ML-Implode News - The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life

Disbanding the [pandemic response unit of the national security council] exacerbated a trend that was already prevalent after two years of Trump -- an exodus of skilled and experienced officials who knew what they were doing. "There's been an erosion of expertise, of competent leadership, at important levels of government," a former senior government official told the Guardian.
"Over time there was a lot of paranoia and people left and they had a hard time attracting good replacements," the official said. "Nobody wanted to work there."

It was hardly a morale-boosting gesture when Trump proposed a 16% cut in CDC funding on 10 February -- 11 days after the World Health Organization had declared a public health emergency over Covid-19.
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Konyndyk recalls attending a meeting in mid-February with top Trump administration officials present in which the only topic of conversation was the travel bans. That's when he began to despair about the federal handling of the crisis.
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So it has transpired. In the wake of the testing disaster has come the personal protective equipment (PPE) disaster, the hospital bed disaster, and now the ventilator disaster.
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Early on in the crisis, Griffeth said, it dawned on her and many of her peers that the federal government to which they would normally look to keep them safe was nowhere to be seen. They resigned themselves to a terrible new reality.
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But just in the last few days, Griffeth has started to see the emergence of something else. She has witnessed an explosion of Americans doing it for themselves, filling in the holes left by Trump's failed leadership.

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The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life