Steve Kelley for April 05, 2020

It’s NOT Uncle Sam blaming 3M for fulfilling its contracts, it’s ONLY Trump and His Disciples.

Another LYING cartoon by SKelley.

Republicans do not get to complain about what 3M is doing. Republicans have no right to be angry at 3M. Republicans since the 1980’s have believed that the sole job of a corporation is to maximize profit and increase stock price for the shareholder. In other words the “me, me, me” is exactly how they say a corporation should act.

Republicans. Is it possibly time to rethink your completely free markets philosophy? How about the no regulation philosophy?

Varvel continues the Trump Blame Game. Blame everyone except the person who failed.

3M is only taking advantage of the dog-eat-dog way the GOP has set up corporate business practices. Trump himself is a shining example.

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. i.e. Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes.

Funny, Mr. Kelley doesn’t seem to have anything to draw about Florida’s governor…

If Trump had done the right things with the stockpile when this started, he wouldn’t be trying to blame it on 3M for fulfilling their commitments now (something Trump knows nothing about)

The U.S. has known since the latter years of the Obama administration and the first 3 years of COVID-45’s reign of signicant shortfalls in medical PPE and ventilators and that this equipment would be critical in case of a respiratory pandemic. This isn’t a new issue.

Steve, you are saying they are model Republicans? “I got mine. F YOU!”….isn’t that your mantra?

…forgetting that trump is the reason there’s a panic-driven market in the first place.

A world conglomerate selling to the world, imagine. Too bad the stockpiles left empty by Obama (per trump) were not replenished over these last 3 years.

Seems to fit right in with the trumpublican mind-set.

Americans word and established contracts mean squat since trump started driving.

Kushner confiscated masks bound for Canadian doctors, Canada is angry.

Trump admin stole medical equipment headed for Germany, they are angry.

Kushner claims the American people’s stockpile is his, the states are angry.

The medically incompetent Trump admin is nothing but a bunch of lying thieves and people everywhere are angry with them.

And here I thought “Greed is good”. Now that someone else is benefitting from that philosophy, all of a sudden the Repubs change their tune. Apparently what they meant was " Greed is good for me."

Actually, the full lyrics are: “Do, Re, Me, more Do Fa Me . . .”

The list is longer than 3M,

In September 2018, the Trump administration received detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic.

The plans, submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by medical manufacturer O&M Halyard, were the culmination of a venture unveiled almost three years earlier by the Obama administration.

But HHS did not proceed with making the machine.

The project was one of two N95 mask ventures — totaling $9.8 million — that the federal government embarked on over the past five years to better prepare for pandemics.

The other involves the development of reusable masks to replace the single-use variety currently so scarce that medical professionals are using theirs over and over. Expert panels have advised the government for at least 14 years that reusable masks were vital.

That effort, like the quick mask machine, has not led to a single new mask for the government’s response.

“The Halyard contract was part of an explicit strategy to ensure we could surge mask production in the next crisis,” said Nicole Lurie, who was the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response under Barack Obama. “Now we’re dealing with the consequences of not having that capability.”

Halyard said Thursday in a statement that its work on the government contract was completed in September 2018. A spokeswoman declined to give additional details.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/federal-government-spent-millions-to-ramp-up-mask-readiness-but-that-isnt-helping-now/2020/04/03/d62dda5c-74fa-11ea-a9bd-9f8b593300d0_story.html

Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.

The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September, and organizations that worked on the PREDICT program laid off dozens of scientists and analysts, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the program.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-administration-ended-pandemic-early-233508840.html

The pandemic has spread to us from overseas. If people don’t help stop the pandemic overseas then it will continue to spread back to us. Would you rather fight a war on foreign soil, or on our soil?

Report 12: The Global Impact of COVID-19 and Strategies for Mitigation and SuppressionSummary:

Summary Report 12The world faces a severe and acute public health emergency due to the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic. How individual countries respond in the coming weeks will be critical in influencing the trajectory of national epidemics. Here we combine data on age-specific contact patterns and COVID-19 severity to project the health impact of the pandemic in 202 countries. We compare predicted mortality impacts in the absence of interventions or spontaneous social distancing with what might be achieved with policies aimed at mitigating or suppressing transmission. Our estimates of mortality and healthcare demand are based on data from China and high-income countries; differences in underlying health conditions and healthcare system capacity will likely result in different patterns in low income settings.

