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> The CDC has a pandemic team, they were let go. Can we please stop parroting that distortion of the facts? https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/dems-misconstrue

> The CDC has a pandemic team, they were let go. Can we please stop parroting that distortion of the facts? https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/dems-misconstrue-trump-budget-remarks/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/dems-misconstrue-trump-bud... > China, for all its failings, gets this right. Their leadership is more STEM and less lawyers and politicians. You don't know anything about China's leadership. They're all politicians. Not a decision gets made without it being vetted ideologically -- ideology always comes first. And we should look at the timelines from China before saying they "got it right."[1] [1] https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devastating-lies/ https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-devas...

kens 7y ago
>> The CDC has a pandemic team, they were let go. >Can we please stop parroting that distortion of the facts? I'm not a fan of fact-checker battles but Snopes says "Claim: The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. True." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
- meow1032 7y ago
  There's no battle, both links say pretty much the same thing.
- TMWNN 7y ago
  briandear is right and toomuchtodo is wrong. (He's even wrong in the way he was wrong.) One would think reading only the Snopes article, or the Twitter thread (!) the piece is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was eliminated and everyone in a large DC office building was fired. Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-trump-s-homeland-security-adviser-resign-n864321 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles the Snopes piece cites in the body, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council (not CDC, contrary to what toomuchtodo claims) hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies, as part of a desire to have his own hierarchical structure. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was. COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things. You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness. PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget" either. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 PPS - Trump was not acquitted in the Senate until February 5. Thought experiment: What do you think would have happened if he had implemented the only thing that would have 100% kept COVID19 out of the US, completely shut down all borders (including with Canada) before January 15, the day "patient zero" entered Seattle from Wuhan? (The WHO was still stating that person-to-person contact for COVID19 did not seem to be occurring.)
  - amylene 7y ago
    There are other options of actions he could have taken that wouldn’t have involved shutting borders. Over the years, as well as not making obviously false statements, starting in late January. Those falsities created a republican resistance to the necessary actions, making it some sort of misguided windmill tilt about freedom. Further, the entire culture he created — don’t speak truth to power, or you will be fired - is also responsible for the late actions and poor preparedness of the administration.
  - Damorian 7y ago
    I'm glad I'm not the only one who bothered reading these links. I can only assume earlier posters are blinded by partisanship. Anything even tangentially related to politics requires a good degree of skepticism in the face of bias that's evident throughout this entire thread.
    - jshevek 7y ago
      Yes. Thank you so much for saying this. It seems like there is only a handful of people who are trying to keep the focus on the truth in the midst of this partisan battle of competing narratives.
meow1032 7y ago
Your link suggests that the statement is true, but you probably already know that and are posting in a bad faith effort to mislead people.

kens 7y ago

>> The CDC has a pandemic team, they were let go. >Can we please stop parroting that distortion of the facts? I'm not a fan of fact-checker battles but Snopes says "Claim: The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. True." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

meow1032 7y ago
There's no battle, both links say pretty much the same thing.
TMWNN 7y ago
briandear is right and toomuchtodo is wrong. (He's even wrong in the way he was wrong.) One would think reading only the Snopes article, or the Twitter thread (!) the piece is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was eliminated and everyone in a large DC office building was fired. Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-trump-s-homeland-security-adviser-resign-n864321 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles the Snopes piece cites in the body, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council (not CDC, contrary to what toomuchtodo claims) hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies, as part of a desire to have his own hierarchical structure. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was. COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things. You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness. PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget" either. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 PPS - Trump was not acquitted in the Senate until February 5. Thought experiment: What do you think would have happened if he had implemented the only thing that would have 100% kept COVID19 out of the US, completely shut down all borders (including with Canada) before January 15, the day "patient zero" entered Seattle from Wuhan? (The WHO was still stating that person-to-person contact for COVID19 did not seem to be occurring.)
- amylene 7y ago
  There are other options of actions he could have taken that wouldn’t have involved shutting borders. Over the years, as well as not making obviously false statements, starting in late January. Those falsities created a republican resistance to the necessary actions, making it some sort of misguided windmill tilt about freedom. Further, the entire culture he created — don’t speak truth to power, or you will be fired - is also responsible for the late actions and poor preparedness of the administration.
- Damorian 7y ago
  I'm glad I'm not the only one who bothered reading these links. I can only assume earlier posters are blinded by partisanship. Anything even tangentially related to politics requires a good degree of skepticism in the face of bias that's evident throughout this entire thread.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    Yes. Thank you so much for saying this. It seems like there is only a handful of people who are trying to keep the focus on the truth in the midst of this partisan battle of competing narratives.

meow1032 7y ago

Your link suggests that the statement is true, but you probably already know that and are posting in a bad faith effort to mislead people.