Sunday School 5/17/20

Two Administration types -- Peter Navarro, the president's director of trade and manufacturing policy, and the oft-missing-in-action HHS Secretary Alex Azar - each made two classroom appearances today. I'll take one of each, and throw in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, too. 

Let's start with Margaret Brennan and her talks with Azar and the Speaker on Face the Nation (CBS). She dove right in with Azar, asking about Operation Warp Speed ("that means big and that means fast," as the president explained), and asked him "is the pledge that all 328 million Americans will be able to get a shot in the arm (a coronavirus vaccine) by the end of the year?" 

Azar said "It's a goal of what we're going to mobilize the entire US government and private sector to achieve." And he said the traditional approach is to do phase one, two, and three trials in sequence and then you go to manufacturing. 

... what we're doing is wringing the inefficiency out of the development process to make the development side faster to get to safe and effective vaccines. And at the same time, we're going to scale up commercial-sized manufacturing and produce hundreds of millions of doses at risk. They may not pan out. They might not prove to be safe and effective. But we'll have it so we can begin administration right away.

Brennan honed in on Azar's 'hundreds of millions of doses" and said that's not the same as saying hundreds of millions of vaccines ready to be administered, and reminded him he had sad "the entire American population could receive vaccines by January" and asked him to clarify. 

...We have hundreds of millions of people. So three hundred million is the goal, and by January that we would set, whether by one or multiple vaccine candidates to be able to have. Let's - let's focus our energies on actually getting those vaccines developed at this point.

Azar said that there were 100 vaccine candidates to start with, and now that's down to 14, and 

...we're going to keep narrowing that down to maybe four or five, six, that we really place the big financial bets behind and drive on. And we might actually have multiple vaccines, some appropriate for different populations and different settings as we see the data get generated here. 

She moved on,wondering what sense Azar has on whether people are getting infected where they've reopened. Azar said that would have to be studied "through our comprehensive surveillance system." And he said the reopening gets framed as an economic vs. health thing, when it's actually health vs healthy. 

We see suicidality. We see reduction in cardiac procedures, cancer screenings, pediatric vaccinations. There is a real - a very real health consequence to these shutdowns that must be balanced against as we - as we try to reopen this economy and move forward.

We'll leave it there, after duly noting the twist of trying to take the focus off human sacrifices in the name of the economy and future generations, and move on to the Speaker, who was primarily there to talk about the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act. And can I say, as an acronym maker from way back, I wish I could get the gig helping name House and Senate bills.

Pelosi said the HEROES Act is a plan to test, to diagnosis and treat and decrease the number of people dying from this. Noting that almost 90,000 Americans have died, she said

We, whatever our differences, have to join together to fight this enemy to the lives and livelihood of the American people. 90,000 people, we send our condolences and our prayers to their families. We will always carry them in our hearts. 

Brennan noted the Republicans want to wait and see how things go before dropping another package. Pelosi said that the House Dems passed their bill, just as the Rs did on past bills, and then everyone comes together to get it done - that's what she anticipates will happen here. She also said that Rs and Ds across the country "all want this bill to happen" because of the aid to state, municipal and tribal governments and provisions for testing in the bill. And she added

... setting aside how we got here, we cannot take a pause... people are hungry across America. Hunger doesn't take a pause. People are jobless across America. That doesn't take a pause. People don't know how they're going to pay their rent across the country. We have - we have to address this with humanity...

Brennan wondered if the Rs had reached out on possible negotiations; Pelosi noted the bill was just passed, but she "has confidence" that they'll come together at some point. And, she pointed out,

...I think it's important to note that everything sounds like a big number, but everything that we have in the state and local column is less than the Republicans put in their tax scam to give 83% of the benefits to the top 1%.

She also said, they "have no red lines" in terms of what they're willing to consider, including corporate liability protections. 

Let's close out today's lesson with George and Peter Navarro, who like others in the administration, sings the president's praises in practically every sentence.  Asked about President Obama's comments to graduates, Navarro was harsh.

Well, I'm glad Mr. Obama has a new job as Joe Biden's press secretary... His new normal was a flat line in terms of wage growth. And I'm happy to report that this president, Donald J. Trump, in 3 1/2 years built the most beautiful economy in modern history. And the Chinese did take that down in about 30 days.

But we are in the process right now of rebuilding that. And this president, Donald J. Trump, is the one who has the skills to do so, because you know what, George? What we're going to do is, we're going to go back to the future here, buy American, deregulate and innovate.  

Stephanopoulos asked if Navarro was saying that China "deliberately unleashed" the virus on the US, and if he had any evidence of that. Navarro said he didn't say it was deliberate but said "let's go over the facts here. Correct me if I'm wrong."

The virus was spawned in Wuhan province. Patient zero was in November. The Chinese, behind the shield of the WHO, for two months hid the virus from the world and then sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese on aircraft to Milan, New York, and around the world to seed that. They could have kept it in Wuhan. Instead it became a pandemic. So, that's why I say the Chinese did that to the Americans and they are responsible. 

And he talked about the trade deal signed back in January, with its promise that the Chinese wouldn't steal intellectual property, but now the FBI is warning that "the Chinese government is hacking the intellectual property, so that they can steal vaccines for the world."

And what would they do with it? It wouldn't be a benign experience. They would use that vaccine to profiteer and hold the world hostage.

Boy, that's dark stuff right there... They moved on to talking about Joe Biden who spoke out last week about Trump "praising the Chinese government, downplaying the threat...as (Biden) was warning the need to get the people into China to see what was actually going on."  Navarro said

Yeah, well, Joe Biden has got 40 years of sucking up to the Chinese, including the eight years as vice president. And we know about the billion dollars that his son took from the Chinese.

Stephanopoulos said that wasn't factual, but Navarro maintained the money "went into that hedge fund" and added he thinks "this election is going to be a referendum in many ways on China.

What else did they talk about? Rick Bright, the whistleblower who said he worked closely with Navarro. Rick Bright, who Navarro calls "a deserter in the war against the virus." Navarro what happened with Rick Bright is "an American tragedy."

This guy is quite talented, but he was asked to be the field commander over at NIH to storm the testing hill with a billion dollars behind him. Instead of accepting that mission, he deserted. He went into a fox hole, wrote up the complaint. And how he's part of a Capitol Hill partisan circus... And the tragedy, George, is this man has talent. He's a smart man. We could have used him on the battlefield. He's not there now. And it was because of the decisions that he made. And it is a shame, George...

Um, there's a little too much high-falutin salutin' in there for my taste,. They also talked about the economic response, the new House stimulus plan, bringing jobs back from China, rebuilding American manufacturing, the deep state, the bureaucracy... it's all there in the transcript if you want to keep up with him. I'll leave you with Navarro's closing comment, in relation to people who are not loyal to the Trump agenda.

And anybody in this bureaucracy who hates buy American, and bringing our domestic supply chains home, they don't really belong here. And I support whatever this president does in terms of his hiring and firing decisions.

I'm going to go wash my hands, for the requisite 20 seconds, and maybe sing a patriotic song as I do so. Keep doing the social distancing thing, the face-covering thing, and whatever else you can to do flatten the curve and stop the spread of 'the villain from Wuhan.'

See you around the virtual campus.