What is going on with the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Dr. Ben Carson? Donald Trump gave him that job, because as a child he lived in a housing project. He probably would have done better as the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). After all, he was a neurosurgeon, which takes a substantial amount of intellect. Yet, he comes across as not very bright. So what is the deal?
Carson appeared on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning and made things worse for Americans. The doctor’s expertise obviously did not include infectious disease. He said that Coronavirus (COVID-19) was like the common flu. That was not true.
Coronavirus comes from the same family subset as pneumonia.
Stephanopoulos said the Grand Princess was docking in Oakland to offload the infected and not infected passengers. He asked Dr. Carson:
‘What plan is in place to deal with the 3,500 people onboard?’
However, the doctor did not want to talk about that plan:
‘The plan will be in place by that time. But I don’t want to preview the plan right now.’
The show’s host asked:
‘Shouldn’t you be able to do that?’
Carson came back with:
‘I think it needs to all come from a solitary source, we shouldn’t have 16 people saying what the plan is.’
Carson said during the interview that there was no problem with healthy people going to “large events like campaign rallies.”
‘There is no reason you shouldn’t go, but he said that if an individual is in a high-risk category, like the elderly, then he or she should “think twice.’
The doctor also encouraged Americans to be careful in the same way they would with any other virus. They should wash their hands.
Trump sent out his administration’s physicians Sunday to comment on the Coronavirus. They advised elderly Americans and people with pre-existing conditions to avoid large crowds and not travel as much.
U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said it was up to local officials to decide whether to cancel big events and to let people telecommute. Adams said on State of the Union:
‘Life can’t stop.’
Dr. Adams added that there were 75,000 test kits available for doctors and medical centers. However, he noted that there would be over two million ready in the next several days.
HHS Secretary Alex Azor held a press conference and said 700,000 Coronavirus test kits had been sent out to hospitals. Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Girior told POLITICO that there were more tests that passed quality control moving that number up to 1.5 million.
An HHS spokesperson told
‘We’re rapidly expanding our testing capacity, so these numbers will change. Moving forward, we expect exponentially more tests to be distributed as additional manufacturers ramp up production.’
Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, large commercial labs, have started to do their own tests after the FDA agreed. A source told POLITICO that would only be about to “a few thousand a day” in the beginning:
‘For really high volume you need to get the platforms from the manufacturers. If you’re going to have something that really ramps up the throughput, you’re going to need the Abbotts, the Thermo Fishers. It will take some time.’
The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.
