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White House blocks Fauci from testifying next week

The White House is blocking Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the administration's coronavirus task force, from testifying before the Democratic-led House next week, according to a spokesman from a key House committee.
"The Appropriations Committee sought Dr. Anthony Fauci as a witness at next week's Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee hearing on COVID-19 response. We have been informed by an administration official that the White House has blocked Dr. Fauci from testifying," House Appropriations Committee spokesman Evan Hollander said in a statement Friday.
White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere confirmed the decision.

"While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at Congressional hearings," Deere said in a statement. "We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time."

Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany followed up on Deere's comments, explaining in an interview Saturday the reasoning behind the White House's decision.

"When we pressed for details as to why Dr. Fauci in particular was the right person for the testimony and this hearing, those details were never provided," McEnany said in a Fox News interview.

In a gaggle with reporters after her interview on Fox, McEnany said the administration wanted to make sure that the "subject matter of the hearing matched the individual they're requesting" and in this case, "there was never any clarity given forth as to what the actual subject matter of this hearing would be."

Though when asked by CNN's Jeremy Diamond if Fauci or other officials will be allowed to testify in front of other House committees in the future, McEnany said "absolutely."
It appears Fauci is expected to testify in front of a committee of the Republican-led Senate committee during May. He will testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on May 12, per an aide to the panel's chairman, Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican.

"Chairman Alexander looks forward to hearing from Dr. Fauci and other administration officials at the Senate health committee's second hearing back, which will be on Tuesday, May 12," the aide told CNN.

While the move to block House testimony comes after the House abruptly canceled plans on Tuesday to return to the Capitol next week, it prevented a potential meeting between a blunt, high-ranking expert who has dissented from President Donald Trump's account of the federal response and lawmakers gearing up for an oversight battle. Fauci has repeatedly veered from Trump's framing of the federal government's handling of the pandemic, as recently as the past few days.

On Friday, Trump said that he is generally supportive of Georgia's efforts to reopen some businesses, but that he is upset with Gov. Brian Kemp's decision to open spas and tattoo parlors before meeting federal guidelines on such businesses reopening.

"I think it's wonderful. I want to see us open safely. But I didn't like spas and tattoo parlors and I was not thrilled about that, but I said nothing about Georgia other than that," Trump said.

Fauci had struck a different tone during a CNN town hall Thursday night, lamenting that "there are some states, some cities ... kind of leapfrogging over the first checkpoint."
"And, I mean, obviously you could get away with that, but you are making a really significant risk," he added. "I hope they can actually handle any rebound that they see."
Fauci was also critical of the current testing capacity during his testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in March.
"The system does not, is not really geared to what we need right now, to what you are asking for," he told lawmakers at the time.

"It is a failing. Let's admit it," he said, adding that "the idea of anybody getting it easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes. But we are not."
Testing has proven to be a continued sticking point between Trump and Fauci.

Fauci said during a Time 100 Talks interview last week that he was "not overly confident right now at all, that we have what it takes to" significantly ramp up testing.
Trump pushed back during a press briefing later that day -- from which Fauci was absent -- and said that "I don't agree with him on that, no. I think we're doing a great job on testing."

The decision to keep Fauci from appearing before the House committee comes as House Democrats are preparing for a multi-front investigation into the federal coronavirus response.

The CARES Act coronavirus aid package created a Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, made up of 21 members from offices of inspectors general across the federal government, to help coordinate investigations into various elements of the outbreak response.

Some of the investigations are already underway. The inspectors general from three key agencies updated the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday on four investigations into potential issues with the federal government's coronavirus response, the committee said.

The watchdogs referenced plans for the use of "flash reports" to provide frequent updates on the probes, as well as possible protections for the inspectors general in light of Trump's ouster of several such independent watchdogs, according to a news release from the committee.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/politics/anthony-fauci-white-house-blocks-house-testimony/index.html

By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

-War of the Worlds

How do we get back to work and back to life when infection and death still run rampant?

Good thing trump is the most transparent president ever. I know this because he told me he is.

I don't know when ... we still have insufficient data to know what is going on.

I do know that the "how" is going to be harder then the 'shelter in place' part .... I am hoping that there will not be a second wave of widespread infection but I have no idea what is going to happen.

It's odd how many of his supporters said they liked him because he said what he meant. Now they're like, "How dare you quote him! He didn't mean what he said!".

We Humans can not hide from this or any other Virus.

We will either overcome it with a vaccine, lesson it with treatments or it will claim the lives of many until immunity is reached.

To surrender our Nations to its wrath does a disservice to all the Humans who came before us and condemns all those who will come after us.

As in any war, their will be casualties in this fight but victory must be had, risks must be taken. In the end, the future will once again be a place of work, life, hugging our loved ones and gathering in fellowship as the Human Race has always done.

Let me translate.... "Trying to keep people from dying doesn't make sense! Tell grandma and grandpa good bye and wish you parents luck."

And they should be limited to the best of our abilities. We could have just let this go and have millions die. Where do you draw the line? Your grandparent, your parent, you?

Well that's better than us ending up speaking German isn't it? Oh wait, it isn't actually that kind of war that we need to puposefully send people out to die. Never mind.

Why did our "leadership" tell people in three democratic states to liberate themselves? This one of the most disgusting things that has been done during all of this. That is encouraging people to act recklessly and encourage death. But only in three democratic states.

You lead the way good sir ! Lead your normal life and let us know how you fare. . . . ignore the science, ignore that it was the 2nd wave of Spanish flu that killed 10 times as many as the first wave, listen to Trump (though I advise against the internal use of Bleach).... You got this!

Locking society up forever is not feasible nor will it cure the virus.

I haven't heard anyone suggest that... have you...?

You are quoting a line from a work of fiction? You do know that there never was a "War of the Worlds" right?

So tell me, what is trump afraid of?

Of course you are right. But you and others are pushing us to reopen sooner than the Professionals are saying it's safe..

j/c

I can hear it now as your children get older.

"Dad, I was very small when grandma passed away and grandpa has been ill ever since I can remember. What happened to them?"

"Well son, it was the second wave of the Covid 19 war. Where we waged war for the sake of the economy. Grandma was killed from her injuries sustained at the battle of Walmart and grandpa was seriously injured at the Battle of Home Depot while fighting for his right to buy paint. He still has Covid shrapnel in his lungs."

j\c
I can hear some old timers say
" To bad that the crazy Trump hating libs wanted open borders and sanctuary cities to allow the sick and dangerous illegals have full protection while they arrest americans that went to a beach or on a lake fishing".

I would block him too from talking to those worthless pieces of crap.


JMO of course, but as usual, I am right. Screw the Democrat's and those who voted them in to office.

Shameful people for who I hold absolutely no sympathy.



It's starting.

What's starting? Don't be cryptic, I want to see you write that crap for all to see.

No, we don't draw a line.
That's not to say you don't help the sick, you absolutely help the sick, you don't lock up the healthy to help the sick.
The Vietnamese have a famous line from the Vietnam war, something like,
You will kill 10 of us for every one of yours, but your people will get tired of it first.

From the outset I've been of the opinion that the brunt of this blow has to be absorbed
and do the best to absorb it.

I supposed I can see the shutting down of sporting event crowds, but for the sake of the economy of not going into a depression on top of a virus,
the one on one meetings, of everything from barber shops to sit down restaurants should never have been forbidden, and still shouldn't.

Now, wearing masks? Ya that's a good idea,
Would we all be better off? We don't know. We are where we are.

The issue there being, a much larger percentage of sick will die if we just "absorb" it. Flattening the curve is in regards to not overwhelming the healthcare system. Italy was at something like 14% mortality rate for a while because their hospitals were overrun with people and they couldn't keep up. We are at over 1 million CONFIRMED cases in the US as of now in essentially 2 months. What would that number have been just "absorbing" it? 2 million? 3? 10? At 10% mortality rate?

You don't think losing that many people would have a similar or worse effect on the economy?

j/c...

Coronavirus Live Updates: Daily Death Toll Will Nearly Double by June, Trump Administration Models Predict
Updated May, 4th 2020 3:03PM

The Trump administration projects about 3,000 daily deaths by early June.

As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths over the next several weeks. The daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double the current number of about 1,750.

The projections, based on government modeling pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, significant risks remain. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.

“There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow,” the Centers for Disease Control warned.

The projections confirm the primary fear of public health experts: that a reopening of the economy will put the nation back where it was in mid-March, when cases were rising so rapidly in some parts of the country that patients were dying on gurneys in hospital hallways as the health care system was overloaded.

“While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,” Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Trump’s former commissioner of food and drugs, said Sunday on the CBS program Face the Nation. “We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we’re just not seeing that.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said deaths in the United States could reach 100,000, twice as many as he had forecast just two weeks ago. But his new estimate still underestimates what his own administration is now predicting to be the total death toll by the end of May — much less in the months that follow. It follows a pattern for Mr. Trump, who has frequently understated the impact of the disease.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” he said in a virtual town hall on Fox News. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”

The White House responded that the new projections had not been vetted.

“This is not a White House document nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting,” said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman. “This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed.”

“The president’s phased guidelines to open up America again are a scientific driven approach that the top health and infectious disease experts in the federal government agreed with,” he said.

Mr. Gottlieb said Americans “may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes the new normal.”

