One other item - I read on a Baja site that there are no lines waiting to get into the states at the SYPOE. Well, Mike says that @ 6:00 am in the mornings, the Sentri Lines (3 to 4 are open) vary, yesterday there was no wait - BUT the other regular entry lanes are backed up as far as you can see, and this backed up state has been going on for the last couple of weeks. So at least for right now, if you do not have a Sentri, be prepared to wait. Here's the Times:
~ From the New York Times: (click title for full coverage)
The
World Health Organization, always cautious, acted more forcefully and
faster than many national governments. But President Trump has decided
to cut off U.S. funding to the organization.
By Richard Pérez-Peña and
On
Jan. 22, two days after Chinese officials first publicized the serious
threat posed by the new virus ravaging the city of Wuhan, the chief of
the World Health Organization held the first of what would be months of
almost daily media briefings, sounding the alarm, telling the world to
take the outbreak seriously.
But with
its officials divided, the W.H.O., still seeing no evidence of sustained
spread of the virus outside of China, declined the next day to declare a global public health emergency. A week later, the organization reversed course and made the declaration.
Those
early days of the epidemic illustrated the strengths and weaknesses of
the W.H.O., an arm of the United Nations that is now under fire by
President Trump, who on Tuesday ordered a cutoff of American funding to the organization.
With
limited, constantly shifting information to go on, the W.H.O. showed an
early, consistent determination to treat the new contagion like the
threat it would become, and to persuade others to do the same. At the
same time, the organization repeatedly praised China, acting and
speaking with a political caution born of being an arm of the United
Nations, with few resources of its own, unable to do its work without
international cooperation.
Mr.
Trump, deflecting criticism that his own handling of the crisis left
the United States unprepared, accused the W.H.O. of mismanaging it,
called the organization “very China-centric” and said it had “pushed
China’s misinformation.”
But
a close look at the record shows that the W.H.O. acted with greater
foresight and speed than many national governments, and more than it had
shown in previous epidemics. And while it made mistakes, there is
little evidence that the W.H.O. is responsible for the disasters that
have unfolded in Europe and then the United States.
The
W.H.O. needs the support of its international members to accomplish
anything — it has no authority over any territory, it cannot go anywhere
uninvited, and it relies on member countries for its funding. All it
can offer is expertise and coordination — and even most of that is
borrowed from charities and member nations.
The
W.H.O. has drawn criticism as being too close to Beijing — a charge
that grew louder as the agency repeatedly praised China for cooperation
and transparency that others said were lacking. China’s harsh approach
to containing the virus drew some early criticism from human rights
activists, but it proved effective and has since been adopted by many
other countries.
A
crucial turning point in the pandemic came on Jan. 20, after China’s
central government sent the country’s most famous epidemiologist, Zhong
Nanshan, to Wuhan to investigate the new coronavirus racing through that
city of 11 million people. Dr. Zhong delivered a startling message on national television:
Local officials had covered up the seriousness of the outbreak, the
contagion spread quickly between people, doctors were dying and everyone
should avoid the city.
Dr. Zhong, an
eccentric 83-year-old who led the fight against the SARS outbreak of
2002 and 2003, was one of few people in China with enough standing to
effectively call Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, a rising official in the
Communist Party, a liar.
Mr. Zhou, eager to see no disruption in his plans for a local party congress from Jan. 11 to 17 and a potluck dinner
for 40,000 families on Jan. 18, appears to have had his police and
local health officials close the seafood market, threaten doctors and
assure the public that there was little or no transmission.
Less
than three days after Dr. Zhong’s warning was broadcast, China locked
down the city, preventing anyone from entering or leaving and imposing
strict rules on movement within it — conditions it would later extend
far behind Wuhan, encompassing tens of millions of people.
The national government reacted in force,
punishing local officials, declaring that anyone who hid the epidemic
would be “forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame,” and deploying
tens of thousands of soldiers, medical workers and contact tracers.
It
was the day of the lockdown that the W.H.O. at first declined to
declare a global emergency, its officials split and expressing concern
about identifying a particular country as a threat, and about the impact
of such a declaration on people in China. Such caution is a standard —
if often frustrating — fact of life for United Nations agencies, which
operate by consensus and have usually avoided even a hint of criticizing nations directly.
Despite
Dr. Zhong’s warning about human-to-human transmission, Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director-general, said there was not yet any
evidence of sustained transmission outside China.
“That doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” Dr. Tedros said.
“Make
no mistake,” he added. “This is an emergency in China, but it has not
yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one.”
