Civic activist demands return to CB5 for being right about the COVID-19 lab leak

NY Post

A member of a New York City community board ousted for referring to COVID-19 as the “Wu-Flu” in a January meeting is demanding he be reinstated — saying he’s been “vindicated” by a classified US intelligence report that said the deadly virus most likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards removed longtime Glendale community activist and CB5 member Richard Huber after fielding complaints that the “Wu-Flu” comment was anti-Asian and racist and violated the code of conduct for board members.

“I was cancelled,” Huber told The Post Monday.

“But I have been vindicated. Just look at the front page of the NY Post.”

The Post’s front page story highlighted the US Energy Department claim, as the FBI had previously, that the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 1 million Americans and 6.8 million people worldwide likely originated in a Wuhan lab.

He said friends texted him The Post cover with smiley faces.

Huber said his use of the shorthand for Wuhan was not anti-Asian — nor was it intended to be.

Mayor Big Slow de Blasio lives up to his name while handling COVID-19's impact on the city

City and State

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio spent the first Monday morning of a worldwide pandemic like he spends every other Monday morning – driving 11 miles to the Prospect Park YMCA for a leisurely workout.

It was just the latest sign that de Blasio isn’t taking the coronavirus outbreak nearly as seriously as public health experts say Americans should. While smaller cities less affected by the disease known as covid-19 were taking radical steps to contain the disease, de Blasio spent the last week leading from behind, only seeming to make decisions after public uproar reached a fever pitch.

"He has been slow to act, not realizing the seriousness of the situation,” a former de Blasio staffer told City & State, on condition of anonymity to speak freely about a former boss. "His normal reluctance to offend important interest groups has proved catastrophic during an epidemic.”

Current employees too, found themselves frustrated by de Blasio’s mismanagement. The Daily News reported Monday that leadership at the New York City

Department of Health and Mental Hygiene threatened to resign if the mayor wouldn’t take a bolder approach. De Blasio denied the reports at a Monday press conference. “I know when somebody comes up to me and says ‘I want to resign,’” he said. “That has not happened.”

De Blasio’s reluctance to take measures experts say are necessary to protect the city, such as closing schools and bars and restaurants, has drawn widespread criticism. In Italy, the authorities' same behaviors led to the explosion of cases and a public health infrastructure so overburdened that respirators are being rationed, with many of the elderly simply left to die. Italians have taken to airwaves and op-ed pages to warn Americans not to repeat their same mistakes. On March 11, former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi went on CNN to say, “Italy wasted time and this was a mistake.”

Last week, many states that are smaller, less densely populated, and less affected by the coronavirus than the New York City region, including Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon, heeded the message and closed schools. Cities such as Los Angeles and Houston also closed their public schools. Yet de Blasio, who likes to play up his Italian heritage and his connection to Italy, didn’t. Instead he emphasized the importance of giving parents the freedom to go to work, rather than stay at home with their kids. “That includes people we desperately need,” he told CNN on Thursday.
“Like first responders. Educators. Health-care professionals.” And while the city and the state asked bars and restaurants to halve their capacity over the weekend, de Blasio still encouraged New Yorkers to go out. “I am not ready today at this hour to say, let's have a city with no bars, no restaurants, no rec centers, no libraries,” he said Saturday.

Now former allies think his slow response and muddled messaging could cause deaths in the city.

“By acting sooner and sooner, he could have saved lives. He didn't,” the former staffer said. “‘He is not a wartime mayor, and this is war.”

As the crisis gathered momentum and de Blasio finally began to take actions he’s been urged to do for days, it raises the question as to whether he will go down in the history books as a failure who cost lives because he was more worried about keeping New Yorkers spending money in bars for a few extra days.

“If you love your neighborhood bar, go there now,” de Blasio said at a City Hall press conference Sunday evening. Merely hours later, de Blasio finally announced that all restaurants had to move to take-out only. Bars that didn't serve food would close, and movie theaters and all other entertainment venues must close too. The executive order would go into effect Tuesday at 9 a.m.

All schools will be closed in Nassau County tommorow

 

  NY Post

 All private and public schools in Nassau County are closing for two weeks because of the coronavirus, officials said Sunday.

The shutdown starts Monday.

Nassau County Executive Lauren Curran made the announcement, saying she had discussed the matter with Gov. Cuomo and that that state was trying to address the issue of health-care employees with school-age children being able to continue to work while schools are shut, Newsday reported.

Your move Mayor de Blasio and Richard Carranza

How President Donald Trump handled the burgeoning global Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic

NBC News


Luciana Borio once worked on President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, but she left last year after a purge of the global health unit.

So when she realized how bad the coronavirus outbreak was likely to get — and saw that the Trump administration was not taking the necessary steps to contain it — all she could do was take her case to the public.

“Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic,” was the headline of her Jan. 28 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, in which she called for widespread testing and beefing up hospital preparedness. “The Wuhan coronavirus continues to spread at an alarming rate,” she warned in a subsequent op-ed a few days later.

Trump saw the situation much differently. While he blocked some Chinese nationals from entering the country in late January, his public message was simple: This is no big deal.

“We only have five people. Hopefully, everything's going to be great,” he said on Jan. 30. A few days later, he said, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

But in fact, the Trump administration hadn’t shut down the coronavirus. The testing that Borio and other experts called for never took place, even as Trump continued to downplay the risks and make a series of false statements that experts say muddied public understanding.

As the virus continues to spread across the United States, the nation is reeling, with schools closed, sporting and cultural events shut down, and an economy in danger of lapsing into recession. As many as 50 Americans have died.

An examination of how the Trump administration responded to the coronavirus outbreak that was first documented in December reveals a story of missed opportunities, mismanagement and a president who resisted the advice of experts urging a more aggressive response. All the while, Trump made a series of upbeat claims, some of which were flatly false, including that the number of cases was declining in the U.S. and that “anybody who needs a test gets a test.”

On Friday, Trump moved to take steps that experts said should have been done weeks ago, declaring a national emergency and launching a new, broader testing program.

Apparently, we just might have made these steps on day one when it was first reported if the President didn't decimate his National Security team.

In 2018, Trump fired his homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, whose portfolio included global pandemics. The next month, national security adviser John Bolton disbanded the NSC’s global health unit. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, the top official in charge of a pandemic response, also left his job. 
So did Borio, whose title was director for medical and biodefense preparedness.

None of them was replaced. That meant Trump had no top advisers in the White House with expertise in global pandemics.

“You organize your NSC around the threats you care about,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the U.S. government’s response to international disasters under the Obama administration.
Pandemics were deemed a lower priority for the Trump national security team, Konyndyk and other public health experts said.

I am going to get a lot of ribbing about this from a lot of devoted Crap readers, but right now it's better and definitively safer to have #TDS than the Wuhan Coronavirus.