Mall in Washington, as it did last year. At present, the capital remains under a stay-at-home order through May 15.

A bigger, more beautiful, celebration. Like no one's ever seen before.

A senior US government doctor who worked on the search for a coronavirus vaccine has claimed he was fired after resisting Donald Trump’s push to use the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Rick Bright was this week ousted as director of the US health department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or Barda, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.

In a stunningly candid statement, Bright highlighted his refusal to embrace hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug relentlessly promoted by the president and Fox News despite a lack of scientific studies.

“Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit,” Bright said.

“While I am prepared to look at all options and to think ‘outside the box’ for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public.”

  Guardian

The rare person of conscience in Trump's administration. And he gets fired.

And, right on cue...

Asked about Bright at the White House coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, Trump said: “I never heard of him. If a guy says he was pushed out of a job, maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. You’d have to hear the other side. I don’t know who he is.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: