Tag Archives: NIH

‘I don’t know who he is; I’ve never met him’

Donald J. Trump’s response to the scathing testimony from a fellow he demoted in the midst of an infectious disease pandemic speaks volumes to me.

Dr. Richard Bright is now a whistleblower who is reporting to Congress about what he believes are serious shortcomings in Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Bright once led the administration’s effort to search for a vaccine to fight the virus, but then questioned whether Trump was correct to push a drug with little known affect on the COVID-19 virus.

Trump got angry and pushed Bright aside, sent him to a midlevel post in the National Institutes of Health.

OK, so Trump responded Thursday to a question about Bright’s testimony. He said he doesn’t “know him; I’ve never met him.” He said he doesn’t “want to meet him” and that Bright sounds like a “disgruntled employee.”

Let’s ponder that response for just a moment.

If Donald Trump is telling the truth — and that is a highly dubious presumption — then he has just revealed to the world precisely why his pandemic response has been such a hideous failure to date. The man chosen to lead the vaccine research effort is unknown to the commander in chief who wants to be known as a “wartime president”?

Suppose, too, that Trump is lying, that he really has met Dr. Bright; that tells me plenty as well about Trump’s reliability, his leadership and his command of the situation.

Bright said the fight against the pandemic lacks a coordinated national effort. Gosh, who do you suppose should be providing that national coordination? Hey, I’ll take a stab at it: The responsibility belongs to the president of the United States.

He has failed!

As Bright told the congressional committee: “We’re in deep s**t.”

Prepare for the worst while hoping for the best

My family and I live in two locations in Texas. My wife and I live just a few minutes from our son and his family in North Texas, while our other son lives in the Texas Panhandle, about 360 miles northwest of us.

We’re all acutely aware of what is happening around the world with the Covid-19 outbreak. We all know what we’re supposed to do to avoid being struck by the virus.

However, speaking only for myself I must admit to a bit of confusion, although it’s probably unwarranted.

Our president seeks to downplay the significance of the outbreak, relying on a “hunch” that the mortality rate isn’t as great as it is being reported by those chumps at the World Health Organization.

Meanwhile, health experts tell us to avoid cruises; airlines are slashing flight itineraries; the United States has imposed travel bans to places in Asia and Europe; athletic events are occurring on fields and indoors with no fans in the stands.

Is the coronavirus serious? Well, I am believing that it is. It is far more serious than Donald John Trump seems to suggest it is.

Our family members aren’t overreacting to it. They aren’t closeting themselves indoors. They are going about their lives. So are my we in our house. My wife and I are not going to hunker down unnecessarily.

The cruise ship advisory is just fine with us, as we weren’t planning a cruise any time soon … or later, for that matter. Air travel? We are staying away from airports.

The good news for us is that we’re all blessed with relatively good health. However, we aren’t going to nap at the switch while so many others are being struck down by the virus that can kill people — and has done so already!

As for the confusion, I will set aside what comes from the president and rely instead on the health experts who know better than a politician whose primary interest is in protecting his backside.

NIH boss blames budget cuts for Ebola mess

A dose of self-awareness is in order for critics of the Obama administration’s response to this Ebola matter.

Pay attention, congressional Republicans. I’m talking about you.

The head of the National Institutes for Health says budget cuts have derailed efforts to find a vaccine for the deadly disease that has killed thousands of people in West Africa — and one in the United States.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/12/ebola-vaccine_n_5974148.html

As the Huffington Post reported: “Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has ‘slowed down’ research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.”

The Post goes on: “Money, or rather the lack of it, is a big part of the problem. NIH’s purchasing power is down 23 percent from what it was a decade ago, and its budget has remained almost static. In fiscal year 2004, the agency’s budget was $28.03 billion. In FY 2013, it was $29.31 billion — barely a change, even before adjusting for inflation. The situation is even more pronounced at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a subdivision of NIH, where the budget has fallen from $4.30 billion in FY 2004 to $4.25 billion in FY 2013.”

Here’s the maddening part, from my perspective.

The very people who now complain about government’s inability to deal with this matter (I refuse to call it a “crisis” in the United States) are the same folks who keep slashing money because — they contend — the United States cannot afford to spend it. They are critical of the NIH, calling it some sort of “liberal-leaning arm of government” that pushes “agendas.”

And yet these are the folks who are feeding much of the hysteria that keeps showing up on right-wing mainstream media outlets by contending that Ebola is about to break out badly in this country, even though health professionals insist that is not the case.

What can be done? How about giving the NIH the resources it needs to find a vaccine for Ebola before it becomes a crisis in the United States?