The second shows how the Pentagon totally disagrees with the president's position.
The third shows how those who faithfully listen to Fox News for information may be digging their own graves by doing so ... and unfortuanately, infecting others. Read On! (And be sure to check out the earlier blog postings which are included.)
Trump again breaks with experts by calling for people to go back
to work, claims seniors 'will be watched over protectively & lovingly'
GRACE PANETTA
Mar 24th 2020 12:05PM
·
In a Tuesday morning
tweet, Trump broke with prevailing public health guidelines by calling again
for Americans to return to work as soon as possible to re-start the struggling
economy.
·
"Our people want to
return to work," Trump tweeted on Tuesday. "They will practice Social
Distancing and all else, and Seniors will be watched over protectively &
lovingly."
·
Public health experts say
that because the virus can be spread by people who show no symptoms and aren't
even aware they have it, social distancing is the only way to protect the most
vulnerable.
In a Tuesday morning tweet, President Donald
Trump broke with prevailing public health guidelines by calling again for
Americans to return to work as soon as possible, repeating his common all-caps
refrain that "the cure cannot be worse than the problem."
The White House is currently half-way
through a 15-day "Stop the Spread" campaign led by the CDC, which is
encouraging Americans to work from home if at all possible and practice social
distancing by not gathering in groups with other people.
Yet over the past two days, Trump has
begun publicly and privately agitating for businesses to start sending people
back to work to boost the cratering US economy, a
major concern for Trump as he faces re-election this November.
On Monday, he indicated that he would
re-evaluate the Stop the Spread campaign when it ends on March 30, and possibly
even relax social distancing guidelines.
"Our people want to return to
work," Trump
tweeted on Tuesday. "They will practice Social Distancing
and all else, and Seniors will be watched over protectively & lovingly. We
can do two things together. THE CURE CANNOT BE WORSE (by far) THAN THE PROBLEM!
Congress MUST ACT NOW. We will come back strong!"
Public health experts, including the doctors
on Trump's own coronavirus task force, have stressed that because the virus has
not hit its peak in the US, it's more important now than ever for Americans to
practice social distancing
Experts also say that because the virus is
highly contagious and can be spread by people who show no symptoms and aren't
even aware they have it, aggressive social distancing and containment measures
across the board are
the only way to protect seniors and other vulnerable populations.
Despite Trump's claim that people "will
practice social distancing," sending Americans back to work in industries
that involve frequent person to person contact directly conflicts with the
principles of social distancing.
In many US states and other Western
countries, major
population centers largely failed at wide-scale social distancing until
governments shut down restaurants, bars, and other large gathering centers
altogether.
Indeed, the
Washington Post reported on Monday that Dr. Anthony
Fauci, a leading member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force,
and other public-health officials are warning Republican leaders against ending
coronavirus-containment measures to restart the economy.
In an
interview on The TODAY Show with NBC's Savannah Guthrie on Friday,
Fauci threw cold water on the idea that life could go back to normal in a week.
"If you look at the trajectory of the
curves of outbreaks in other areas, it's at least going to be several
weeks," Fauci said. "I cannot see that all of a sudden, next week or
two weeks from now, it's going to be over. I don't think there's a chance of
that. I think it's going to be several weeks."
Trump's push to send Americans back into the
workforce and re-start the economy is receiving criticism not just from experts
but from members of his own party, who argue letting the virus infect and kill
more people will be worse for the economy in the long run.
On Tuesday morning, Rep. Liz Cheney, a
member of Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, tweeted: "There
will be no normally functioning economy if our hospitals are overwhelmed and
thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying
because we have failed to do what's necessary to stop the virus."
Pentagon leaders suggest coronavirus outbreak could continue for
months
THOMSON REUTERS
Mar 24th 2020 12:16PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Pentagon
leaders said on Tuesday that the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak that has
hit the United States could continue for months and the military would continue
to support efforts to counter it for as long as needed.
The coronavirus pandemic has killed more
than 550 people in the United States and sickened more than 43,800.
President Donald Trump said on Monday he is
considering how to reopen the U.S. economy when a 15-day shutdown ends next
week, even as the highly contagious coronavirus is spreading rapidly and
hospitals are bracing for a wave of virus-related deaths.
"I think we need to plan for this to be
a few months long at least and we're taking all precautionary measures to do
that," U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said when asked how long the
outbreak may last and how long the military would continue the support efforts
to counter it.