Some states that have partially reopened are still seeing an increase in cases, including Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas, according to Times data. Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska also are seeing an increase in cases and reopened some businesses on Monday. Alaska has also reopened and is seeing a small number of increasing cases.

While the country has stabilized, it has not really improved, as shown by data collected by The Times. Case and death numbers remain stuck on a numbing, tragic plateau that is tilting only slightly downward.

At least 1,000 people with the virus, and sometimes more than 2,000, have died every day for the last month. On a near-daily basis, at least 25,000 new cases of the virus are being identified across the country. And even as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit have shown improvement, other urban centers, including Chicago and Los Angeles, are reporting steady growth in cases.

The situation has devolved most dramatically in parts of rural America that were largely spared in the early stages of the pandemic. As food processing facilities and prisons have emerged as some of the country’s largest case clusters, the counties that include Logansport, Ind., South Sioux City, Neb., and Marion, Ohio, have surpassed New York City in cases per capita.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/us/coronavirus-updates.html#link-7b42d0f5

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We will preserve for our children and their children this, the last best hope of man on earth or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

I've always wondered when people reach the point in life where this is less accurate than it used to be, the more convinced they are that it's true.



I guess after the November elections I'll have to remind you that you aren't my type.



There's a difference in "It's starting", to "it's recklessly starting while ignoring all the guidelines".

Let's recap shall we?



Most of, if not all of these states have not passed that 14 day guideline. While this plan was unveiled at one of his own press conferences on April 16th. Only a day later he Tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” which were in defiance of the very guidelines that were set forth only the day prior at his press conference.

I mean if you're actually looking for "shameful people" instead of being a partisan hack promoting we be reckless with the life of your fellow Americans.

I understand how avoiding facts has become a pastime of your ilk, but they are out there for everyone to see.

What old timers? From the looks of things you trying to help kill them all off.

Yeah Milk, but who really cares about the death count?

It's much easier for retired people, people on pensions and ss, people living on disability, gov't. employees, etc, to say "keep it locked down", than it is for people that don't get a guaranteed income.

Yet, everyone wants the workers at grocery stores to work, and be open. They want the employees at amazon to work, and at food processing plants to work, so they can sit in their home.

Wal Mart is open, as are building supply stores, some 'essential' factory's.

What determines who can be open?

Why do we "have" to have mail in voting? Being around people? Go to a Wal Mart, or a grocery store - there's people. Maybe we should put the voting machines there?

There's more to consider is what I'm getting at.

I have 2 cousins, and about 8 friends that are nurses in hospitals. While still working, they are having their hours cut - down to 32, or even 24 hours a week.

It's certainly not fair for everyone and no system will be fair. But that doesn't address anything I posted. Those guidelines were set for our nation as a guideline to reopen the states. These were the very criteria that was supposed to be met in a national briefing to educate our citizens and state governments.

Less than 24 hours later Trump undermined those very guidelines in a Tweet storm rant. Those guidelines are being ignored in many states that are reopening. Sadly, some states were going to be heading that direction or were heading in that direction yet didn't follow through with them.

So if you would, please address that part of it rather than veering off in another direction.

Why would you set national guidelines only to ignore them?

Covid-19 has brought about a war, a class war. The well off, jobs not cancelled group, celebrities, salaried employees not furloughed, people with wealth are on their high horse STAY HOME!

Meanwhile a lot of people, living paycheck to paycheck are hurting. I personally don't have to worry about my next meal or mortgage payment, but I am also no rubbing it in peoples noses when they NEED to work. Shouting from my ivory tower, screw you common man STAY HOME.


Nah, if people need to work, we should let them. Especially Democrats, you voted out the only person who would allow this country to give REAL aid to people in times like this. Either go full socialism in your party or buzz off with the elitist, moral high ground nonsense.

"STAY HOME working stiff with no savings, we don't want to get sick".

Honest question: What does testing do?


Say I get tested tomorrow. I'm clean. But later in the day, I touch something, then touch my nose, and I get it.

Or, I test clean. I'm good to go. Wife unknowingly brings it home from work, or my daughter does. Asymptomatic..........I test clean in the morning, but I get it later that day. Do we test everyone daily?

If you test positive it lets you know to self isolate and not walk around giving it to everybody.

Cool. I test negative, but get it later that day. Then what?

Take a guess.

trump didnt set them He read them. Then He did his stupid tweet thing. Because he is a moron.

“If you want a test you get a test.” Mmmmmmmm? More broken promises from the pos in the oval. Takes no responsibility for keeping the European door wide open and he let the virus come right on in. Blames China, Obama, Clinton. Lol. And Wants to start a conflict with China during a world pandemic. Pffft trump and his supporters can go to hell.