The
W.H.O. was still trying to persuade China to allow a team of its
experts to visit and investigate, which did not occur until more than
three weeks later. And the threat to the rest of the world on Jan. 23
was not yet clear — only about 800 cases and 25 deaths had been
reported, with only a handful of infections and no deaths reported
outside China.
“In retrospect, we all
wonder if something else could have been done to prevent the spread we
saw internationally early on, and if W.H.O. could have been more
aggressive sooner as an impartial judge of the China effort,” said Dr.
Peter Rabinowitz, co-director of the MetaCenter for Pandemic
Preparedness and Global Health Security at the University of Washington.
Amir
Attaran, a public health and law professor at the University of Ottawa,
said, “Clearly a decision was taken by Dr. Tedros and the organization
to bite their tongues, and to coax China out of its shell, which was
partially successful.”
“That in no way supports Trump’s accusation,” he added. “The president is scapegoating, dishonestly.”
Indeed, significant shortcomings in the administration’s response arose from a failure to follow W.H.O. advice.
The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bungled the rollout of
diagnostic tests in the United States, even as the W.H.O. was urging
every nation to implement widespread testing. And the White House was
slow to endorse stay-home restrictions and other forms of social
distancing, even after the W.H.O. advised these measures were working in
China.
It is impossible to know whether the nations of the world would have
acted sooner if the W.H.O. had called the epidemic a global emergency, a
declaration with great public relations weight, a week earlier than it
did.
But
day after day, Dr. Tedros, in his rambling style, was delivering less
formal warnings, telling countries to contain the virus while it was
still possible, to do testing and contact tracing, and isolate those who
might be infected. “We have a window of opportunity to stop this
virus,” he often said, “but that window is rapidly closing.”
In
fact, the organization had already taken steps to address the
coronavirus, even before Dr. Zhong’s awful revelation, drawing attention
to the mysterious outbreak.
On Jan.
12, Chinese scientists published the genome of the virus, and the W.H.O.
asked a team in Berlin to use that information to develop a diagnostic
test. Just four days later, they produced a test and the W.H.O. posted online a blueprint that any laboratory around the world could use to duplicate it.
On Jan. 21, China shared materials for its test with the W.H.O., providing another template for others to use.
Some
countries and research institutions followed the German blueprint,
while others, like the C.D.C., insisted on producing their own tests.
But a flaw in the initial C.D.C. test, and the agency’s slowness in
approving testing by labs other than its own, contributed to weeks of
delay in widespread testing in the United States.
In late January, Mr. Trump praised China’s efforts.
Now, officials in his administration accuse China of concealing the
extent of the epidemic, even after the crackdown on Wuhan, and the
W.H.O. of being complicit in the deception. They say that lulled the
West into taking the virus less seriously than it should have.
Larry
Gostin, director of the W.H.O.’s Center on Global Health Law, said the
organization relied too heavily on the initial assertions out of Wuhan
that there was little or no human transmission of the virus.
“The
charitable way to look at this is that W.H.O. simply had no means to
verify what was happening on the ground,” he said. “The less charitable
way to view it is that the W.H.O. didn’t do enough to independently
verify what China was saying, and took China at face value.”
The W.H.O. was initially wary of China’s internal travel restrictions, but endorsed the strategy after it showed signs of working.
“Right
now, the strategic and tactical approach in China is the correct one,”
Dr. Michael Ryan, the W.H.O.’s chief of emergency response, said on Feb.
18. “You can argue whether these measures are excessive or restrictive
on people, but there is an awful lot at stake here in terms of public
health — not only the public health of China but of all people in the
world.”
A W.H.O. team — including two Americans, from the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health — did visit China in mid-February for more than a week, and its leaders said they were given wide latitude to travel, visit facilities and talk with people.
Whether
or not China’s central government intentionally misstated the scale of
the crisis, incomplete reporting has been seen in every other hard-hit
country. France, Italy and Britain have all acknowledged seriously
undercounting cases and deaths among people who were never hospitalized,
particularly people in nursing and retirement homes.
New
York City this week reported 3,700 deaths it had not previously
counted, in people who were never tested. The United States generally
leaves it to local coroners whether to test bodies for the virus, and
many lack the capacity to do so.
In
the early going, China was operating in a fog, unsure of what it was
dealing with, while its resources in and around Wuhan were overwhelmed.
People died or recovered at home without ever being treated or tested.
Official figures excluded, then included, then excluded again people who
had symptoms but had never been tested.
On Jan. 31 — a day after the W.H.O.’s emergency declaration — President Trump moved to restrict travel from China,
and he has since boasted that he took action before other heads of
state, which was crucial in protecting the United States. In fact,
airlines had already canceled the great majority of flights from China,
and other countries cut off travel from China at around the same time
Mr. Trump did.
