Testing, Testing (Cont.)

Reality check:

FACT:
US has conducted 16.4 tests per every 1,000 people, below the world average and about the same as *Belarus*

Iceland: 136 per 1,000
Bahrain: 71
Italy: 30
Russia: 22
Belarus: 17 https://t.co/Cuj4j5czc5

— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) April 29, 2020

Testing, Testing (Cont.)

Moron vector Donald "COVID Donnie" Trump continues to lie about the status of testing for coronavirus while shirking Federal responsibility for it.  The farcical "blueprint" rolled out at yesterday's misinformation event continues to put the onus on states to conduct massive testing, while not providing the resources and capacity to do so.  That's been the regime's strategy now for months -- to try to shift blame for their on- going incompetence in ramping up testing.  (A cynic would say their aversion to mass testing was based on not wanting to have the growing levels of infection "spook" the stock market, lest it damage COVID Donnie's re- election bid.)  The Trump regime, through invocation of the Defense Production Act, had a unique capability to respond forcefully when it mattered, but it didn't.  Time has been and continues to be squandered, and lives lost, for the sole purpose of shielding COVID Donnie from the consequences of his ignorance and criminal incompetence.

Lickspittle and human termite Mike "Dense" Pence was asked about the lack of testing yesterday, and this was his "explanation":

Reporter @jonkarl reiterates promises made by Pence and the Trump administration for testing and Pence says "it represents a misunderstanding" by the public regarding a test and the ability to test.

Not sure why Pence thinks this answer exonerates him. pic.twitter.com/u51EWWEAeX

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) April 27, 2020

KARL: So when you promised 4 million tests 7 weeks ago, you were just talking about tests being sent out, not completed?

PENCE: "Precisely correct" pic.twitter.com/exxdP7RnB3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 27, 2020

OMG - Pence is saying we promised 4M tests but it is not our fault we didn't have the ability to "actually process" the tests. Was a "misunderstanding" on the public's part to think promising 4M tests would mean they could be used.

— Nathan Salwen (@NSalwen) April 27, 2020

Once again, testing -- and re- testing -- is the path to restoring public health and confidence and must precede "re-opening" the economy.  We're nowhere near the number of tests that need to be administered to assure we can move forward.  As Dr. Ashish Jha, Director of Harvard's Global Health Institute points out, it's all connected to a basic and continuing shirking of responsibility on the part of COVID Donnie and his enablers:

Director of Harvard Global Health Institute: "I think most Americans need to know the reason we are shutdown, our economy is shutdown is because we've had inadequate testing." pic.twitter.com/nzqnjWVftf

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 27, 2020

BONUS:

Truth: Trump inherited a growing economy that continued to grow, until he refused to prepare for a virus that was spreading around the world, because he thought mobilizing to fight it might hurt the stock market. Now we're facing a depression. https://t.co/gIvMD88gT9

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) April 28, 2020

Testing, Testing ...

Keep this in mind, keep reminding your neighbors and friends that there's a reason we're criminally unable to do the kind of testing for coronavirus that other developed nations have been doing:

There are a lot of reasons why the U.S. lags other countries in testing for the new coronavirus — defective early tests by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the decision not to adopt an effective German test adopted by the World Health Organization — but Politico's Dan Diamond told Fresh Air's Terry Gross on Thursday that politics also seems to have played a role, along with mismanagement and infighting between, for example, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Seema Verma, the Medicare chief.

In January, Azar "did push past resistance from the president's political aides to warn the president the new coronavirus could be a major problem," Diamond said, but he "has not always given the president the worst-case scenario of what could happen. My understanding is [Trump] did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall."   (our emphasis)

The dull, evil bastard has only his own interests in mind, and they don't align with the nation's as a whole our yours or ours in particular.  One more thing to remember come November 3.

BONUS:  At Trump's announcement/ news conference where he belatedly declared the coronavirus outbreak a National Emergency, this:

This quote should lead the news tonight everywhere. It represents an appalling refusal to take responsibility for an extraordinary abdication of leadership that could end up claiming untold numbers of American lives. It's one of the worst presidential displays in modern times. https://t.co/cGUlCCfieX

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 13, 2020