"I am fully confident that at the end of
the day, in a period of months, we will get through this," Esper said
during a virtual town hall.OTOS
Coronavirus in the United States
At the same event, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said that while it was unclear how long the
outbreak would last, taking models from the experience of other countries,
which may or may not apply to the United States, the outbreak could last into
July.
"If it does apply, you're looking at
probably late May, June, something in that range, could be as late as
July," Milley said.
On Monday, Esper announced more security
restrictions on those entering the Pentagon. The building has seen a drop in
the number of people coming into work since measures to combat the outbreak
started, with many of them teleworking.
Esper said that those teleworking should
expect to continue to do so for "weeks for sure, maybe months."
Over the weekend, U.S. Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin said the lockdown affecting large segments of the American
public to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus is likely to last 10 to 12
weeks, or until early June.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Chizu
Nomiyama and Steve Orlofsky)
SUZANNE SMALLEY
Mar 24th 2020 11:53AM
As the coronavirus threat
intensified in the U.S. in late February and early March, Fox News viewers
received different information than Americans who got their news from other
sources. Ben Smith, a longtime reporter and editor and the media critic at the New
York Times, set out to understand why. His conclusion: Fox anchors consistently
downplayed and even denied the existence of the coronavirus, a failure he
blamed on Fox chairman Lachlan Murdoch’s laid-back management style, in
contrast to the firm hand of longtime chief Roger Ailes, who resigned in
2016.
No one with real power
over the big talent was engaged enough with the network's coverage to rein in
broadcasters who asserted that the virus was fake, Smith said. He believes the
network's coverage of the virus, which is widely seen as a major black eye for
Fox, caused unnecessary deaths.
On March 9, when 700-plus
American coronavirus cases had been confirmed, Sean Hannity told Fox viewers
that political enemies of President Trump were using the virus to “bludgeon
Trump with this new hoax.” In an interview Tuesday with the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery,” Smith told hosts
Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman that Fox didn’t just echo the president,
who consistently downplayed the virus, but went even further with comments like
Hannity’s, which actually called it fake.
Asked for comment, a Fox
spokeswoman pointed to a statement that condemned the “cherry picking of clips”
from opinion programs as “the definition of politicizing this serious threat.”
The statement also highlighted how the story has changed, saying the pandemic
“has evolved considerably over the last few weeks.”
As public criticism
mounted over the tone of the network’s coverage, News Corp. founder Rupert
Murdoch — Lachlan Murdoch’s father — reached out to Hannity with a warning to
take the virus “seriously,” Smith reported. Fox host Tucker Carlson, whose
reporting on the coronavirus was more aligned with mainstream medical advice,
is now the object of scorn by rivals within the network who believe he is
burnishing his reputation for independence at their expense.
Fox, which remains a
powerful and lucrative media outlet with a firm grip on its audience and advertising
dollars, might not be punished, Smith said — other than by facing the likely
“consequences ... that some of their viewers will die.”
Smith believes the
knee-jerk tendency among Fox commentators to defend Trump vigorously against criticism
by the mainstream media caused them to lose sight of the substance of the story
itself. Internally, some people at the network took the danger of COVID-19
seriously. Smith reported that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott was concerned enough
that she took proactive steps to better sanitize the network's cafeteria. But
Scott had no influence over on-air coverage, and Fox hosts dismissed the threat
until mid-March, when the White House itself began taking a different view.
Fox would likely not have
lost its way on a story this major as recently as a few years ago, Smith said.
Ailes — the former Fox News chairman and trusted Murdoch confidant who died in
disgrace in 2017 after several women came forward to accuse him of sexual
misconduct and rape — always resisted allowing politicians to dictate Fox
coverage.
Smith believes that is no
longer the prevailing attitude at the network. The president is personally
close to certain Fox anchors, who Smith said often do not share Ailes’s view
that “the politicians worked for him and not vice versa.”
The editor of BuzzFeed
from 2012 until his recent hiring by the Times, Smith is known to be an astute
media observer. Like many big stories, he said, the coronavirus has put the
spotlight on great work from individual reporters, outlets and even platforms
themselves. Social media coverage of the virus has been spectacular, Smith
said, and has been particularly valuable as a forum for doctors and
epidemiologists to speak to the public directly. In January, when many people were
inclined to believe the conventional wisdom that the coronavirus was overhyped,
Smith said, the “voices of both epidemiologists and doctors and nurses on
social media ... cut through” when nothing else did.
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