And you need to get your facts straight. Do you pay any attention to WTF is actually going on? The death toll would not be what it is if Trump had done his f'in job.
Trump’s Misleading Comments on Biden and the Coronavirus
Not a “travel ban.” First, as he repeatedly does, the president incorrectly describes the action that he took regarding travel from China, where the coronavirus was discovered last December. As we have previously reported, it wasn’t a “travel ban.”
On Jan. 31, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced that certain non-U.S. citizens who have traveled to China within the last two weeks would be barred from entering the United States. U.S. citizens and permanent residents and their immediate families were exempt from the restrictions.
A New York Times story on April 4 found that nearly 40,000 people had flown on direct flights from China to the United States in the two months after the travel restrictions went into effect on Feb. 2. So this was hardly a ban.
Impact of travel restrictions. As he has before, Trump said that the travel restrictions “saved tens of thousands of lives.” But as we reported, there is no evidence to support this, and the White House has provided none.
The few studies that have been done estimate travel restrictions the United States and other countries enacted on China had modest impacts, slowing the initial spread outside of China but not containing the coronavirus pandemic. Past studies also have found travel restrictions could delay the path of the spread of diseases, but do little to contain them.
We found no study that looked only at the U.S. travel restrictions Trump instituted, and we found only one study, which wasn’t peer-reviewed, on Australia, that found an impact on decreasing the number of deaths — but the study had a major limitation. It didn’t consider any impact of cases coming to Australia from other countries besides China.
As we’ve written, it’s possible the U.S. travel restrictions on China had some impact in slowing the importation of cases, but we don’t have evidence of that, or of what the magnitude of the impact would be.
Biden supported China travel restrictions. Trump charged without evidence or elaboration that if he had listened to Biden, “hundreds of thousands of additional lives would have been lost.” We asked the White House what he was referring to, but it provided no response, nor did the Trump campaign.
It seems likely the president was referring to the travel restrictions, since he said that Biden “opposed my very strict travel ban.” In fact, Biden took no position on the China restrictions when they were implemented.
As we have written, Biden’s campaign said on April 3 that Biden backed Trump’s decision to impose travel restrictions on China.
“Joe Biden supports travel bans that are guided by medical experts, advocated by public health officials, and backed by a full strategy,” Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, told CNN. “Science supported this ban, therefore he did too.”
Biden called Trump “xenophobic.” Trump is right that Biden called him xenophobic. But Biden didn’t make clear why he said that. The Biden campaign has said that was not in connection with the China travel restrictions.
As we have written, on the day the White House announced the restrictions, Biden said at a campaign event in Iowa that as the pandemic unfolds, Americans “need to have a president who they can trust what he says about it, that he is going to act rationally about it.” He added, “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”
The Biden campaign says Biden’s “reference to xenophobia was about Trump’s long record of scapegoating others at a time when the virus was emerging from China,” and that he was not talking about the travel rules.
HHS experts backed restrictions. Trump is also incorrect, as we have written, when he says that when it came to the travel restrictions, “I was a crowd of one, because even experts didn’t want to do it.”
HHS Secretary Azar told reporters on Feb. 7, “The travel restrictions that we put in place in consultation with the president were very measured and incremental. These were the uniform recommendations of the career public health officials here at HHS.”
“Closing up” saved lives. We don’t know whether Trump is on target when he says that the lockdowns imposed by many states may have saved “millions” of lives. A study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley published on June 8 in the journal Nature found that lockdowns had prevented 60 million infections in the United States.
The study didn’t say how many lives were saved, but the lead researcher, Solomon Hsiang, did say the benefits of the lockdown are in a sense invisible because they reflect “infections that never occurred and deaths that did not happen.” A study by researchers at the Imperial College London estimated lockdowns saved about 3.1 million lives in 11 European countries.
Columbia University researchers concluded that 36,000 fewer deaths from the coronavirus would have occurred if the U.S. had imposed social distancing one week earlier in March.
Pelosi in Chinatown. Finally, Trump is wrong when he once again says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “dancing on the streets of Chinatown” well after he imposed his travel restrictions. Trump has repeatedly falsely described Pelosi’s trip to Chinatown.
As we have written, Pelosi traveled to Chinatown on Feb. 24 in an effort to bolster the neighborhood’s restaurants and shops. Their business had fallen sharply in the wake of the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which as we said originated in China.
The visit came three weeks before six Bay Area counties implemented shelter-in-place restrictions. On the day of Pelosi’s visit, Trump tweeted this about the virus: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
For a time Pelosi’s visit became a staple in Trump’s remarks. He variously described her as holding a “rally” in Chinatown, having or wanting to have “parties” or a “street party” there, and encouraging people to go to a “big parade.” In May, Trump shifted to references to Pelosi “dancing in the streets of San Francisco in Chinatown.” None of these things ever happened. She was interviewed as she shopped.
