US State Department and Trump Administration overruled CDC's "no" — regarding importing Diamond Princess COVID-19 patients into the United States

© 2020 Peter Free

 

22 February 2020

 

 

The politics of unaccountability

 

Three days ago, the Washington Post revealed that the CDC opposed the risky step of combining sick and non-sick Diamond Princess Americans on a plane trip back to the United States.

 

The State Department, favoring the step, won out.

 

CDC's (principal deputy director) Anne Schuchat, was reportedly so incensed over the State Department's risk-filled decision — that she explicitly told State to remove her agency's name (as having been "consulted") from State's press release.

 

 

On the other hand, a reputation at stake

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci — Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (and an icon in the virus-fighting world) — supported the State Department.

 

He later told CNBC that the airplane's segregation of the 14 infected patients from the supposedly unaffected evacuees "worked out fine".

 

See that CNBC video, here (at 01:55 minutes).

 

 

I had to laugh at Dr. Fauci's exaggerated confidence

 

Epidemiologically for some weeks still, there is no way of knowing how well the containment-equipped aircraft worked. Nor, whether mistakes were made moving the evacuees from the plane to hospital or quarantine.

 

Fauci knows this. He was bullshitting for the viewing public's supposed benefit. Talk about elites lying to the Rabble.

 

Perhaps Fauci was also cynically noting to himself that viruses like this one — highly contagious and probably so before signs appear — are uncontainable under any conditions.

 

 

I have some empathy for the Director, but

 

If this epidemic goes pandemic in the United States, as it is likely to — some of us are going to remember how the esteemed Dr. Fauci used his reputation to assist in throwing the American public under the bus.

 

 

The moral? — Politics in the United States usually defeats common sense

 

If COVID-19 plays out similarly to the World War I era's Spanish flu — a possibility due to this coronavirus's higher than "normal" flu's mortality rate — dishonesty and arguable stupidity will have wreaked a sad toll.