Two stories came out today. Completely separate stories, yet taken together, they tell you everything you need to know about this “administration” (not that we didn’t know it already; not that we aren’t already sick of knowing it).
Story 1: Doctor Says He Was Removed After Questioning Drug Promoted by Trump. A top vaccine scientist was dismissed from his job supervising the development of a coronavirus vaccine because — get this — he refused to back up Trump’s crazy infatuation with the hydroxychloroquine snake oil elixir that the White House has been peddling:
Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.
Instead, he was given a narrower job at the National Institutes of Health. “I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit,” he said in a statement to The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman.
“I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way,” he said.
…
Dr. Bright, who noted that his entire career had been spent in vaccine development both in and outside of government, has led BARDA since 2016.
In the statement, he said: “My professional background has prepared me for a moment like this — to confront and defeat a deadly virus that threatens Americans and people around the globe. To this point, I have led the government’s efforts to invest in the best science available to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. [….] I also resisted efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections.”
Dr. Bright, who is a career official, pointed specifically to the initial efforts to make chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine widely available before it was scientifically tested for efficacy with the coronavirus.
“Specifically, and contrary to misguided directives, I limited the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lack scientific merit,” he said.
Story 2: Former Labradoodle breeder tapped to lead U.S. pandemic task force. Not, it’s not The Onion. True story. Back in January, when the scope of the looming pandemic was becoming obvious, Alex Azar — in some ways the most competent person in the “administration,” which is really saying something — decided it was time to put together a pandemic task force. And to lead it, he picked… Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. Unless you remember that George Bush put the former Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association to run FEMA, that is.
[A]t the dawn of the coronavirus crisis, Azar appointed his most trusted aide and chief of staff, Harrison, as HHS’s main coordinator for the government’s response to the virus.
Harrison, 37, was an unusual choice, with no formal education in public health, management, or medicine and with only limited experience in the fields. In 2006, he joined HHS in a one-year stint as a “Confidential Assistant” to Azar, who was then deputy secretary. He also had posts working for Vice President Dick Cheney, the Department of Defense and a Washington public relations company.
Before joining the Trump Administration in January 2018, Harrison’s official HHS biography says, he “ran a small business in Texas.” The biography does not disclose the name or nature of that business, but his personal financial disclosure forms show that from 2012 until 2018 he ran a company called Dallas Labradoodles.
What else is there to say?
Oh, I know: VOTE THEM ALL OUT!!
Election Day is only 6 months and 12 days away, not that I’m counting or anything.