We estimate that in the absence of interventions, COVID-19 would have resulted in 7.0 billion infections and 40 million deaths globally this year. Mitigation strategies focussing on shielding the elderly (60% reduction in social contacts) and slowing but not interrupting transmission (40% reduction in social contacts for wider population) could reduce this burden by half, saving 20 million lives, but we predict that even in this scenario, health systems in all countries will be quickly overwhelmed. This effect is likely to be most severe in lower income settings where capacity is lowest: our mitigated scenarios lead to peak demand for critical care beds in a typical low-income setting outstripping supply by a factor of 25, in contrast to a typical high-income setting where this factor is 7. As a result, we anticipate that the true burden in low income settings pursuing mitigation strategies could be substantially higher than reflected in these estimates. (cont’d)

Our analysis therefore suggests that healthcare demand can only be kept within manageable levels through the rapid adoption of public health measures (including testing and isolation of cases and wider social distancing measures) to suppress transmission, similar to those being adopted in many countries at the current time. If a suppression strategy is implemented early (at 0.2 deaths per 100,000 population per week) and sustained, then 38.7 million lives could be saved whilst if it is initiated when death numbers are higher (1.6 deaths per 100,000 population per week) then 30.7 million lives could be saved. Delays in implementing strategies to suppress transmission will lead to worse outcomes and fewer lives saved.

We do not consider the wider social and economic costs of suppression, which will be high and may be disproportionately so in lower income settings. Moreover, suppression strategies will need to be maintained in some manner until vaccines or effective treatments become available to avoid the risk of later epidemics. Our analysis highlights the challenging decisions faced by all governments in the coming weeks and months, but demonstrates the extent to which rapid, decisive and collective action now could save millions of lives.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news—wuhan-coronavirus/

The New York Times has a story today that you might have missed. Back in 2008, after realizing that the country would be woefully short of ventilators in the case of a big flu epidemic, the federal government announced a contract to design and build a new generation of cheap, portable ventilators. The contract was awarded in 2009 to Newport Medical Instruments, a small ventilator maker in California, and at first the project went swimmingly: Then everything changed. The medical device industry was undergoing rapid consolidation, with one company after another merging with or acquiring other makers….In May 2012, Covidien, a large medical device manufacturer, agreed to buy Newport for just over $100 million….Newport executives and government officials working on the ventilator contract said they immediately noticed a change when Covidien took over. Developing inexpensive portable ventilators no longer seemed like a top priority. ….Government officials and executives at rival ventilator companies said they suspected that Covidien had acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien’s profits from its existing ventilator business. ….In 2014, with no ventilators having been delivered to the government, Covidien executives told officials at the biomedical research agency that they wanted to get out of the contract, according to three former federal officials. The executives complained that it was not sufficiently profitable for the company.

The contract was eventually re-awarded to Philips, and last year the FDA signed off on the new Philips ventilator, the Trilogy Evo. Delivery of 10,000 units was set for . . .Mid-2020. Just a little late. Too bad.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/03/nyt-next-gen-ventilator-project-failed-because-it-killed-profits/

So, Kelley, just who screwed up? And who has contributed to the problem by having the states individually bidding for the supplies and equipment?

The one saying Me Me Me doesn’t look anything like tiny.

The US has 4.25% of the world’s population and 95.75% of the world’s ego, it seems, with most residing in the resident.If an International corporation delivered 4.75% of its products here that would be ethical, but it seems this administration wants it all.

https://www.worldsmostethicalcompanies.com/honorees/

Are you suggesting that we nationalize the multinational corporations? How much of 3M’s ownership is still in U.S. hands, let alone Minnesotan hands?

Good thing for New York that China (and for that matter, the state of Oregon) did not take that “our people only” attitude with their ventilators.

Do you really want to play that game “3M stop fulfilling your contracts with other countries, USA first!!”

You do realize, that if other countries do the same in return the US is screwed.

Once again, Kelley demonstrates his willful IGNORANCE! So, that qualifies him as a spokesperson for #45!

3M is a multinational corporation with contract obligations in other countries. If the company was being run by the soiled Barbie Doll, Ivanka, nothing would have been said by smelly Kelly.

Let me point out, in February Trump shipped tons of medical equipment to China.

In March Trump lied that Obama left empty shelves.

ME ME ME..they caught the Dr. Don virus.. but oh, the ratings

I’m no fan of big corporations but I gotta call B-S on this one Mr. Kelley. By that logic, then the Chinese shouldn’t be delivering masks and other equipment to us. ~ The real fault are the geniuses in FEMA that just started looking for PPE once we ran out. “Emergency Management” indeed!

Money, moola, maga-bucks…

That was a signed contract, already in place. Guess where the raw materials for N-95 masks are sourced? Hint: you just pissed them off. Another think here. Obama had commissioned a company to develop a machine that pops ut a million masks a day. It was completely designed and ready to build when DJT put a stop to it.

Fire Kelly Bring Back Bob Rogers