The Virus Chronicles (continued)

03 April 2020

Jared Kushner is a Fool, an Idiot, and a Buffoon

The fact that he is rich is strictly an accident of birth, and of course marriage. After weeks of rumors that son in law Jared was heading a second, off the books, secret anti COVID-19 Task Force, The Boy himself appeared on stage with the President yesterday for what I've come to think of as the Five O'clock Follies, that ever elongating press circus in which President Trump generally insists on hogging center stage as the nation's faux chief epidemiologist.

Apparently Boy Jared, having failed as Middle East Peace Maker (I'm not sure he can be faulted for that, except for having taken on the job at all) is now chief national medical logistician. He and the Vice President insisted that Boy Jared reports everything right to the Vice President, hence his mixed government/industry task force is not a parallel organization to that of the Vice's, and is definitely not a secret. How could it be — The Boy was right out in front of all those reporters.

Our new Chief National Medical Logistician had this to say to those complaining in state governments, and to the ungrateful hospital treatment centers of our country: “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” he said, “It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.” Apparently if the federal government happens to need a bunch of ventilators or masks, it can hop over and get 'em from the stockpile, but don't you states try to get your grubby hands on them. Order yer own! We bought these with our money. Boy Jared is unfamiliar with FDR's analogy of the garden hose from Lend Lease days. If your neighbor's house is afire, and you have a garden hose all hooked up, you don't negotiate a price on the hose, you pick it up and put out the fire, lest it spread to your house as well. Anyway, HHS had stated that the Strategic Stockpile's purpose is to supplement state and local supplies in times of emergency.

It could be that Young Jared was out getting measured for his first silver sippi-cup on the day that Sesame Street aired the sharing episode. More likely, he was just reflexively insisting on the administration's perfection. ('It was a perfect call, a perfect letter, a perfect stockpile, &c.')

In the few minutes since I began writing this very piece, and since Boy Jared's unfortunate encounter with truth, the HHS website has been magically revised to reflect the stockpile's mission as being more in conformance with Kushner's statement. It's a clear 1984-ish revision of the documentation to conform to the desired facts. Technically, this turns Jared Kushner from an idiot to a seer. Kushner also noted that states shouldn't be calling the feds for more ventilators before they need them, simply to stockpile them “just in case.” “Call when you need them,” he advised. Boy Jared may not have learnt at Famous Medical Logistician School that ventilators are a critical care item. By the time you need them, it's too late to go out and procure them. That wrinkle may not have been covered in Pandemics 101.