The first known case
in the United States was confirmed on Jan. 20, after a man who was
infected but not yet sick traveled five days earlier from Wuhan to the
Seattle area, where the first serious American outbreak would occur.
The
W.H.O. said repeatedly that it did not endorse international travel
bans, which it said are ineffectual and can do serious economic harm,
but it did not specifically criticize the United States, China or other
countries that took that step.
Experts say it was China’s internal travel restrictions, more severe than those in the West, that had the greatest effect, delaying the epidemic’s spread by weeks and allowing China’s government to get ahead of the outbreak.
The
W.H.O. later conceded that China had done the right thing. Brutal as
they were, China’s tactics apparently worked. Some cities were allowed
to reopen in March, and Wuhan did on April 8.
The
Trump administration has not been alone in criticizing the W.H.O. Some
public health experts and officials of other countries, including
Japan's finance minister, have also said the organization was too deferential to China.
The
W.H.O. has altered some of its guidance over time — a predictable
complication in dealing with a new pathogen, but one that has spurred
criticism. But at times, the agency also gave what appeared to be
conflicting messages, leading to confusion.
In
late February, before the situation in Italy had turned from worrisome
to catastrophic, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and other government
officials, citing W.H.O. recommendations, said the regional governments
of Lombardy and Veneto were doing excessive testing.
“We have more people infected because we made more swabs,” Mr. Conte said.
In fact, the
W.H.O. had not said to limit testing, though it had said some testing
was a higher priority. It was — and still is — calling for more testing
in the context of tracing and checking people who had been in contact
with infected patients, but few Western countries have done extensive
contact tracing.
But the organization took pains not to criticize individual countries — including those that did insufficient testing.
On
March 16, Dr. Tedros wrote on Twitter, “We have a simple message for
all countries: test, test, test.” Three days later, a W.H.O. spokeswoman
said that there was “no ‘one size fits all’ with testing,” and that
“each country should consider its strategy based on the evolution of the
outbreak.”
The organization was
criticized for not initially calling the contagion a pandemic, meaning
an epidemic spanning the globe. The term has no official significance
within the W.H.O., and officials insisted that using it would not change
anything, but Dr. Tedros began to do so on March 11,
explaining that he made the change to draw attention because too many
countries were not taking the group’s warnings seriously enough."
Reporting
was contributed by Selam Gebrekidan, Javier Hernandez, Jason Horowitz,
Adam Nossiter, Knvul Sheikh and Roni Caryn Rabin.
Richard
Pérez-Peña, an International News Editor in New York, has been with The
Times as a reporter and editor since 1992. He has worked on the Metro,
National, Business, Media and International desks. @perezpena • Facebook
Donald
G. McNeil Jr. is a science reporter covering epidemics and diseases of
the world’s poor. He joined The Times in 1976, and has reported from 60
countries.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, they didn't publish the Pentagon Papers for nuthin folks. Meanwhile, you may have been reading about the protests and marches of the wacked out Trump/Fox News supporters and I guess just simply crazy people objecting to the lock down including social distancing. Christ. Oh, and Bannon is recommending to Trump to reopen the whole shebang - oh shit, of course he is, he needs to go to the Liquor Store, doh. Seriously.
edit: Yes, some of them were heavily armed...and Trump called them, "responsible people":
~ From The Guardian:
Trump Calls Protestors Against Stay At Home Orders "Very Responsible"
~~~~~
Bye for now, back to the salt mines and take care.
You knew I was going to do this - the Official Trumpista song - Open It Up So More Of Us Can Die!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
 |
| Ohio: Bannon & Trumpista supporters @ Local Liquor Store Banging On The Windows To Open Up For Business - No social distancing but I see one guy with a mask on - the rest of them do not care if they die ! I think like I said, they want that liquor store opened, Bannon is waiting in the car for his bottle (s)!!! Crazy fuckin people. |
Well, they didn't publish the Pentagon Papers for nuthin folks. Meanwhile, you may have been reading about the protests and marches of the wacked out Trump/Fox News supporters and I guess just simply crazy people objecting to the lock down including social distancing. Christ. Oh, and Bannon is recommending to Trump to reopen the whole shebang - oh shit, of course he is, he needs to go to the Liquor Store, doh. Seriously.
edit: Yes, some of them were heavily armed...and Trump called them, "responsible people":
 |
| It's Beginning to Feel Like A Mad Max Movie |
~ From The Guardian:
Trump Calls Protestors Against Stay At Home Orders "Very Responsible"
~~~~~
Bye for now, back to the salt mines and take care.
You knew I was going to do this - the Official Trumpista song - Open It Up So More Of Us Can Die!
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