What did Trump know and when?

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_Chap
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What did Trump know and when?

Post by _Chap »

Trump was warned about pandemic in January – reports

Yeah, but nobody knew how bad it could be, right?
Donald Trump was warned at the end of January by one of his top White House advisers that coronavirus had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and derail the US economy, unless tough action were taken immediately, new memos have revealed.

The memos were written by Trump’s economic adviser Peter Navarro and circulated via the National Security Council widely around the White House and federal agencies. They show that even within the Trump administration alarm bells were ringing loudly by late January, at a time when the president was consistently downplaying the threat of Covid-19.

The memos, first reported by the New York Times and Axios, were written by Navarro on 29 January and 23 February. The first memo, composed on the day Trump set up a White House coronavirus task force, gave a worst-case scenario of the virus killing more than half a million Americans.

According to the Times, it said: “The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on US soil. This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”

The second memo went even further, predicting that a Covid-19 pandemic, left unchecked, could kill 1.2m Americans and infect as many as 100m.

This was not the first time Trump and his White House team were warned that the virus had the potential to devastate the US and needed to be dealt with quickly and firmly. Senior scientists, epidemiologists, and health emergency experts in the US and around the world delivered that message clearly early on in the crisis, only for Trump to continue belittling the scale of the threat which he compared falsely to the dangers of seasonal flu.

But the emergence of the memos from such a senior aide within the White House will make it much more difficult for Trump to claim – as he has done on multiple occasions – that nobody was able to predict the severity of the disease. As the pandemic has swept across the country, the president has come under mounting criticism for having done too little, too late in response, leading to mass shortages of diagnostic testing, protective gear for frontline health workers and ventilators for the very sick.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

As far as derailing the economy goes, I think that one was unavoidable. Either the virus is going to overwhelm the system and people will naturally self-isolate as a result, or the ‘cure’ of a government stay-at-home order will get the results we’re seeing now. Even if we had massive amounts of personnel screening people at points of entry, we’d still have to have a shutdown to slow the unavoidable spread of the disease.

- Doc
_Chap
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Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _Chap »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Tue Apr 07, 2020 12:50 pm
As far as derailing the economy goes, I think that one was unavoidable. ...
The point is that Trump knew that damn well months ago (or should have done if he had glanced at briefing document headlines). Yet until recently he continued to talk as if any economic damage need only be minimal, and that a quick return to normal should be possible.

This was one of a number of examples in which his words and actions not only failed to push preparations forward, but actually opposed them.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:02 am

Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Oh. Well. We've been making that point over and over again on the other thread.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Big oof:

https://www.axios.com/exclusive-navarro ... 382a9.html

“Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon defended Navarro's motives, calling the memos "prophetic" and saying Navarro was forced to put his concerns in writing because "there was total blockage to get these facts in front of the President of the United States."

- The "naïvété, arrogance and ignorance" of White House advisers who disagreed with Navarro "put the country and the world in jeopardy," Bannon said, adding that Navarro was sidelined from the task force after the memo.

- "In this Kafkaesque nightmare, nobody would pay attention to him or the facts."“

tl;dr - Chap is correct.

- Doc
_EAllusion
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Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _EAllusion »

If you read the Navarro memos, he comes to the correct conclusion using batty reasoning probably motivated by his prior goals to isolate China. It puts lie to Trump's drum-beat of "no one could've known," but really, there so many other examples of clear warning given to the Trump admin, both from within and without, while he was publicly downplaying the threat that you don't need this one specific example to make that point. It's just another brazen lie where reality needs to constantly shift to accommodate the narrative that Trump and the party are always right. Not listening to what Navarro has to say is sound advice. Other sources? Not so much.

There's gonna be no consequences for it. Nor all the other related abuses, including overseeing a quasi-genocide of Americans, so you just have to get yourself used to accepting it doesn't matter. When the grip is tight enough, as it is now, you have to just remember the truth to pass along and bide your time until political upheaval is possible.
_Chap
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Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _Chap »

EAllusion wrote:
Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:56 pm
If you read the Navarro memos, he comes to the correct conclusion using batty reasoning probably motivated by his prior goals to isolate China.... Not listening to what Navarro has to say is sound advice.
I've just read both memos here:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/07/poli ... index.html

I really don't see what you mean by 'batty reasoning'. In my usage 'batty' = 'deranged, highly eccentric, crazy'. I appreciate that you may disagree with Navarro in a number of ways (though you do not make it plain what these might be) . But disagreeing with you is not the same as being crazy, is it?