3M has investigated 4,000 reports of N95 fraud, filed 18 lawsuits A judge has issued a restraining order in a lawsuit filed in Minn.
By Mike Hughlett Star Tribune July 16, 2020 — 9:31pm
3M is the market leader in the U.S. and one of the largest global makers of N95 respirators.
3M has investigated 4,000 reports globally of fraud, counterfeiting and price gouging in connection with its N95 respirators. As a result, it has filed 18 lawsuits in North America, including two in Minnesota.
The Maplewood-based company Thursday issued an update of its battle against scams as COVID-19 has greatly increased demand for N95 masks, the gold standard in protection against pathogens and other particulate matter.
3M is the leading U.S. manufacturer of N95 respirators and among the largest globally.
3M said that so far, courts have issued six temporary restraining orders — including one this week in Minnesota — and four preliminary injunctions to stop N95 sales operations alleged to be unlawful. The company said it has provided referrals to law enforcement agencies that have helped lead to criminal charges in some cases.
“The schemes we shut down were not only unlawful, they also endangered lives and wasted precious time and resources by diverting buyers from legitimate sources of much-needed respirators,” said Denise Rutherford, 3M senior vice president of corporate affairs.
In addition to litigation, 3M said it has removed more than 7,000 e-commerce listings with fraudulent or counterfeit product offerings and more than 10,000 false or deceptive social media posts. The pace of alleged N95 scams hasn’t slowed. “I attribute much of that constant pace to the fact that supply does not meet demand, and that gives fraudsters an opportunity,” Haley Schaffer, 3M assistant general counsel, said in an interview.
In U.S. District Court in Minnesota, 3M last month sued Legacy Medical Supplies and four people connected with the company, claiming they were “running a scam.”
Legacy Medical was trying to sell 3M brand N95 respirators at a 75% to 267% markup over 3M’s list price, 3M said in a court filing. “That represents price gouging and unconscionable profiteering during a global pandemic,” the filing said.
The lawsuit alleged that two of the defendants, Legacy’s Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Reboulet and consultant Carol Ann Korpi, falsely claimed to a Minnesota attorney that they had a personal relationship with Nick Gangestad, 3M’s chief financial officer.
Korpi, the lawsuit said, also sent the attorney an e-mail indicating that Legacy sources N95 respirators through “3M attorneys.”
“This is not only false, but also nonsensical,” the suit said.
Legacy is not a 3M-authorized distributor as it claimed, the lawsuit said. It also claimed it could access between 250 million and 47 billion respirators at a time — far more than 3M even has the capacity to produce, the suit said.
Reboulet said Thursday that “none of what they are saying is true. … There is no guilt here.”
A judge this week issued a temporary restraining order against Reboulet and a fourth defendant, which 3M listed as consultant Mark Eckhardt.
According to his LinkedIn page, Reboulet lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., and is CEO of Legacy Trust and Holdings of Carmel, Ind., as well as founder and president of Condor Solution Inc. in Minnetonka. Legacy Medical Supplies, which was formed this year, is registered in Indiana, according to the lawsuit.
Eckhardt is a consultant for Legacy Medical who is believed to live in the Philadelphia area, the lawsuit said. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
Korpi, whose LinkedIn page says she is founder of CA Consults in the San Francisco Bay Area, could not be reached for comment. She settled 3M claims against her earlier this week.
So did Joseph Nelson, another defendant listed in the suit as Legacy’s vice president for operations. “We resolved it,” Nelson said, declining to comment further.
Nelson, according to his LinkedIn page, lives in the Minneapolis area and works as a senior account executive at LinkedIn. He is also the head coach of the women’s lacrosse team at Concordia University in St. Paul.
In the other Minnesota case, 3M sued Matthew Starsiak and AMK Energy Services in federal court, saying they were running a scam.
The lawsuit said that Starsiak in May approached 3M falsely claiming to represent a consortium of wealthy people and charitable foundations, including Bill and Melinda Gates, Richard Branson and Elon Musk.
Starsiak, who is president of AMK, then used the names of senior 3M lawyers he had communicated with “as bait to lure unwitting buyers into placing large amounts of money in escrow to purchase billions of fictitious 3M N95 respirators,” the lawsuit claims.
The company said Starsiak, a former U.S. Marine Corps major, used his service record “to win trust so he could trick people into paying for 3M N95 respirators that he does not have.” Starsiak, who lives in Bountiful, Utah, declined to comment.
A federal judge granted 3M a temporary restraining order against Starsiak and his company in late June.
The Minnesota litigation has the hallmarks of many of 3M’s N95 fraud suits.
Schaffer said common litigation threads include: defendants claiming to be have a relationship with 3M — including as authorized dealers — when they don’t; huge sales pitches that would be difficult or impossible to fill; and the involvement of 3M lawyers in sales transactions.
3M said any damages it recovers are donated to COVID-19 relief efforts.
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