Don't throw away your masks

Ooops.  The guy Trump wants to put in charge of national health is anti-vax, and he says they're going to put infectious disease research on hold.

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

Caught out

Sure.  Let's have a look at that again, why don't we....

(click the pic - or here - to play)

Also...

He also told us wearing masks would put us more at risk.  Impeach the Surgeon General.

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

UPDATE:

The hits just keep on coming

In mid-March, a National Security Council team rushed to address what they saw as a threat to the U.S. government’s ability to function amid the advancing pandemic: a lack of masks to protect enough staff on the White House complex.

Alarmed by the small cache and the growing signs of an acute shortage of protective gear in the United States, a senior NSC official turned to a foreign government for help.

[...]

The effort resulted in a donation of hundreds of thousands of surgical masks from Taiwan, which had plentiful domestic production and had sharply curtailed the spread of the coronavirus on the island.

The bulk of Taiwan’s goodwill shipment went to the Strategic National Stockpile, but 3,600 masks were set aside for White House staff and officials, administration officials said.

[...]

“That was a lesson learned. We did look at buying some, but couldn’t find available supply.”

[...]

At the time, the U.S. government was discouraging the public from wearing masks, saying that healthy people didn’t need them and that the gear should be saved for front-line medical workers most at risk of infection.

Because of that guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House was not issuing masks to its staff, according to two officials. But inside the NSC, a top deputy was convinced that face coverings should be used more broadly to protect both his team and the public at large.

The resulting arrangement he struck with Taipei made thousands of masks available for White House staff use two weeks before the administration reversed policy and advised that citizens should broadly begin wearing cloth face coverings in public.

[...]

From January until April 3, the White House task force, the CDC and the U.S. surgeon general were all telling the American public that healthy people should not use masks or face coverings to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams stressed that most Americans faced low risk of infection, but warned that mask wearers could heighten their risk because they were more likely to touch their faces as they adjusted their masks. He urged the public to save the supply for medical workers on the front lines.

“Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!” Adams tweeted on Feb. 29, as stores across the country sold out. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus."

  WaPo

And that should be a crime, because it's definitely criminal. He should not have a job now, at the very least, but he was just doing what he was told to do.

The White House Military Office, which oversees the medical unit, is responsible for girding the White House for a crisis, including supplying necessary protective equipment and ensuring the continuity of government operations.

The White House said the office had sufficient supplies to protect the president, the first family and essential personnel.

Everybody else is expendable. Just wait until he wants another cheeseburger and the cooks in the basement are all dead.

When Taiwan later announced its mask donation, it did not mention that a portion of it was going to White House staff. A joint statement between the two countries said they would collaborate on “exchanges of medical supplies and equipment.”

The deal was sensitive in Taiwan, which had banned commercial exports of masks to protect supply for its citizens. China, which claims the island as part of its territory, called the transfer of masks to the United States during a pandemic “despicable behavior” and said it was provoking a “confrontation with the Motherland.”

[...]

At the time, Taiwan had a ban on the commercial export of masks to meet the needs of its own citizens, who were only allowed to buy a limited number a week.

The shipment of masks between the United States and Taiwan sidestepped this ban because it was a government-to-government arrangement, rather than a foreign purchase from a Taiwanese manufacturer.

[...]

After its initial shipment of masks for the U.S. government, Taiwan late last month announced it was donating 10 million masks to foreign countries to help combat the pandemic. It is now expected to send 3.5 million to the United States, earmarked for emergency medical workers.

If the feds don't confiscate them like they've done with other PPE shipments being ordered by various states.

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

Un.fucking.believable

Surgeon General Jerome Adams is calling on the handful of governors who have yet to issue stay-at-home orders to at least enforce restrictions for one week in order to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.

“Ninety percent of Americans are doing their part, even in the states where they haven’t had a shelter-in-place. But If you can’t give us 30 days, governors, give us a week, give us what you can so that we don’t overwhelm our health care systems over this next week, and then let’s reassess,” Adams said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

  The Hill

Some Georgia beaches will reopen this weekend following an executive order issued by Gov. Brian Kemp (R) that overrode local shelter-in-place mandates from a number of cities.

A spokesperson for Kemp told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the order would allow popular beaches in Georgia, such as Tybee Island, to reopen after they had closed because of local measures aimed at limiting the community spread of COVID-19.

"The Governor's Executive Order suspends the enforcement of any local ordinance or order adopted or issued since March 1, 2020, that relates to COVID-19," said Josh Hildebrandt, director of public and governmental affairs for the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

[...]

The order went into effect Friday night at 6 p.m. It allows for people to exercise outside as long as they maintain at least 6 feet of distance from other individuals.

[...]

State Rep. Jesse Petrea (R) wrote on Facebook that he had notified the mayor of the changes earlier Friday and said the beach would not be "expressly closed" under the governor's new order but emphasized that "NO congregating" would be enforced by DNR rangers.

  The Hill

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

UPDATE:

He can't be that stupid

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert and member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, said he doesn’t know why some states still do not have stay-at-home orders in place to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

"Whether there should be a federally mandated directive for that or not, I guess that’s more of a political question, but just scientifically, doesn’t everybody have to be on the same page with this stuff?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked the physician during an interview on live television Thursday evening.

"I don't understand why that's not happening,” Fauci responded. “If you look at what's going on in this country, I just don't understand why we're not doing that. We really should be."

  The Hill

Let me help Dr. Fauci understand. We're not doing that because the president of this country has down-played the need to do anything every step of the way, and his Republican toadies and lickspittles, who want to stay on his good side, are following his lead.

Fauci fell short of directly calling for a nationwide stay-at-home order. He remarked to Cooper that “the tension between federally mandated versus states rights to do what they want is something I don't want to get into,” but noted the virus will be difficult to contain if some states don’t comply by White House guidelines.

Trump said at a White House briefing Wednesday that he does not plan to issue a nationwide order because each state is uniquely affected by the virus.

The same day, Florida Gov. Ron deSantis (R) issued a stay-at-home order after weeks of pressure.

And will no doubt overwhelm his state's medical services, even with the fact that because he has been especially ass-kissy, Trump released from the national stockpile whatever deSantis has asked for, while deying states with Democratic governors. Uh-oh, somebody forgot to factor in the eventual depletion of the national stockpile because it has been sorely underfunded and under-supplied.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Wednesday that the White House coronavirus guidelines should be interpreted as a national stay-at-home order.

“My advice to America would be that these guidelines are a national stay-at-home order,” he said on NBC's "Today."

Unfortunately, "America" isn't taking your advice, Jerome. Talk to your CIC.

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