Test Failure: If your car engine FAILS because of a lack of oil. Adding oil will not repair it.

[shockey80]

You will have to pay big time and rebuild the engine. The damage is done, that's the situation we are in.

Trumps catastrophic mistake took place late January, early February. At that time, America and South Korea were on the same time line when it came to the outbreak.

South Korea immediately made testing their #1 priority. They reached their peak weeks ago and have stabilized the spread.

Trump failed to do this. He was not interested in testing because his narcissist brain said testing would show bad numbers and make him look bad. Because of this the virus has been spreading around the country for at least a month and half. You can't fix that, the damage is done. All you can do now is test on a large scale to stop more damage from happening. We are still not doing that nation wide.

Trumps massive failure has reduced him to making immoral, deadly statements, decisions , trying to fix the engine he wrecked. He wants to open up the economy, that's like adding oil to a blown engine and then attempting to start it.

Trump cannot fix the mistake he made and we are going to pay a heavy price for it. Our battle against the virus is just beginning. It will go on for months, the loss of life and economic damage will be severe because a narcissist did not want numbers making him look bad.

What's so sad is, this was so predictable. The Trump presidency in ruins, the country and us ruined with it. I can clearly remember what I thought the moment Trump was elected. This will end in a major disaster. I know many of you had the same thought.

[jimfields33]

1. I just wonder how people would have reacted on January 15th

Close everything down and stay home. Too late to find out but interesting to think about especially since there’s even push back now from some people in California going to beaches this past weekend and New York going to various parks.

[Beartracks]

3. I know, right? How do you motivate and mobilize Americans to be PROACTIVE and PREVENT disasters??

STRENGTH as a nation can be exhibited in its ability to prevent, avoid, and/or mitigate disasters, rather than showing how awesome we are by trying to tackle problems of our own making.

===========

[jimfields33]

4. People would have been pissed!!!!!

They sorta are even today. We have only been in lockdown a week. I think restlessness is coming.

[Beartracks]

8. There was a doctor who said it's hard to feel like you're saving the world when...

... you're just sitting on the couch binge-watching Netflix, because if lockdowns and social distancing are successful then we WON'T see that national disaster occur that we are fighting against -- and that's kind of the point.

=======

[jimfields33]

9. That's an excellent great point

[Beartracks]

26. Here we go: it was epidemiologist Emily Landon

Emily Landon, the chief infectious disease epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213142476

===========

[Rebl2]

18. I think the

only way it would work is to have martial law. It’s extreme, but when it became obvious in February it was spreading in areas of the country, just maybe it would have helped. Who knows. It’s to late now.

[jmowreader]

32. Which is the last thing you want with Trump at the helm

You KNOW the first thing that fat orange bastard would do is to arrest the Obamas and the Clintons, and execute them all.

[tosh]

24. That would not have been needed on Jan 15.

By Jan 15, we should have shored up supplies and suppliers of tests and PPE.

By Jan 15, we should have been screening international arrivals - travelers AND cargo - at all ports of entry and testing all entries who had visited infected locales within a window of x days, isolating entries as indicated. Cargo should have remained undistributed as long as it took for any virus to dissipate.

Testing and isolation protocols, had they been ready, might have prevented what is happening now.

We weren’t ready. Orange Julius shrugged it off.

[dpibel]

25. It wouldn't have been a lockdown

Because South Korea tested and contact traced so heavily, it didn't have a Wuhan-style lockdown.

I may be overestimating the intelligence of the American public, but there's at least a chance that reports of hundreds of positive tests, even without the disaster scenario we're now seeing, would have produced at least some willingness to limit activity.

We'll never know, because the public wasn't given the chance to do the right thing until the virus was already out of control

[Delmette2.0]

35. He was at about 15,000 lies in January.

Who would have believed him? It's always about credibility.

[Afromania]

2. The whole shit with the DPA and the test kits is a perfect example of this

We needed test kits weeks and months ago. Not at some random point in the future and at numbers that will do nothing for nothing. The best part was when Fema was like,"nah that's ok we got that shit someplace else don't even bother now."

[Hugin]

5. Excellent, excellent.

I'm so sorry it has ended like this and saddened because we will lose so much.

I've done my best and it wasn't enough to overcome greed and power hungry sycophants.

[Javaman]

6. come on, haven't you used Marvel Mystery Oil?

that's what the orange asshole uses!

we are a rudderless country with a fucking psychopath as a leader

[kozar]

10. for his "tan?"

Because I am assuming the ass doesn't even know where an engine is in a car.


Koz

[Hugin]

20. He drives, y'know. Great driver. Best driver in the known Universe...

<insert picture of the Rainman painted orange wearing a bag of potatoes strapped to his butt>

[shockey80]

23. Lol! 'I'm an excellent driver"

Trump is Rainman.