Perhaps I am ignorant and dense, but I can't immediately see any essential feature of Navarro's texts that would have justified a reasonable person in having simply ignored them, as did Trump, to the great subsequent cost of the American people.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_EAllusion
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Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _EAllusion »

[quote]
I've just read both memos here:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/07/poli ... index.html

I really don't see what you mean by 'batty reasoning'. In my usage 'batty' = 'deranged, highly eccentric, crazy'. I appreciate that you may disagree with Navarro in a number of ways (though you do not make it plain what these might be) . But disagreeing with you is not the same as being crazy, is it?

Perhaps I am ignorant and dense, but I can't immediately see any essential feature of Navarro's texts that would have justified a reasonable person in having simply ignored them, as did Trump, to the great subsequent cost of the American people.
[/quote]

The most talked about example is when he invokes game theory where game theory has no meaningful application. It's just straight nonsense to sound sophisticated to a dumb person. It's a real-life example of "It's time for some game theory..." outside of the infamous tweet. He uses that to justify a travel ban on China. It's not the only example, but that alone would justify dismissing what you are reading as the work of a pseudo-intellectual hack.
_Chap
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Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _Chap »

EAllusion wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 2:02 pm
I've just read both memos here:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/07/poli ... index.html

I really don't see what you mean by 'batty reasoning'. In my usage 'batty' = 'deranged, highly eccentric, crazy'. I appreciate that you may disagree with Navarro in a number of ways (though you do not make it plain what these might be) . But disagreeing with you is not the same as being crazy, is it?

Perhaps I am ignorant and dense, but I can't immediately see any essential feature of Navarro's texts that would have justified a reasonable person in having simply ignored them, as did Trump, to the great subsequent cost of the American people.
The most talked about example is when he invokes game theory where game theory has no meaningful application. It's just straight nonsense to sound sophisticated to a dumb person. It's a real-life example of "It's time for some game theory..." outside of the infamous tweet. He uses that to justify a travel ban on China. It's not the only example, but that alone would justify dismissing what you are reading as the work of a pseudo-intellectual hack.
I've just re-read both memos. It is a loooong time since I studied any game theory, but so far as I can see he only mentions game theory twice, both times in the first memo (1/29):

"a game-theoric analysis" is used in the first paragraph a descriptor of what follows.
"game theory' is said to be 'instructive in assessing the need for swift containment and mitigation measures'.

But for the most part the memo is phrased in commonsense terms, making estimates of potential risks and costs that a sensible person in Navarro's position might make in dealing with the imperative need to make choices under the uncertain conditions of the real world. To ignore its conclusions on the grounds that the memo's phrasing offends the professional susceptibilities of experts in games theory seems to me to be a case of mistaken priorities.

The second memo (2/23) does not mention game theory at all, but is, as its title suggests, a demand for urgent appropriations:

Image

I am astonished that such a clear warning back in February - which even uses the tactic of a flattering reference to 'Trump Time' - could have been ignored. And that, I think, will be the reaction of most people who read the two memos.
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
_EAllusion
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Posts: 18519
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:39 pm

Re: What did Trump know and when?

Post by _EAllusion »

The first memo is the important one because of its position in the timeline.

The issue is not "offending professional sensibilities of game theory experts." It has nothing to do with sensibility. It's that he grounded a specific measure he is recommending in a "game-theoretic analysis" that is utter gibberish intending to sound learned by using a buzzword. When people do that, it means their analysis is bogus and you can safely ignore the recommendation. You might say what he did is "batty" in that example. You asked for an example, and I provided one.

Navarro in general is a fraud prone to terrible reasoning, hence his position in the Trump admin, which is why ignoring what he has to say is generally good advice. It's the same Navarro who made the news a few days before because of his aggressive push to use an unproven and potentially dangerous COVID-19 treatment because he views his ability to read medical literature on par with medical experts due to his degree in social science.

People are seizing on the story not because it was remarkably prescient - again there are numerous examples of stories regarding the Trump admin receiving warnings both before and during their downplaying of COVID-19 from both inside and outside the admin. The risks were broadly understood. It's that you have a clear example of a Trump guy with direct access to Trump trying to warn Trump in a way that makes for easy writing of news stories. The further subtext, I guess for closer news watchers, is that it is amusing to see Navarro get something right and be dismissed for it, because he's mostly known for being wrong about everything. He got the position he has by being a idiot contrarian. That's why he's in the room.
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