Orange NZ
Here are some of my observations regarding Trump Derangement Syndrome and the COVID-19 virus.
The timeline so far for TDS and the virus
- Nov 28 – Possible patient zero (undetected phase of new disease begins)
- Dec 31 – Wuhan officials say something is up
- Jan 8 – Centers for Disease Control says something is up
- Jan 17 – CDC starts looking at passengers arriving from Wuhan
- Jan 22 – Trump’s first comment acknowledging the passengers arriving are being identified and their arrival being controlled
- Jan 24 – Trump thanks China for transparency (ie. A politically nice way of asking them to be transparent)
- Jan 25-26 – World finds out officially that China has not been transparent at all
- Jan 29 – US Task Force started
- Jan 31 – US border closes to anyone that has visited China recently. Trump is roundly castigated for being xenophobic.
- March 19 – NZ border closes to non-residents, non-citizens. NZ PM hailed as a hero for making a tough decision so early. “Hard and fast”.
- March 19 – Trump announces accelerated testing and use of several existing drugs that seem to reduce the harm the virus can cause to a patient.
The Independent claims that the FDA commissioner contradicted Trump, speaking right after him. This is not true. Trump announced accelerated testing and “immediate use” of several existing drugs (the anti-malaria one in particular). The FDA said that a “large pragmatic clinical trial” is to start. This is a technical term that refers to a clinical trial that focuses on finding a correlation between treatments and outcomes in real-world health system practice, ie. one can expect a near-immediate rollout of the anti-malaria drug to half the severe cases in the US. The Independent clearly does not know the difference between the types of clinical trials.