[Hugin]

27. Almost.

The Rainman (Raymond) is an idiot savant. Trump is only an idiot.

Important distinction.

[shockey80]

29. Keep me laughing man, I love it.

[Hugin]

36. Trump may very well be the perfect...

Idiot.

Biggest idiot in the history of man-kind. If not before.

In fact, he may even be a clod.

( Whew! I'm doing my best, shockey. )

[CanonRay]

7. Excellent analogy

[dalton99a]

11. This ongoing drawn out fucking disaster did not have to happen the way it did

The blood is on the hands of Donald Trump and the Republican Party which continues to enable him and tries to profit from the crisis

[bucolic_frolic]

15. Republicans had the opportunity to remove him from office

It's on their hands now

[gibraltar72]

12. January 3rd 2020. A day that will live in infamy.

[uponit7771]

13. THANK YOU !!! I think I'm going crazy with the logic of testing here !!!

[bucolic_frolic]

14. And we haven't even run out of food yet /nt

[dalton99a]

16. "I'm hearing more and more people say that old people taste like chicken"

Bring to a boil over high heat, then immediately reduce the heat to very low. Cook uncovered until tender, 1 to 1 1/2 hours

[NNadir]

17. Good analogy. n/t.

[thisaintright]

19. good post...

I remember thinking and saying out loud that sorry day in Nov 2016 that this guy was going to get people killed, and I'm so sad that I was correct. I recall walking through DC the day after the election there on business and joking on a call that I saw a black cloud over the white house...no joke

[Bernardo de La Paz]

21. tRump thinks if he tweets names at the air filter maker, his car will get repaired. . . . nt

[azureblue]

22. Trump doing what he always does

Cons his way into a situation. Immediately figures out ways to make money for himself in side deals. Fails to lead, does nothing and what he does makes things worse. He reveals himself as being a failure. When things fall apart, blame everybody else, and he leaves everybody else holding the bag. And this is the 7th time.

[Timmygoat]

31. I think

Don the Con did not realize the severity of the situation in January and was thinking he could lie his way out of it, because, apparently that is what he has done all his life, he has always had someone to fix his problems and make them go away.
This time (although he is still lying every day) he cannot lie himself out of the problem.
And now, the leader of the supposed strongest country in the free world had to go begging to China and another country for
supplies & meds, which he could have manufactured here if he had the sense.
Also, why are the rethugs, every day covering for him?

[MadMike47]

28. Except it was no "mistake"

Trump honestly doesn't give a shit about the lives of others. Look at what he said about Mitt Romney as an example.

[lpbk2713]

30. I bought my two daughters three engines.

They must have thought the instrument panel light was a decoration.

[stopdiggin]

38. snort. I've run into this

and it wasn't even Christmas time.
Dad had 5 kids (2 daughters) .. looking back, I'm not sure how the man survived ...
Looking back, I'm not sure how some of US survived ... And some of the cars (multiples) .. didn't.

[Tipperary]

40. Looks like they were not taught very well.

What a shame.

[majdrfrtim]

33. His "mistake" happened in 2018

when, purely out of spite and insecurity -- and with malice aforethought, he fired the "Obama" pandemic response teams on the National Security Council and elsewhere in the government!!

Even I, with only a master's degree in immunology and a postdoc in molecular virology, could foresee the second- and third-order consequences of such an imbecilic, petty move!

[mercuryblues]

37. Exactly

the government would have know about this by mid December, at the latest if he had not fired those people.But he did fire them and that enabled him to ignore it. When Cove-fefe got to big to ignore, he called it a hoax. Which enabled his cultists to ignore. Now here we are and still not even enough fucking tests.

[IronLionZion]

34. Yeah but the American stock market was winning so much back then

that sacrifices must be made. In this case, it's human sacrifices.

Note: Not trying to offend anyone by joking about death. Americans younger than me have died already from this virus.

[James48]

39. April 10, 2018.

That was the date that the disaster was put into motion.

That was the date that John Bolton was hired and came into the NSC, and asked for the resignations of the people there who were on the Pandemic Team.

Politico has a nice article on it at this link:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285

On April 10, 2018, Trump NSC expert Tom Bossert resigned, at the request of John Bolton. Bossert was the man who set in on the Obama transition briefings on Pandemic defense, and was the custodian of the plan to react to Pandemics.

It turns out that nobody on the NSC ended up following the detailed guidance on what to do, and what questions to ask; what equipment to inventory, and what emergency requisitions to make in the event of a virus like what is happening now.

It's all in the book. Years of prior Administrations lessons learned, and detailed questions to ask and decisions to make.

Sad, really. We could have easily been just like South Korean.

Instead, we will be the model for what NOT to do for a lifetime.