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pat_k

(9,313 posts)
17. Endless drumbeat: China travel ban kept Chinese virus out. Simple lie beats more complex truth.
Tue Mar 31, 2020, 11:56 PM
Mar 2020

It is such a simple -- even logical sounding -- lie.

I saved you. It would have been FAR worse.

The truth is much more complex. His dismantling of the infrastructure that was in place, CDC delays creating "it's own test" when one was already available Jan 13, delay in declaring a public health emergency to enable preparation, when test finally available, distribute without quality control (recipients were the ones who discovered the problems), idiots at the FDA not using their emergency use authority to give labs across the country the go ahead to distribute and process their own tests (or the test available on 1/13) the instant the public health emergency was declared, on and on.

The truth is the virus was already here, circulating, for weeks, undetected. The travel ban was doomed. Not only was the virus already here, the ban was implemented so badly the "screening" they did was useless. Unfortunatey, we can not definitely prove how far it was allowed to circulate because there was no testing. A catch 22. Obstruction of testing allows uncontrolled spread -- uncontrolled spread "unprovable" due to obstruction of testing.

The truth is harder to get across. Too many people are too busy just figuring out how to get by in this to pay attention to details. The simple lie beats the complex truth. And it is showing in the polls. NY Times Who Are the Voters Behind Trump’s Higher Approval Rating? (March 31)

While public perceptions are fluid in a crisis, a notable twist in polling at this point is that independents are driving Mr. Trump’s bump in approval, and some increased Democratic support is a factor as well. Gallup called that “highly unusual for Trump” in reporting its latest survey, which was released last week and showed Mr. Trump’s approval rating at 49 percent, equal to the best of his presidency.

While Republicans’ views of Mr. Trump were flat — a sign they had already topped out — approval by independents rose by eight percentage points from early March, while Democratic approval was up by six percentage points.

Polling experts said that it was normal for the country to rally around a president during a national crisis, and that Mr. Trump’s dominance of the airwaves alone was enough to sway a slice of voters who don’t normally tune in to politics.

“There are people who haven’t even heard Trump that much, while the rest of us have been obsessed,” said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University. “Those people are paying attention and seeing Trump a lot.”


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